Work Sharp Precision Adjust Unit?

Pomsbz said:
Interesting. Somewhat limited but for the price it's certainly interesting.
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Yes, they do make affordable kit. I have the WS guided system, and it only really comes into its own with the additional stones and strop. If they release an extra three-sided stone with different gradients for this new one, it would be a big lift.
 
Sharpening Supplies (.com) had a sale beginning of the year and I purchased both the Work Sharp Precision Adjust Knife Sharpener, as well as the Angle Set Knife Sharpener (because I really like my Spyderco Triangle Sharpmaker). I have been able to use the Angle Set Knife Sharpener, and I have opinions on that, but I have not been able to use the Precision Adjust Knife Sharpener.

It is not that I have not tried, but...

  1. I have been sharpening smaller knives recently. I do not even remember which knife it was, but my guess is that it was a Case or Buck medium stockman.
  2. I wanted 15 degree angle (per side) maximum
  3. The sharpener would rub against the holder for the small knife at that angle.
So, my very limited experience is that it is not the best for a small blade with a shallow angle. I still have it sitting on my bench just waiting for me to drop a knife into it and get to work. I did touch up one of my chef knives, but that just felt too large for it so I just free-handed it on a stone (not that I tried it).

I will see if I can make time to give it a go later today.
 
pitonyak said:
Sharpening Supplies (.com) had a sale beginning of the year and I purchased both the Work Sharp Precision Adjust Knife Sharpener, as well as the Angle Set Knife Sharpener (because I really like my Spyderco Triangle Sharpmaker). I have been able to use the Angle Set Knife Sharpener, and I have opinions on that, but I have not been able to use the Precision Adjust Knife Sharpener.

It is not that I have not tried, but...

  1. I have been sharpening smaller knives recently. I do not even remember which knife it was, but my guess is that it was a Case or Buck medium stockman.
  2. I wanted 15 degree angle (per side) maximum
  3. The sharpener would rub against the holder for the small knife at that angle.
So, my very limited experience is that it is not the best for a small blade with a shallow angle. I still have it sitting on my bench just waiting for me to drop a knife into it and get to work. I did touch up one of my chef knives, but that just felt too large for it so I just free-handed it on a stone (not that I tried it).

I will see if I can make time to give it a go later today.
Click to expand...
This is important information for me, I tried and gave up with a lansky specifically because I couldn't actually reach the blade of my traditionals due to the angle, the stone would hit the holder first and that was at 20 degrees.
 
Pomsbz said:
This is important information for me, I tried and gave up with a lansky specifically because I couldn't actually reach the blade of my traditionals due to the angle, the stone would hit the holder first and that was at 20 degrees.
Click to expand...

To be clear, I had small blades and was going for 15 degrees. In the video posted above, he looks to be closer to 20 degrees and that blade is probably larger than the blade that I was trying. I will see if I can try some similar blades at greater than 15 degrees. Heck, I probably have a similar Victorinox I can test. Most of the knives in my pile to sharpen are Medium stockman size.
 
golly, vid was waste of time. how to glue sandpaper strips to the ceramic side of the rod. not a word on the system itself, what angles (DPS) it can do, at the finer angles does the knife clamp interfere with the stones ...
 
afishhunter said:
golly, vid was waste of time. how to glue sandpaper strips to the ceramic side of the rod. not a word on the system itself, what angles (DPS) it can do, at the finer angles does the knife clamp interfere with the stones ...
Click to expand...
It's the second of his videos on the sharpener, not his main review as he mentions at the beginning. I was specifically answering Pilsner with that video.
 
pitonyak said:
To be clear, I had small blades and was going for 15 degrees. In the video posted above, he looks to be closer to 20 degrees and that blade is probably larger than the blade that I was trying. I will see if I can try some similar blades at greater than 15 degrees. Heck, I probably have a similar Victorinox I can test. Most of the knives in my pile to sharpen are Medium stockman size.
Click to expand...
I'd be specifically interested in the big and small blade on a 91mm Victorinox at 15 degrees. Thanks!
 
afishhunter said:
golly, vid was waste of time. how to glue sandpaper strips to the ceramic side of the rod. not a word on the system itself, what angles (DPS) it can do, at the finer angles does the knife clamp interfere with the stones ...
Click to expand...

He did reference his initial review (23 minutes), which I have not watched.


His initial complaint in the first video was that there were insufficient stones, but he is usually using a significantly more expensive system (I think) that has many different grits. He wants something rougher and finer. The first video is more useful I think since he covers things such as the fact taht you cannot use much force because it is plastic and things can flex. In other words, it is cheap.
 
Pomsbz said:
I'd be specifically interested in the big and small blade on a 91mm Victorinox at 15 degrees. Thanks!
Click to expand...

