Tungsten Carbide Sharpener. Non-pull through.

[shecky]

I think I'm one of the few around here that isn't scared of carbide sharpeners.

A carbide sharpener is basically like a very hard file with one cut instead of hundreds in a row. How much or how little steel it removes is entirely up to the user. It works like any other abrasive, just a very coarse one. I find people like to use them with a gorilla's finesse, and then complain when they see little spiral shavings or chips pulled off the edge of their knife. It doesn't have to be this way.

As I'm sure you all know, it takes two seconds to completely ruin an edge with any sharpening system, be it stone, ceramic, diamond, etc. What makes any system work is the know-how of the user. Freehand carbide cutters are no different.

That being said, I think I generally prefer a pull through carbide sharpener to a freehand one. Though I've come to make either perform decently well with most of my knives. The freehand one in the OP is well suited to garden implements like shears, snips and grubbing/digging tools. Small diamond rods are just as compact, and probably easier for the average knife user to use on knives.

 

[Gingerman]

I think the first of these was commissioned by the U.S. Forest Service for smoke jumpers to carry in their kit. Light and small. The object was to have a small quick tool to put a working edge on tools: axes and shovels and the like, where a too sharp edge is not entirely desirable for chopping hard burning wood and into stoney ground that can chip a too narrow edge.
Lanka currently makes the government model, and it works well for field touch up of machetes , axes, and such.

 

[jinmo]

I have one of these and it is the perfect tool for sharpening a blade. A lawnmower blade. It can very easily destroy the edge on a knife.

 

[Rawrzors]

Can't tungsten carbide take a killer edge? Shouldn't it be like a slightly less fragile ceramic? Make that a knife!

very high cost to form it the way you want it. they use it for machinery, and when i was looking at the stats on the maxemet i saw that the maxemet steel was a low cost alternative to tungsten carbide. and maxemet is not a cheap steel lol
also, they were talking about tungsten carbide decarding and snapping alot, which means its pretty brittle.

you could probably put it into a big .33in thick fixed blade, and it would be awesome, but super expensive, near impossible to resharpen, and prone to snapping.