I had been humming and hawing over purchasing the WE100 for over a year, and on Christmas I finally decided to treat myself. So I ordered the WE100 along with the base, and planned to get some after market higher grit stones. After ordering, I noticed that the after market stones would really only save me 10-15% so I just ordered some higher grit WE stones too. When the WE100 got here, I opened it up and saw that the 600 grit stone had a brutal defect in it.
I think it would have taken a chunk out of a knife if I used it.
No big deal really, defects happen. So I messaged the company I bought it through (Thunderbirdgear, I’m up in canada and it looks like they’re the only reseller here), and they said mail the stone back to them, and when they have it then they’ll mail me a replacement.. Kind of annoying but okay. So I’ll maybe get a replacement stone in mid February.
Today, my higher grit stones I ordered arrived.. and before I even opened the package I could see one wasn’t glued to its handle.
WE will replace.. You may try to run the stone bump against the spine of an old junker knife. The hard surface contact often knocks off the high spot, clean I knocked off a high spot running the stone across a piece of cold steel flat-bar I got at HD. The bump knocked off clean and the stone worked as expected. Others have done this with similar good results using the edge of plate-glass. Sometimes though, the plating defect doesn’t come clean and those stones needs replacing. This doesn’t happen often but it does happen. It’s an inconvenience for sure.
That’s terrible all the way around. The only good thing is the quality of your photos… I’ve asked our Customer Success manager to reach out and try to fix this for you more quickly.
I’m so sorry about all this. This definitely isn’t the experience we want any of our customers to have. Can you send me your shipping address and full name to support@wickededgeusa.com. We’ll get you all new products shipped out under warranty.
Again, I’m really sorry about all of this. Let me know in that email if there’s anything else we can do for you.
I’ve run into this problem of abnormally large clusters of diamond grit a few times before. In instances where the cluster is aligned parallel to the stone, they are really hard to knock off and the normal process of breaking them in doesn’t do it. On particularly hard steels like my ZDP-189’s, they can produce some really nasty chips. I found that clamping a section of glass in the vise and working the stone with firm pressure over the corner of the glass will do the job.
The vendor’s process of manufacturing diamond stones distributes the diamond grit randomly over the steel platen and then nickel-plates the assembly to anchor the particles to the steel. The break-in process is supposed to knock off any particles that aren’t directly attached to the platen. Unfortunately, randomly distributing particles can occasionally result in a random cluster oriented in disadvantageous direction. I’ve suggested to Clay that there are other vendors doing a better job out there, but he doesn’t seem to have found one.
