1. How do i keep a blade with an odd shape steady on the sharpener?
2. How do i hold the knife when i switch to the other side of the blade? The handle is facing the other direction and makes it very awkward to hold.
A little background information on my experience: I've been using this system for 6 months and sharpened reprofiled more than a dozen knives and sharpened over 50 occasions. Every time you sharpen something on the EdgePro, you gain some experience and pick up tips and tricks; you
will learn on the way to your destination.
A couple things I saw on your video that I'd like to point out:
1. These are
water stones and you must soak the stones in water prior to use. I recommend at least 10 minutes to allow your stones to "wake up".
2. You should lap your stones on a flat piece of glass with Silicon Carbide grit to freshen up the freshly cut surface of the stones. The 120grit SiC stone is very flat and smooth out of the box, you want to have it's working texture so it works quickly as it was meant to
3. Use plenty of water. I've seen Ankerson's videos on his technique; he uses little water but the stone will load up from pushing the slurry into the voids of the surface. The stones will load up from use as yours have, a little water will slow that down
Alright, now back to your questions, remember that I'm not the ultimate Edge Pro sharpener, but I consider myself plenty experienced. These tips may work for you, but these are strictly my opinion
1. How do i keep a blade with an odd shape steady on the sharpener?
The Edge Pro's table is flat and slanted. If your blades do not have a flat area to rest on(Ricasso or Saber Grind) then you don't have much choice but to use other methods. In my experience, the Benchmade 940 was uneasy to keep flat; it took a lot of effort to hold it down and all I had to do was keep a lot of pressure very close to the flat portion. To give you an idea of the small area I had to keep pressure on:
2. How do i hold the knife when i switch to the other side of the blade? The handle is facing the other direction and makes it very awkward to hold.
Practice and lots of it. It was unnatural to use my off hand to hold a blade steady. Here's my advice: Hold the closest as you can on the handle by the Edge.(For example, hold where the Axis lock is on the Benchmade and use a sideways hammer grip)
You want to control it so you also want to apply downward pressure. You can also stabilize by placing your thumb on the corner of the table(top or bottom works)
Red: Where I laid on the Table and kept it flat as I work on the edge
Blue: Where I put my thumb to remove vibrations from each stroke
