Here's my article on the Wicked Edge WE60 Sharpener. I hope you guys like it.
The New Wicked Edge WE60 Sharpener
The New Wicked Edge Go WE60 Sharpener is here! It is very nice with a lot of new design features. The WE60 unit comes with the Sharpener Base and new designed Standard Vise and Standard Angle Slide Assemblies. The above photo shows what comes in the WE60 package.
** Please keep in mind that I was invited to be a beta tester and the WE60 and its package contents that I have may be slightly different than the WE60 Sharpener/package contents that will be released for sale to the public, and that they are subject to possible changes without my knowledge. **
The WE60 Sharpener comes with the standard vise and standard angle slide assemblies installed onto the WE60 Sharpener Base, two 200/600 Wicked Edge diamond stones, two 9” Guide Rods, practice knife, vise key, depth key, alignment guide, C-clamp, four vise clamping screws(one vise hold-down screw) , two ball joint shields, four rubber o-rings to retain the ball joint shields, practice knife instructions, a card with the QR Code and URL so you can go online and get the WE60 instructions, a package of nice Wicked Edge paperboard shims, and a Wicked Edge sticker.
The vise clamping screws are stainless steel 5/32” Allen head flat socket screws. The total length of them is; 1/2”, 5/8”, 7/8”, and 1”.
The Wicked Edge paperboard shims are nice for protecting coated blades and to help keep really thin blades from possibly slipping in the vise jaws.
Above is a closer view of the WE60 unit and the main package contents. The flange on the base of the WE60 Sharpener has two holes for two #10 screws to affix it to a surface. An aluminum base is planned to be available September 1st.
Above is a look from the backside of the WE60 Sharpener. I love the, “Made in U. S. A.”!
You can see the protective plastic balls inserted into the standard angle slides. You just loosen the Delrin Guide Rod Retention Screws and remove them to install the Guide Rods.
The dimensions for the WE60 Sharpener Base is 9 11/32” long, 2 29/32” wide, and 29/32” high. The top of the vise is about 4 5/8” high from the bottom of the base. The vise jaws are 1” wide at the top.
Above you can see the bottom of the WE60 sharpener base. The empty hole on the right center is for changing the vise to face the other way if you so desire. My WE60 unit came with the fixed vise installed so that the vise clamping screws go into the fixed vise jaw from the right side – that’s the way that I like mine.
You can easily change the vise around if you wish by using the supplied vise key. Just remove the vise mounting screw and turn the fixed jaw of the vise around and screw it down into the empty hole on the right, and then snug it down tight.
In the photo above you can see the WE60 vise jaws from the top. I just have them pushed together with no vise screws in them. The vise jaws have two vertical slots that give the jaws three fingers that will flex around and clamp distally tapered blades. You can also see that the center fingers are slightly more angled toward the center than the outside fingers.
In the next photo you can see the inside of the new WE60 vise jaws. You can see how the contact pad of the center vise jaw finger goes up to the top and the outside vise jaw finger contact pads stop about 1/8” from the top. The inside of the other jaw is the same.
The inside jaw faces have offset contact pads on the fingers that help with clamping fully flat ground blades. Brilliant design!
In the above photo you can see that the protective plastic ball has been removed and the ball end of the Guide Rod mounted between the Delrin Guide Rod Socket and the Delrin Guide Rod Retention Screw. The Guide Rod moves as smooth as silk. I really love this design!
Future WE60 Sharpener Units will have hex heads on the Angle Slide Locking Screw and Delrin Guide Rod Retention Screw sized to 11/16” and 7/16” respectively so that they can be operated with standard wrenches.
Ok, let’s sharpen some knives!
I’ll start with the supplied practice knife. I could screw the WE60 Sharpener Base down to a sturdy surface, but for this article I’m going to pretend that I’m in the hills and need to clamp the WE60 Sharpener down to a wooden standup TV dinner tray using the supplied C-clamp.
You can see above that I have the supplied Wicked Edge practice knife clamped into the top holes of the WE60 vise using one of the supplied Wicked Edge paperboard shims. If the spine to edge of the blade was more than an inch wide then you would mount the blade in the bottom holes.
The way that you tighten a blade in your new WE60 vise is while you are holding the blade on top of the depth key or where you want it in the vise jaws, screw the top (Pivot) screw in until both jaws touch the blade on both sides.
While keeping the blade held in position, tighten the bottom (Jack) screw until the blade is held tight in the vise jaws. Then tighten the Jack screw a half turn more. Check to make sure that your blade is held firmly in the vise jaws. Be careful!
Above I am using the supplied Alignment Guide to record the “sweet spot” position of the blade in the vise jaws so that the next time that I need to sharpen the blade it will be much quicker to get it clamped into the vise in the same position that it was in the previous sharpening.
The sweet spot isn’t very critical with this blade since it doesn’t have much of a belly to it. There will be a Wicked Edge video for finding the sweet spot in the instructional videos for the WE60 on the Wicked Edge YouTube channel.
I sharpened the Wicked Edge practice knife at 20dps. The supplied Wicked Edge 200/600 diamond stones worked very well to get a good working edge on the knife. As you can see in the photo above, the edge cut the printer paper pretty well. I would advise getting some more different grit stones, but the supplied stones work well for an entry level Wicked Edge sharpener.
Continued in the next post.