Work Sharp Ken Onion Knife Sharpener Tool - Adjustable Knife Sharpening System - For Knives, Scissors, Serrated Blades, & Tools

There are probably plenty of raving reviews about this product but this review is more geared towards 'how to use' properly and other views that aren't discussed. I've used it for work knives, kitchen knives, small carving tools and work swords (yes, swords). I've fixed 2 softer metal blades that I thought were going into a recycling bin. It is quick to setup, fairly easy to use and gives good, work fast results. Granted I still prefer stones and plates for my favorite, cherished tools but using those takes time, prep work and lots of work along with clean up and proper storage. I can get a better edge with them but that's because I can control the abrasive removal process easier. As always, wear protective gear as the removal process will create metal and abrasive dust. I always wear safety glasses and cut resistant gloves for larger blades. The WSKO edition is abrasive. It can take off more than you wanted and you will go through belts in little time. It does require some skill and for whatever reason do not test it on your favorite blades until you are comfortable. Even when using older sharpening processes I usually use a test blade before reaching for my good blades. With the WSKO it can take some time before you get a hang of it. I couldn't remove the bur on my first few attempts and I was tempted to just finish those with my nicer stones and polish but keep at it. Using a finer belt and switching edges works the best for the bur. I usually go slow and yes stop the unit early when you reach the tip. I've used this for sharpening my Condor Dadao and ZOMG even the awkward (long) pull gives me undeniably fast work sharp results compared to older methods. I will be purchasing the work tool attachments in the near future but for edged tools that you don't put down often it will save you time so you can continue to do (you got it) work. A huge advantage if you're out with the task and need a quick sharpening. If they had a battery powered version (that was also pluggable) then this would be the only sharpener I'd need. I'm not a hunter but I do butcher livestock. This would be undeniably useful for that alone or for a hunter who does not have access to electricity. *HINT HINT Worksharp, do it!* Overall, if you're looking for sushi stupid crazy bragging sharpness this could achieve it with enough practice. It'll still do it faster than plates/stones/polish but it may take off more than you'd like. It will go through belts sooner than you think and the sharper you want your blade(s) the more you'll pay for it. That's the trade off though and any mechanical belt sharpener will require new belts. I suggest purchasing a backup set and some polish for the hack (works pretty darn good). Even with some after thoughts I cannot believe how much time is saved. What usually took me a daylight's worth to finish a bucket of bladed tools is shortened to a few hours (sharpening 20"+ swords with plates, stones, polish is not as easy as it looks). If time is money or important then this is definitely worth the investment.

Excellent sharpener. The oval edge produced by the sharpener means sharp edges last longer. Not just a little longer, but a lot longer.

I really love this sharpener! I was able to finish an entire kitchen knife set in less than an hour. Anything by Worksharp is well built and does a great job. Its easy to set up and its not much of a learning curve so you can get going pretty fast. I just wish it came with a carry case, otherwise its a wonderful tool!

Bought this after a hunting buddy brought his along during the season, worked so awesome I had to get one! Can remove nicks or just bring a dull blade back. The pocket knife guide really does start out by asking if the blade is "Trashed"!? It can remove a lot of steel in a hurry so be sure to follow directions and change the belts to hone it properly. Plug and play with easy to follow belt and speed guide. Haven't tried it on hatchets and axes yet but would certainly be capable!

