Organic

That looks like it turned out pretty nicely!

I’ve seen that happening on my new style paddles as well. It seems like the older style handles held the screen printing a little better. It doesn’t bother me since it has no affect on the function, but it is something that could be addressed. The color coding of the grits is should keep confusion to a minimum in the mean time.

Diamond is harder than any steel, so as long as you use light pressure and let the abrasives do the work I don’t think the S-35VN will be a problem.

If you’ve checked out Marc’s thread on super steels you will see that some of the modern ultra high hardness blade steels can behave strangely when sharpening. People have reported that they will get…[Read more]

Cool setup! Did you order yours without the shelving unit, or did you remove it yourself?

What I meant by that statement was that every knife will require some adjustment the first time you sharpen it on your WE. The arc of the KME is almost certainly a tighter radius than that of the WE. Unless the blade is totally straight and has no belly then you will end up doing some re-profiling on the knife the first time you sharpen it on the…[Read more]

I wouldn’t worry about being able to hit the factory angles on the Dalstrong. They may not be as advertised, but I can get 12 degrees per side on a somewhat similar knife that I own and I don’t even need the low angle adapter to do it.

I don’t like granton edge knives because it shortens the useful life of the knife. Once you sharpen it down to…[Read more]

Welcome George! People seem to fall into a tribal mentality about their sharpening method of choice. Free hand is a very versatile way to sharpen . While I can sharpen that way, I’m just not very good at it. The WE makes that lack of skill a non-issue; I can repeatedly get amazing results.

I don’t really own an EDC that I love right now. There are several ZT, Spyderco, and Benchmade models on my radar, but my employer doesn’t allow people to carry a pocket knife and the carry laws in Massachusetts are downright draconian, so I rarely have a blade on me anymore. My money has been invested in kitchen blades instead.

My want to buy…[Read more]

That’s a call only you can make. Its just a matter of personal preference. If the knife is primarily used for chopping through frozen foods I would probably go to 20 per side, but its a cheap knife so there’s no sense in worrying too much about it. Cheap knives can be great because you can try lots of things and you don’t have to worry about the…[Read more]

I think you’ll be happy with that kit. It will offer you a lot of flexibility. If you get the sharpening bug like I did then you’ll be back for more accessories and stones in the not so distant future. Let us know if you run into any troubles when sharpening your first few knives.

My Gen. 3 pro is has this issue as well. It does not seem to be blade dependent either. WE does have limits to what they deem acceptable when matching the angles on the pro models. You can call them and find out if yours is out of specification or not, but I think the threshold is something like 1 degree from side to side.

I would drop back to the 100 stones and re-mark the bevel with sharpie then keep going until all of the sharpie is removed from the entire bevel. It also looks like you didn’t apex the very tip of the blade, so I would spend some extra time working just the tip area. It is often the heel and the tip that are the hardest areas to get.

It will be…[Read more]

I’m not sure if it will accommodate that much weight without rotating in the WE clamp. I don’t even own anything that large to test it for you. I’ve personally never tried to sharpen anything larger than about 12 inches of blade, but there is a video of Clay sharpening a 17 inch machete and that was with the old style 8 inch rods.

My concern with…[Read more]

That 1 inch thick spine is going to be trouble with the WE130 clamp. The WE 120 style clamp might be able to handle it, but there would be a lot of compensation you’d have to do to get the angles to match. You should be able to get it done on the WE130 style clamp with the Tormek small knife adapter because it grips the handle rather than the…[Read more]

Marc is right when he says that the line between functional and cosmetically impressive is not distinct. Highly polished edges have less drag through whatever material it is that you are trying to cut, so they often preform better than a lower grit finished knife. However, the ultra refined apex that you get when putting a highly polished edge on…[Read more]

Welcome Drew!

You’ve been given good advice thus far. The WE 120 does offer more flexibility and it will be easier to use. That said, people were putting mirrored edges on knives long before the WE120 / WE130 / Generation 3 were around and I’ve even seen people accomplish that with the WE GO. You don’t need the extra features and you can upgrade down the line,…[Read more]

I have applied the emulsions by pumping it directly onto the strops (no distance between the nozzle and the strop surface) in a glob and then I spread it onto the strop surface by rubbing the two strops together. It works out okay and there is no risk of over-spray.

I’ll add my $0.02 to the discussion. The coarse grits on strops don’t really behave like coarse grit on a solid substrate (ceramic, lapping film on glass, diamonds on steel). I use the 14 / 10 set of strops after the 1.4 / 0.6 micron ceramic stones and the result is an increase in observed polish.

WE customer service is very good and they should be able to help you diagnose the issue.