Work Sharp Ken Onion

[JHR]

I picked one up at Cabela's today and I've been playing around with it for a couple hours. First knife was a beater Kershaw Oso Sweet. Love the knife, but since it was one of my cheaper knives and it was dull, it had to play guinea pig. I decided to just go with the lowest angle setting possible (a little under 15 per side). Why not? With this machine, repairing a chipped-out blade or lowering the blade angle is trivial.

Preliminary observations: Don't loiter any section of the blade on the coarser belts! The coarser belts will flay metal from your knives. My Oso Sweet now has a oso sweet recurve to it :D

I need to pay more attention to the tip. Don't move the tip off the belt, lift the blade upwards when the tip reaches the center of the belt. Still haven't mastered this part so the tip now looks a little funny.

The faster settings and the coarse and medium belts used in conjunction will heat your blade noticeably. As I understand, high heat can affect the heat treatment of your blade so buyer be warned.

The 6000-grit belt leaves a very nice mirror finish on the bevel and gets it screaming sharp in no time. A few strokes of the strop later and I can say I'm very pleased with the results. A little practice and I should have no problems with unwanted recurves or tip mutilation :eek:

[StuntZombie]

So the Ken Onion version allows you to use different speeds?

A buddy of mine has the original version, and it's done quite a number on his Kershaw Needs Work. I think that comes from lack of practice though.

[JHR]

Indeed it does, and it comes with a handy button that holds the trigger down. It can be set to go very slow. I think I'll make sure to go slow and use the button so I can move the blade across carefully.

[Evil D]

Sounds like a recipe to remove too much metal and burn edges to me.

[sir_mike]

Can they run on batteries too in case the power goes out?

[JHR]

Can they run on batteries too in case the power goes out?

Nope.

[defenestrate]

According to the info at Cabela's, which I assume comes from the company, the operating Wattange is around 90-150W. Not too heavy and definitely within the grasp of a moderate inverter.

Seems like this could be pretty convenient for some folks, but I honestly would lean toward a belt grinder in that price range, I think. I would want to do more than sharpen knife blades, however.

[Rwb1500]

Oso curvy. Haha.

[JHR]

Been playing around with a $17 Buck Bantam.

But this time I did a little tip I found on bladeforums and put some green polishing compound on the 6000 grit belt. So now I do know that the system is capable of producing edges that cut whittle freestanding hairs.

I've been getting edges with bench stones and a leather strop for a while but it would take much longer than what I would be able to achieve with a power system.