This is a great sharpener! There are pros and cons to having an electric/powered sharpener, versus the manual models that clamp to a workbench and have a constant-angle arm. The obvious upside is that the powered sharpeners are MUCH FASTER to use, (and of course require less effort). The downside is directly related to the upside of speed: While it's faster and easier to sharpen a knife, it's also faster and easier to ruin one. Depending on what you use your knives for -- and what kinds of knives you have -- this is a no-brainer to purchase or pass. BOTTOM-LINE ADVICE: Use this sharpener for your every-day kitchen and utility knives, (and outdoor tools, as well as woodworking tools that do not need to be LASER precise). But if you have $400 knives or use precision tools to carve details into wood, then get a manual system for those. SHARPENING ABILITY. It's as advertised. You can get your knives razor/mirror sharp, and very quickly. In this respect, it's just as good any other sharpener. They do include a 6000p belt, which is similar to a leather strop, but I did buy an additional leather strop and compound to go from razor sharp to the polished effect -- you won't necessarily notice the difference in cutting in the kitchen, but strop polishing makes a knife ever-so-slightly sharper, and keeps it sharper a little bit longer. HOW YOU CAN RUIN YOUR KNIVES WITH THIS -- OR ANY ELECTRIC -- SYSTEM. 1. First, there is the human tendency to push down at the base of the blade -- closer to the handle -- then to gently let up on the force as one pulls the blade through the sharpener. This has a cumulative effect of removing more metal from the knife at the base near the handle, even to the point of creating a concave curve there. 2. Second, it is easy to "round off" the tip of the knife, so that instead of coming to a sharp point at the tip, the tip becomes more like a small rounded blade. WITH PRACTICE, you can lessen those tendencies. Start with older, cheaper, more expendable knives, and practice. I was well aware of these tendencies, and I consciously compensated for them, and I still got a slight bit of base curvature and rounded tips on the first several knives I sharpened. THE ONE DRAWBACK OF THIS PARTICULAR DESIGN is that the guide to keep your knife at a constant angle is just not good. It's a plastic guide, (which amazingly is not even entirely flat), and it requires the user to manually hold the blade flat against the guide on one side, while sharpening by the belt on the other. This is harder to do that you might think. And even after much practice, I still swerved in and out of square against the guide. When sharpening short or narrow blades -- like paring knives or fillet knives -- the guide is completely useless, and you are essentially free-styling against the belt. AGAIN, this is much faster -- and just as good as -- free-styling on sharpening stones, but you need a very steady hand. I have a Henkel 4-star paring knife, and I did go ahead and use this machine on it, (to great effect), but I'm still hesitant to use it on my 4-star Henkel 8" butcher knife. (I might after more practice). Bottom line, if you are a collector of fine, rare, historic, or decorative knifes, -- like some of my buddies in the south who have major-league pocket knife collections -- then this is NOT the sharpener for you. If you are a chef or artist who uses blades to carve intricate details, and your blade is your livelihood, then stick with manual sharpening. But if you use your knives in the kitchen, or you have sets of knives for a restaurant that are not top-of-the-line investments, and if you want to sharpen axes, mower blades, and chisels for mortising, then I whole-heartedly endorse this machine, and would argue that it is way underpriced. As a non-professional at-home cooker, home handyman, and amateur woodworker, this is a great deal and a no-brainer. Most of my kitchen knives are middle-of-the-line, and I would just as soon buy another $30 blade than to spend two or three hours to manually sharpen one. With this device and a leather strop, I lined up about a dozen kitchen knives, and from start to finish, spent less than two hours getting them sharper than they have ever been. And it is true that this curved-bevel sharp will last longer than before. The cost of this machine was about $140, whereas the cost to replace those knives would have been over $500. They will probably not need re-sharpening for a year or more. I can live with a little added curvature and bit of a rounded tip.

The Worksharp Knife & Tool Sharpener Ken Onion edition...For 7 months I debated w/ myself over and over about "biting the bullet" and getting a power tool to help me sharpen knives more efficently. Im almost 48, and since age 12 I have used my grandfathers' tried and true stone & ceramic methods to put a razors' edge on a cutting tool. And the old methods WORK. Period. But I cant see quite as well as I used to, and if you get off count sharpening and stropping, it causes big problems that you have to be able to SEE the edge to correct. I swore up, down, and sideways never to "go powered". But w/ the WSKTS systems, my edges seem to true up faster...way faster. I chose the WSKTS-KO because of the options it has available over the standard... My personal favorite?? A slow speed mechanism that keeps me from skrewing up a good blade. I can watch the process as it unfolds. Slow on the WorkShap systems is still "jack-rabbits' ass on fire!" fast compared to almost any hand sharpening rigup. I particularly like the medium and fine "white surface" belts. They sharpen and hone like Spyderco ceramics, and still leave the door wide open for me to finish by hand w/ leather strops. They have a "gunmetal" lookin' deposit as you use them, just like a ceramic rod. You can clean them w/ a white gum eraser on slow speed too, or the standard cleaning "stick" widely available for belt abrasives. The angle adjustment guide is a stroke of genius. If the weight of the knife is all the pressure you use, the blade can easily be "leaned back" and hovered past the belt and the sharpness you seek comes faster. Now, "leaned back" sounds like a relaxed term. Thats' the idea. Set the knife into the sharpener, and REST it on the angle guide, using JUST enough pressure to keep it sliding against the guide. The tool motor in and of itself has more than enough power to handle almost any job, if you use the right belts in succesion and TAKE YOUR TIME. This is a great tool for beginners, and a Godsend for experienced sharpeners, but it doesn't possess the power of an angle or bench grinder Remember that sharpening isn't a race, and if you don't feed your family doing it, its far better to proceed SLOWLY and watch what youre doing. Pay Attention. Don't crank this baby to max on your Sebenza, and then give this tool a bad review if you are foolish enuf to do that. You can and WILL RUIN a very expensive knife in a heartbeat!! Read the directions. Watch Youtube. Call Worksharp, ask questions. Read the directions again. Find some old user knives to practice on. NEVER drag the tip of any knife blade more than 1/2 way off the belt. Start w/ tool OFF, set blade into the angle guide, and using the weight of the blade, and GENTLE guidance, manuver the blade toward the tip, following the shape of the blade. If you are using the "crossbar" blade guide, DO NOT press the knife edge into it, that will dull your knife, defeating the purpose. This IS NOT a bench grinder you just turn on, and leave it that way 'till you finish. Its rated for 1hr. before you need to let it cool completely off. Then when you get good, and I mean good enough to feel that edge and say "Damn!, now that's freakin' sharp!", THEN its time to "Dress up your babies for school". In less than 45 minutes, you can turn a butter knife into a razor w/ the WSTKS-KO, and you can bleed easier than you think. Keep the tool clean and free from sharpening residues as much as possible w/ a dry bristle brush, air compressor nozzle etc. The coarser belts will produce loads of fragments that can gum up the sharpening guide, cassette workings etc. This produces scratches on surfaces you don't want them on. Use masking tape if necessary to stop that from occuring. Put the masking tape in a single layer on the guide "sliderpads" too, if you can, stop and clean often. I sharpened a RUSTY old HC steel butcher's knife, started w/ the coarsest belt I could find, established a "working edge", and went from there. That rustbucket Old Hickory will now SHAVE hair. Tnere was rust and metal frags/sanding matl. all over that cassete. KEEP it squeaky clean. If you think that this tool can be mastered in 5 mins. w/ no practice etc. you will need to take your knives to a professional edgemaker!! All belted abrasive tools need time/patience to get good, but it'll be less time than with stones!! The "medium grit" belt is normally used for sharpening a well-cared for blade on occasion as needed, the fine grit for semi-regular honing, where you want something more aggressive than a steel, but less than attempting to adjust a primary grind to facilitate sharpness. EDIT: 2/24/14 I used the 6k purple belt to polish away the tiny imperfections from the back of my Spyderco H1 Salt Pacific, and now it shaves hair! Make sure you polish AWAY FROM the edge if you do that...or you'll cut the belt! Also, if you have a combo edge knife, each portion of the edge must be sharpened INDEPENDENTLY. Sharpen the plain edge parts as normally done and then follow the directions for sharpening the serrated parts the way you would a fully serrated blade. Tantos must be VERY carefully done, because the flat portion on the nose needs to be treated as if it is a seperate small blade, otherwise you will ruin your knife. My suggestion is the Spyderco TSM for these, unless youre REALLY good on the WSKTS-KO. I will update this review as I go along, but as for now, this is a "TD Essential Sharpening Gizmo List" chart-topper. Highly recommended. Edit 6/19/15 Still well satisfied----just keeps getting better!....I'm thinking about snagging the Wskts field kit to complete the lineup!.....May consider a 1 by 30 too. Everything comes full circle.