I have a Victorinox Explorer, which seems to be about 91mm (my only close tape measure is inches on both sides), but it has a 2 3/8" pen blade and a 1 1/2" pen blade. Already crazy sharp, will see what happens.
 
pitonyak said:
I have a Victorinox Explorer, which seems to be about 91mm (my only close tape measure is inches on both sides), but it has a 2 3/8" pen blade and a 1 1/2" pen blade. Already crazy sharp, will see what happens.
Click to expand...
Yup, that's a 91mm model, thanks!
 
So I was asked about a swiss army knife that is 91mm long with two blades. So, I grabbed a Victorinox explorer, which seems to be 91mm long with two pen blades 38 mm (1 1/2") and 60 mm (2 3/8") long. At the end of the day, it is not the blade length that matters, but the blade width. The long blade is 11mm wide and the smaller blade is closer to 9mm wide.

I will try to embed some images and I am pulling them from my smugmug account (https://pitonyak.smugmug.com/Knives/i-VqfH7bK) since I am embedding small(ish) images

This is the Victorinox with 5mm of the blade clamped and and 7mm protruding
IMG_20210120_200726-XL.jpg

When I lower this to 15 degrees on the sharpener, it hits
IMG_20210120_201057-M.jpg

Then again, the actual angle observed will be directly related to how wide the blade is. In the picture above, my digital angle measure showed this to be about 16 degrees, but it is hitting the guide; no good. If I raise this to just under 20 degrees, it is probably closer to 21 degrees at the blade, and it does not hit.
IMG_20210120_201415-M.jpg

For what it is worth, this seems to be about the angle that this particular knife is sharpened at the moment.

Next I tried a Case medium Stockman, nope! Even the widest blade is not wide enough for 15 degrees.
IMG_20210120_203128-M.jpg

On a whim, I locked a ruler sticking out of the clamps and off hand, it looks like need roughly 20mm of blade sticking out of the sharpener to get 15 degrees. If I have 35mm to 40mm sticking out, I can go down to 12 degrees I believe, but I did not actually try that.

Next, I grabbed a Buck 722 with S30V steel. This still had the factory edge. It came pretty sharp for a factory edge. Buck tells me that they sharpen free hand on belts, as does Case, before they leave the factory. I believe this to be true for both made in USA and made in China Buck knives.
I was trivially able to get this at 15 degrees, which looks like it pretty much nailed the factory grind.
IMG_20210120_205139-M.jpg

IMG_20210120_205158-L.jpg

I found out that on one side, the factory grind was far from consistent at the tip, it was way off. The other side was spot on. I had never bothered to touch the edge because it was pretty good from factory for my needs.

I used all three grits for the tip and only two of the grits for the other side. The edge was certainly close to factory. Pretty amazing after I hit it with a strop. I should mention that I strop with my Worksharp belt knife sharpener. I own both the Original Knife and Tool Sharpener as well as the ken onion version. Usually when I "strop", I put stropping compound on an old belt and free hand the strop. It is crazy fast and almost always makes a huge difference.

My primary concern here is that the blade near the handle is concave. The problem with a concave blade is that we a stone that will have problems getting into that concave portion of the blade. I usually avoid concave blades because I cannot easily sharpen a knife on a stone (water stone or oil stone), at least not easily. I also expect this problem with the Spyderco Triangle Sharpmaker, the Work Sharp Angle Set Knife Sharpener, and this Work Sharp Precision Adjust Knife Sharpener. The Spyderco Triangle Sharpmaker you can put the corner out and easily get into that concave area. The same is true of the Lansky Turn Box Knife Sharpener because their rods are round.

To my surprise, the Work Sharp Precision Adjust Knife Sharpener managed to sharpen the concave section with no problem, so I assume that the edge of the "stones" did the work. Surprise surprise, very happy about that.

The end result was not nearly as polished given the progression available. If you are a knife snob (and most of us here probably are), attaching sand paper as shown in the video is probably not a bad option, but at some point you start thinking that the sharpmaker at $500+ is a good idea. Even that, however, will still have problems with narrow blades. They make a narrow blade attachment, which has more clearance and it pushes the blade further out. So then you need to get longer bars. So you need to spend another $100(ish) to add the ability to handle the narrower blades. OK, they might have called it the low angle attachment, so with my pension for these smaller knives, I would need that if i got one. Would sure like someone who has one to tell me the smallest blade width it can handle at 15 degrees (or slightly less).

Given that I paid about $50 at Sharpening Supplies (.com), it seems like a good purchase.

If you want something for a narrow blade, take a look at the Work Sharp Angle Set knife sharpener. I prefer the Spyderco, but the Worksharp supports more angles, but it has shorter stones, less of a selection unless you attach sandpaper to it (and then you need to run the blade backwards), and you are stuck with the flat stones only. On the other hand, the Spyderco cost more, and if you want extra coarse (diamond or one other thing) or the extra fine, that costs even more.

