Help with Edgepro

[beakman]

Gentlemen,
I've just got around to giving Ben's machine a try and didn't have much luck. Sort of dissapointed.
A few questions, how often to wet stones, how much to wet stones, how often to wipe stones, how often to wipe blade table.
I have taken your advice and bought a gkass bakeing dish to mount it in. Have roll of paper towels instead of rag. Paper towel leaves bits of itself on stone because it is wet. Will this hinder proformace?
Have Sharpie to color edge on knife in, but could not match bevel of existing edge with marks on guide.
Suggestions Please!
Has anyone not been able to get this system to work?
Got a feeling it's going to be me.

Eric

 

[thombrogan]

Soak your stones before using them. They'll hold water a lot better that way. Squirt them down with the water bottle every so often while sharpening and you should be fine. Use a lighter touch with the paper towels (they're for lightly wiping swarf/gunk off the blade and stone, not for drying).

The edges of your knives likely won't match with the marks on the guide, but that's okay. They're only reference points.

The easiest way to get the system to work is to make sure you raise a burr along the entire edge of the knife on both sides and then remove it using progressively lighter strokes (lighter than the weight of the stone) switch the knife over with each stroke before changing to a finer grit. You'll know you've got the hang of it (with plenty of room for improvement, still) when your edges on the 220 grit stone are better than your previous stropped edges.

 

[cbwx34]

Hey Eric,

I don't know what your sharpening experience is, so this may or may not help.

Get a practice knife. Set the angle on the edge pro so that you know you're hitting the edge. Then, just use the 600 stone, and make a couple of passes on one side. You should easily raise a burr. Flip the knife over and do the same thing. Then flip it back over and make one light pass with the 600... swiping the whole blade if possible, to remove the burr. Repeat a couple times alternating sides. You should have a sharp knife.

This should give you an idea of what to expect.

As for your questions, there's no hard and fast rules. The EP works well regardless. Just make sure the stones are wet. I give mine a quick shot of water when I flip the knife over, and if I get a lot of buildup, I rinse 'em off. I never wipe the stones with a towel. Wipe the table in between stones, and you usually only have to do it on the coarse stones... the fine stones don't leave much debris behind.

You may not get a knife to match the existing bevel, and you'll find that a lot of factory knives aren't sharpened the same on both sides. When you're learning, lean toward a slightly higher angle and finer stones, so you know you're hitting the edge. As you gain experience (probably after 1 or 2 knives), you can use the coarser stones to start reprofiling the bevels to what you want.

Hope this helps...

cbw

 

[matt321]

beakman,
I've had one for a month now. I've sharpened about a dozen knives. Here are my observations but remember I'm still a rookie.

If you have the DVD video you can see that Ben puts a little water on the stones almost each time he alternates sides. The stones cut better and less harsh when wet.

The purpose of swabbing the blade table is to remove grit that would otherwise scratch the surface of the blade. I'm still having a problem with scratching when I don't tape the blade.

For efficient sharpening, take the time to accurately match the knife's existing bevel angle. That way you avoid having to remove a lot of steel to create a different angle. You can create your own custom bevel angle if you desire, but it will take a very long time. (The DVD suggests making major bevel angle changes in stages over several sharpening sessions. So if you want to lower the angle by four degrees, just lower it a degree or two each time you sharpen.)

To match the existing bevel, use the sharpie marker on the edge and then make a light stroke with the stone arm. It helps to have a hand lens to see the results on the edge. You move the angle adjustment up or down till you find the setting that removes all the marker. The correct setting won't necessarily be one of the pre-set marks. It may be somewhere in between. Also, the knife edges I've seen are never uniform, so find the setting that seems to fit best, but it won't match the entire blade perfectly.

The first time you sharpen a specific knife it may take a bit of time to find the right matching angle. Record the blade guide position and the angle setting carefully in a notebook for each knife you sharpen to save time in the future.

Also, the first time you sharpen a specific knife, you will spend more time coarse grinding than you would expect. The original edge is not going to be perfectly uniform, so you'll have to work a (long) while to create a uniform bevel angle. Once you grind a nice, uniform bevel with the coarse stone, the machine begins to really shine. You know you're there when you raise a burr along the entire edge. Working the edge with the other (finer) stones goes very quickly since all the cutting is now merely refining the bevel, not creating it. I'd guess 75% of the work in an initial sharpening will be with coarse stones, even when you are just matching the existing bevel, and even when the knife edge is in good condition.

So you see, the first time you sharpen a specific knife, it is going to take a while. The next time you sharpen that same knife will go much faster since you'll have very uniform bevels in-place from your previous work. Also, the initial sharpening has the highest potential for accidental scatching of the blade. This is because you will be using the coarse stone and you'll be working with the edge for a long time. Subsequent sharpening will be with the fine stones and won't require near as much sawing.

Most of the skill required is learning how to hold the knife on the blade table in a stable, consistent manner. This is somewhat difficult since many knives are not flat enough to make for a nice, stable position on the table. If you can't keep the blade from rocking, you won't get the beautiful, pristine bevels that this machine can create.