Awesome sharpener. It put a polished edge on all my knives. The belts seem to get dirty quickly but they are still sharpening after I sharpened 10 knives and two pairs of scissors. I’m an amateur and couldn’t get the hang of a whetstone but with his I don’t think I need to learn. It’s definitely pricey but I think the build quality and performance makes it worth it.

Ok so full discolsure, Bought this with my own money and am an avid edgesnob. I even moved to Japan and initiated the process to apprentice to become a togiya (professional "polisher" (sharpener)). SO, I know a thing or two about sharpening knives. Short version: if you actually use your knives and need a repeatable, easy to use, and effortless (read foolproof) way to sharpen knives THAT YOU USE, look no further. Now the longform. I've been using this thing for years, and aside from the belts eventually losing bite (become a slightly higher grit over about 30 reprofiles or so), AND the fact this system does marr the primary bevel a bit, this is the best powered system of it's kind. When I was apprenticing with a professional knife maker, one of our buddies had purchased one of these on a wild hair (probably about 8 years back). We used a Burrking in the shop, with professional grade equipment all around. This ken onion sharpener here put comparable (not quite to the polish level of a slack belted high grit finishing belt to a scotchbrite belt finished with a buffing on a buffing wheel with green compound, but honestly functionally competitive) edge on darn near any knife we hucked at it, and it did a fantastic job. True, the belts are proprietary (and teensy) and the guides do mar the primary grind, but the ability to quickly do a reprofile job while travelling in a hotel room cannot be overstated. This will not replace a professional grade belt grinder ($3000), but it will give you a darn fine edge in no time flat. Would highly reccommend using a sharpy to paint the edge before using, and your bread and butter belt should be a med to ceramic to powerstrop. For a touch up, use the power strop, and if the apex loses bite use the ceramic. If damaged, consider trying just the Med grit and move up to the lower grits at your own risk, as they are quite aggressive when new. The speed is adustable, and it has an auto centering that keeps the belts in perfect alignment. You install the belt by lifting the lower lever, paint ur apex with a sharpie, set the preferred angle (for most things I use 20 deg (thats per side, for you edge snobs. noone uses inclusive!)), and pull through one or two times with fresh belts (or to taste). As long as ur sharpie is wiped away at the apex (tip of the triangle, or cutting edge), you're clear to remove burr formation and move to the higher grit belts. If the angle is too low, consider adjusting dial to fatter angle (say move from 20 deg to 25) and see where marks are occuring on edge until you're consistently hitting apex. then at a low grit, drop degrees until at desired edge geometry. Easy as pie. I love this device and would have no problem getting one for a knife nerd who actually used their *&^% and wanted a functional working edge while being a bit reticent around hand sharpening. Much fewer RSI's with this guy, let me tell you from experience (yes I can hand sharpen on Japanese water stones. That takes 2 hours. This takes 15 mins tops for a full reprofile). Don't misunderstand, I love the masochism of hand sharpening. It's just when you find yourself stropping your knives 10 times a day because the edge you want falls away twice as often as your hope in humanity, The ken onion worksharp is the way to go. A quick power strop and you have that toothy biting edge back. Not an ad, I buy all this nonsense with my own money, just thought I'd give my 2 cents.