Well, I hope that was at least a little bit informative.
 
pitonyak said:
So I was asked about a swiss army knife that is 91mm long with two blades. So, I grabbed a Victorinox explorer, which seems to be 91mm long with two pen blades 38 mm (1 1/2") and 60 mm (2 3/8") long. At the end of the day, it is not the blade length that matters, but the blade width. The long blade is 11mm wide and the smaller blade is closer to 9mm wide.

I will try to embed some images and I am pulling them from my smugmug account (https://pitonyak.smugmug.com/Knives/i-VqfH7bK) since I am embedding small(ish) images

This is the Victorinox with 5mm of the blade clamped and and 7mm protruding
IMG_20210120_200726-XL.jpg

When I lower this to 15 degrees on the sharpener, it hits
IMG_20210120_201057-M.jpg

Then again, the actual angle observed will be directly related to how wide the blade is. In the picture above, my digital angle measure showed this to be about 16 degrees, but it is hitting the guide; no good. If I raise this to just under 20 degrees, it is probably closer to 21 degrees at the blade, and it does not hit.
IMG_20210120_201415-M.jpg

For what it is worth, this seems to be about the angle that this particular knife is sharpened at the moment.

Next I tried a Case medium Stockman, nope! Even the widest blade is not wide enough for 15 degrees.
IMG_20210120_203128-M.jpg

On a whim, I locked a ruler sticking out of the clamps and off hand, it looks like need roughly 20mm of blade sticking out of the sharpener to get 15 degrees. If I have 35mm to 40mm sticking out, I can go down to 12 degrees I believe, but I did not actually try that.

Next, I grabbed a Buck 722 with S30V steel. This still had the factory edge. It came pretty sharp for a factory edge. Buck tells me that they sharpen free hand on belts, as does Case, before they leave the factory. I believe this to be true for both made in USA and made in China Buck knives.
I was trivially able to get this at 15 degrees, which looks like it pretty much nailed the factory grind.
IMG_20210120_205139-M.jpg

IMG_20210120_205158-L.jpg

I found out that on one side, the factory grind was far from consistent at the tip, it was way off. The other side was spot on. I had never bothered to touch the edge because it was pretty good from factory for my needs.

I used all three grits for the tip and only two of the grits for the other side. The edge was certainly close to factory. Pretty amazing after I hit it with a strop. I should mention that I strop with my Worksharp belt knife sharpener. I own both the Original Knife and Tool Sharpener as well as the ken onion version. Usually when I "strop", I put stropping compound on an old belt and free hand the strop. It is crazy fast and almost always makes a huge difference.

My primary concern here is that the blade near the handle is concave. The problem with a concave blade is that we a stone that will have problems getting into that concave portion of the blade. I usually avoid concave blades because I cannot easily sharpen a knife on a stone (water stone or oil stone), at least not easily. I also expect this problem with the Spyderco Triangle Sharpmaker, the Work Sharp Angle Set Knife Sharpener, and this Work Sharp Precision Adjust Knife Sharpener. The Spyderco Triangle Sharpmaker you can put the corner out and easily get into that concave area. The same is true of the Lansky Turn Box Knife Sharpener because their rods are round.

To my surprise, the Work Sharp Precision Adjust Knife Sharpener managed to sharpen the concave section with no problem, so I assume that the edge of the "stones" did the work. Surprise surprise, very happy about that.

The end result was not nearly as polished given the progression available. If you are a knife snob (and most of us here probably are), attaching sand paper as shown in the video is probably not a bad option, but at some point you start thinking that the sharpmaker at $500+ is a good idea. Even that, however, will still have problems with narrow blades. They make a narrow blade attachment, which has more clearance and it pushes the blade further out. So then you need to get longer bars. So you need to spend another $100(ish) to add the ability to handle the narrower blades. OK, they might have called it the low angle attachment, so with my pension for these smaller knives, I would need that if i got one. Would sure like someone who has one to tell me the smallest blade width it can handle at 15 degrees (or slightly less).

Given that I paid about $50 at Sharpening Supplies (.com), it seems like a good purchase.

If you want something for a narrow blade, take a look at the Work Sharp Angle Set knife sharpener. I prefer the Spyderco, but the Worksharp supports more angles, but it has shorter stones, less of a selection unless you attach sandpaper to it (and then you need to run the blade backwards), and you are stuck with the flat stones only. On the other hand, the Spyderco cost more, and if you want extra coarse (diamond or one other thing) or the extra fine, that costs even more.

Well, I hope that was at least a little bit informative.
Click to expand...
Extremely informative, you just saved me $50. Thank you!
 
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