I bought a Fiskars machete recently to see if I’d like using a machete in brush. I still don’t know the answer to that question, since the Fiskars is so terrible it folds rather than cuts. Anyway, the factory grind on it was abysmal. Inconsistent, not centered, wobbly, pretty much everything that could be wrong. So I clamped it into the WEPS and had at with my 50 grit diamond paddles to put a 30dps bevel on it. I used my USB microscope to see when I finally got the two bevels to intersect each other. This video first shows looking at a section where I had apexed the edge, then looking at a section where I had more work to do. The machete is clamped in the WEPS. I’m hand-holding the microscope facing the edge and rocking the scope back and forth to look at the edge from different angles.
I’ve had a couple of the Chinese USB 'scopes. One was supposedly 800X but the best I could get was maybe half of that. The next was 500X and I was surprised to find it really did 500X.
You’ll find that the 'scope will focus at two different magnifications. My Celestron, for example, will focus at 180X and at 50X. They’re really simple, optically speaking. I recommend using the lower power for all but really fine work. The depth of field is much better at the lower mag, making it much more friendly to use. See my video below.
You can definitely do machete’s on the WEPS, you will have to reclamp though and work on them FOREVER if you are reprofiling. I suggest a belt sander first, like I did to this one then microbevel on the Wicked Edge =)
Yeah, I did a Fiskars machete on the WEPS a couple of years ago it worked. Same experience as you guys: blunt as hell to start with. Then a lot of work to reprofile. And a lot of reclamping. But it worked. The end result was not perfect (I sharpened in sections and was not too motivated given the quality of the blade), but quite usable.
In the end I sold the blade: it was the first time I found it dangerous (for myself) to have such a large and sharp tool in my hands .
Yeah, I recall the steel was very soft. To be honest, I don’t know anymore what angle I used. But in hindsight I would not put anything more steep than 35-40 degrees on the edge. And I might not even reprofile this knife completely to the apex… I don’t know how you use this knife, but swinging around such a large blade in a rather uncontrolled way (which is what I would probably do, since I had no experience with so a blade) was plain dangerous to me.
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