Okay I’m back from the hardware store with my leveling pads for the bottom of the granite base. I looked through every single piece of packing and boxes and there were no feet anywhere in the contents. So minor set back, but i would now like to share some early user experience feedback.
I need to qualify my remarks to give a bit of perspective. I am a total, complete novice and have very limited experience sharpening knives. Previously I used a Magic Chef electric knife sharpener which was convenient, easy and made my kitchen knives cut better than they did after being dulled through normal kitchen use. This is basically an electric motor turning a sharpening stone that scraped the knife edges when you draw the knife through a slot in two stages, a sharpener and a honing wheel.
So now after collecting a number of pretty expensive knives in the $100 to $400 range, I decided that i needed to get a little more in touch with my collection. I didn’t want to use my Magic Chef because it left a pretty toothy (albeit effective cutting edge). I saw all the very pretty mirror edges others had achieved and decided that my knives would look pretty cool with that finishing touch.
I looked at a bunch of other sharpeners on line, since there is no place near me that I could go to compare and shop for a good knife sharpener. There were plenty of selections, but long story short, I liked the WE system the best. So I bit the bullet and spent a ton of money to buy into it. I must say a difficult decision because I am retired and could have for example bought a nice HD, 3D flat screen tv for what I paid for my PP2 and additional strops and ceramics.
Which brings me to the point. I bought an inexpensive knife similar in size and shape from Amazon, there are tons to chose from. for about 10 bucks or so. Today for the first time, i finally have my new PP2 assembled and ready for use. So here are some first impressions and observations from someone who really has too much time on his hands. Sorry for the lengthy post.
Before you get going, evaluate your workspace. There will be some significant very fine dust, so if you are using your office desk next to your computer and external hard drives consider covering them and also, it is imperative that you have very good lighting beyond just the lights in your ceiling. I recommend a good goose neck desk lamp that can be moved and focused easily on your blade and able to move and focus from one side to the other. Also bring everything you will need so you don’t have to keep getting up to go get stuff, that gets old fast.
I first took a metal file to the edge of my test knife to dull it past dull into abuse. Next I taped the non cutting edge and mounted it according to instructions. It’s a bit harder to level it on top of the two insert posts than it looks online. since the swedge and curve on the non cutting side made it uneven but with a bit of practice you can get it pretty close. Next, I unpacked my shiny new stones starting at 100 and put them on the guide rods. This is pretty intimidating because there is a lot to take in I spent so much time watching YouTube demos, I felt a bit of pressure to remember all the little tricks and hints and rules and directions. So, I just took a deep breath and dove in. Once you take the first few strokes it becomes really fun and I would be amazed if you are not smiling broadly at how cool this thing is.
But I am getting a bit ahead. I think the factory edge on my test knife was about 20 degrees per side. So I decided to try a steeper angle just to see how fast the 100 grit would cut steel. It is pretty amazing what a big difference there is between 18 degrees and 20 degrees. At this point magic marker is your friend. Use it as you experiment to see where on the edge your stones are cutting. The size of the bevel is much greater at 18 degrees, I mean a lot. Not a big deal if you are just sharpening old kitchen knifes and don’t care how they look, but if you are cutting a $400 CRK for example, you can seriously change the look of your knife blade if you use too steep an angle. So don’t go anywhere near your good knives until you have tested this thing.
It took a lot more strokes than I thought it would to re-profile a blade even though it was a new stone which cuts much faster than a broken in one. You can hear the difference as the stone begins to break in. You will know what I mean when you try it. It did change the angle and bevel but a few hundred strokes later I was still not getting the bur on one side that I needed to move to the next stone. To me that bur is not as easy to feel as I thought it might be. It’s pretty tiny. So IF you are going to be re-profiling, especially hard steel, it might be a good investment to get get the 50-80 grit stones available, but the 100 will work if you are not in a hurry.
So, I decided I didn’t really need to re-profile this knife at this time and I was more interested in seeing how sharp I could make it. So I switched to a 20 degree angle. Well, to answer the question… how sharp can I make it. The answer is very sharp. At some point the blade was so sharp that when I starred at it for too long my eyes started bleeding. (I joke). Actually, it’s not that simple. As I progressed from one set of stones to the next more fine set, I could see the scrape pattern or toothy pattern start to change and become smoother until you get a bur for the first time and sharpen the opposite side so the apex is exact. It gets very, very sharp. I mean you could cut toilet paper sharp. But there is a sort of bell curve of sharpness. As you move from the toothy sharpness of the PP1 set of stones to the PP2 set your blade gets more mirror and less toothy which makes it less effective at cutting some things like paper. It is an interesting trade off and you can still have the mirror and the toothy edge but that is another discussion for another place.
So as I began to go through the different grits, I began to wonder, when to move to the next grit stone? In other words had the current grit done as much as it could do or should. I keep going with the same stone so I don’t use a finer grit to try to take off more metal than it is intended or designed to. Not sure if that makes sense, but it seems like there is no good answer. I guess this is one of those intuitive things that just comes with experience. However, having said that, this sharpener is pretty much fool proof. I mean, if I could bring my knife to a push cut sharpness and then to a mirror finish on the first attempt from a damaged blade, trust my you can. More importantly, it was fun. I mean really fun. I brought a cup of coffee with me, I love my morning coffee. But, I forgot all about it and it got cold because I was so distracted by sharpening. It is more fun because the learning curve is almost nonexistent. There was none of the frustration of screwing it up and having to start over. It’s easy and fun. One thing I found out, especially at the end when you are going for finesse and appearance, past just sharpening is to not muscle the stones. Really, just let the weight of the stone do it. Kind of like brushing your teeth.
So is it better than a new 3D HD flat screen, I think so. It is certainly more rewarding and I like working with my hands, plus I already have tv’s all around the house, so not such a big deal for me. Do I have buyers remorse, now that I have seen it and put it through it’s paces. Not at all. I really love this thing. Do I recommend it, a resounding YES. It is very expensive for what it is, but when you actually use it, you will see that there is a lot of precision design and manufacturing that had to come together. This is a very refined product and will continue to be in high demand, ( IMHO ).
There is probably more I could say, but this is already too long so for now, I will sign off and let others add their observations as they open their new WEPS and try them out for the first time. Good luck and as someone else here often says, stay sharp. (I like that). :cheer: :cheer: :cheer: :cheer: 
come with four little “feet”, so mention this when you contact them.