Wicked Edge Buyer’s Guide – Fall and Holiday Season 2023 – WE60, WE66 & Gen4Pro
- This topic has 17 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 03/13/2024 at 4:44 pm by
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Thanks for all of the responses. I ordered the WE66. Looking foward to giving it a try. I’ll have to use the WE120 to get the true angle of all my knives for a little while.
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I have three WE rigs: A Gen 3 Pro with a 3/4″ riser block added and the SS aftermarket micro adjusts (my design), a WE130 with the same type microadjusters and what would called a WE120, with the original vise and on which I use the rods/microadjusters from the WE130 rig.
The Gen 3 Pro is a very nice rig. I especially like the incremental adjustments which make convex jobs a breeze. But there are a couple of limitations I don’t like. The geometry is such that when sharpening a narrow blade (as is not found in most kitchen knives), the top inch or so of the stone won’t touch the center couple of inches of the blade. It will contact the parts of the blade which are farther from center. I added the riser block to get more use out of the upper end of the stones. Doing so solves one problem but trades it out for another: the detent labels are off by about three degrees and the highest achievable angle is about three degrees less than stock.
For very wide knives or knives with very low bevel angles, I use two Low Angle Adapters stacked one on top of the other and extra long guide rods. This only works well on my rigs with the 5/16″ angle bars. I have three sets of guide rods: 11″ 14″ and 18″. For some situations, I much prefer the original vise. I would hang onto the WE120 base and vise assembly. You can swap between the 120 and the 130 rigs in only one or two minutes.
I recommend that you watch my video on using the Gen 1 Wicked Edge vises. It’s at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBRsrJrB-gw
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