I did a ton of reading and youtube watching before I decided to buy my WEPS and I felt it would only be fair if I left an honest feedback others who are thinking about pulling the trigger could use.
Now because of some medical conditions which we won’t get into, I’m unable to even use the sharpeners that elevate your stones to a certain angle and you just hold the knife at 90 degree. My hands are just too shaky. As I move further into the middle-high end of knife collecting I couldn’t let something like dull knives continue to ruin what are otherwise good knives. Over the weekend I ordered my WEPS I off of Amazon and it arrived today.
By the time this thing hit my door I probably had over 100 hours of youtube under my belt. I was ready with washers of different sizes and the whole deal to “modify” my WE to prevent the problems others in the past have had who didn’t have the new ball joint arms. Turns out WE has already done this. I’m not sure the exact manufacture date on my unit, but the arms have 2 washers already placed in between the arm and the holder on the pin. The arms also appear to be thicker with much less play then many of the units I was seeing on youtube videos from a few years ago. So for starters, good on you WE for seeing these problems and fixing them.
Now that said, these arms are dangerous. I’ve already cut myself once and am honestly pretty disappointed. As many of you know when you are doing the WE motion while sharpening, you slide back to front and top to bottom then out and back. Well that would be great if the arms themselves would actually allow that pivot to happen, but they honestly do not. About 50% of the time the snag while you’re trying to move the rod backwards as the pivot pin is trying to change sides. I know we’re looking for tight tolerances for repeat ability, but I feel my arms are so tight, it’s not allowing for proper pivot of the movement joints. Now can I oil the already high dust areas and do my best to keep them clean? I absolutely can and am going to have to try that. The reality is, should I really have to?
I currently can go very slow, 1 stroke at a time and manually unbind as I go and accomplish my sharpening (which we’ll get to), but I am unable to use that nice smooth bicycle motion and am pretty much going to be forced to buy the upgraded arms as these things as I said are just dangerous. I’m extremely disappointed as a consumer and I’ll make a comparison to another product I own. I currently own a Ruger LC9. As some of you may know, the LC9 had many trigger issues and a few other issues which caused Ruger to go back to the drawing board and release the LC9s. Upon release of the LC9s, Ruger offered a trade in program where LC9 owners could trade in their LC9 for LC9s.
I’m not suggesting that WE should necessarily go to that extent, but the reality is all of the upgrades and fixes they have made to the old rods, still doesn’t make them anywhere as user friendly, or in my case finger friendly as the newer rods. The travel is not smooth and user friendly and WE knows it as they have released new rods. The fact that I have purchased a unit which I knew had older rods, but obviously has what WE felt were some quick fixes to old problems, but they were unwilling to just change completely to the new rods is disappointing.
Okay so I’ve ranted enough about the rods. Let’s move onto the machine itself. It just flat out works. It took my about 3 or 4 knives to get my stones broken in and cutting smoothly, but I expected this and started on some cheap promo knives I had lying around. My most recent knife through the machine was a Schrade Old Timer 1520T. I use this knife as one of my main skinning knives and love the profile in size. Other then having to move this thing way up in the clamp to avoid rubbing, I was able to put a 16 degree primary edge with a small 20 degree bevel on it. It literally push cuts paper with ease and I’ve never been able to get it this sharp.
So here I sit, $400+ dollars in with a machine I know does what it is supposed to do, and it does it well, but because of WE’s decision to continue to try to sell old technology and just make small fixes, it just doesn’t work with the smoothness that it should. My advice to other people on the fence would be to weigh these options to yourself and just know you probably won’t have much choice but to upgrade to the newer arms if you buy this machine. My advice to WE would be to please just retire these arms. We as customers are already paying a premium price for this machine, most of us would be willing to pay another $50 or so for a stock unit with the updated arms, but to continue to sell arms which are just dangerous in my opinion makes me as a consumer feel nickle and dimed and I really hate that.
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