I fail to see the logic behind some of the issues listed in this thread. I would guess that 99 percent of knife makers use powered sharpeners of some kind to sharpen their knives. Most professional knife shops uses them also. Now the results of their efforts can vary but I'm sure the majority of them get good results.
The paper wheel happens to be a pretty good system that any person with some mechanical skills can use to sharpen. A bench grinder is relatively cheap and the wheels are cheap too. It took me a few days and maybe a dozen practice runs to get comfortable with it and start producing good blade edges. I used old hack saw blades for practice and a cheap folder I didn't mind ruining.
Once the main bevel is set, normal maintenance only involves the polishing wheel. How much metal does that remove? Even on a completely dull knife, you only make enough passes to create a burr. Then it's over to the polishing wheel again. If you're grinding off enough metal to recurve a knife or lose 1/4 or more inches of metal in just a few years, you're doing something wrong or you use your knife WAY more than I do.
If you've never used the wheels, then you have no reason to post here. I don't talk crud about other sharpening systems and I always maintain that there are many ways to skin a cat. I just happen to use a system that skins the cat in only a few minutes.
I've never used the paper wheels, but I spent a while in a machine shop and have used various grinding tools as well as hand files on projects and can say firmly that one doesn't wholly replace the need for the other.
The thing about "learning" to do it free-hand and making mistakes easier... You learn by mistakes and gain experience. The wonderful thing about power grinding equipment is that when you make a mistake, it's instant, and you understand what happened in a matter of seconds. On the other hand, when manually grinding, you may start working and make a mistake, and not really realize it until you've done many many strokes and go, "Oh, darn, I've got to start over," and then it just takes that much longer to get back from a starting position, plus it takes that much more to happen for you to understand where you made your mistake and why. If I had to learn how to sharpen drill bits on a bencstone instead of a pedestal grinder I still wouldn't know how.
As far as power grinding tools vs manual tools go, I think it should be obvious to anyone that a balance between both is the best option--power grinding tools to do most of the work for you, and manual work for precision. However at the end of the day power grinding tools just aren't that practical for everyone and they don't solve all of the problems.
No offense intended or anything richard, but I think the primary gripe people here are having is that you seem to offer the paper wheel advice where advice on such equipment is unsolicited. I'm not going to cite specific examples, but it seems that you promote them at any given opportunity. A lot of the times it's not a big deal, but imagine how irritating it must be for someone wanting advice on how to sharpen the way they're doing it, and simply being told that they should use paper wheels instead.
That's just the way I see it anyway. Power equipment is great, but a lot of people are happy doing it manually and have no real need to do it in any other way, and because of that promoting one particular way above all others becomes somewhat irritating.
I'd love to have a power setup for reprofiling though. As it stands I don't even have a proper working environment though. Just a couch and a coffee table.
I would only recommend it if you could find diamond C, F, and EF cups, otherwise it takes all day with some of the newer steels. :foot:
scary
