Spyderco sharpmaker was the first thing that I ever used successfully. It is an incredible sharpener and reasonably priced. I love mine and would not part with it. I had bought every gimmicky, destructive, magic sharpener on this planet, until I got one. The thing with the sharpmaker is regular maintenance. Start with a fairly sharp blade and it will shave in no time. I would hit my edc knives about every 2 weeks and they would stay sharper than when I purchased them.
That being said, I had some high end knives that I could not sharpen on the sharpmaker. Mainly a Busse active duty that I love. No matter how hard I tried or how often. I also, never had a whole lot of luck with the decent blade that one of my buddies had neglected to the point of "butterknife" status.
I recently purchased the work sharp Ken Onion edition, and I was impressed! It filled in the gaps in my sharpening system and was able to tackle even my problem knives. I won't be giving up my sharpmaker anytime soon, but I won't part with the worksharp either! It took the combination of the two to finally take a guy like me, with no skill at sharpening at all, and give me sharp knives in very little time.
