- Joined
- Mar 30, 2001
- Messages
- 423
Im a long time Spyderco Sharpmaker user, but sometimes you come across knives that dont have exactly 30deg or 40deg edge bevels, and as the Sharpmaker isnt necessarily the best at re-profiling I thought I would get an Edge Pro Apex with the stone upgrade kit. I would also strongly recommend getting the instructional video (comes as part of the Pro set), as its worth its weight in gold.
For those of you not familiar with the Apex, its a waterstone based sharpener where you hold the knife in one hand on the supporting bed and move the metal arm which holds the waterstone back and forth with the other hand, the angle of sharpening is adjusted by moving the pivot point of the metal arm up and down to suit, as its a simple thumb screw clamp that holds the pivot you can sharpen at any angle you want, although there are about six presets marked on the pivot spindle.
Go here for more info Edge Pro
Considering that this is meant to be the budget version of Edge Pros Pro sharpener I found the Apex to be very well put together. The body is of thick hard plastic, all the sliding elements slide well for adjustment, but just as importantly lock quickly and tightly when you are happy with their positions. The whole thing came in a neat carry case which included everything you would need to travel with your Apex, right down to water bottle and cleaning cloth, even as far as to include some sand to flatten out your waterstones when they become worn.
After watching the video a couple times I was ready to start, although I did have some worries. The part where you hold and move the knife across the supporting bed (adjusting the angle where necessary to keep the blade perpendicular to the waterstone) with the left hand and move the pivoted arm back and forth with the right hand seemed doable, but I was not so sure I could do it the other way around (right holding knife, left moving arm) in order to sharpen the other side.
I neednt have worried, after the first knife the action became second nature either way around. Like the maker Ben Dale says in the video, you can go as slow as you like until you are comfortable, but by the third knife I was zipping along and finding the motion quite therapeutic, a bit like stropping, the forth knife I hardly remember doing at all.
Even though the kit I purchased came with 5 grades of waterstone and a set of polishing tapes, I thought I might skip some stones as it looked a hassle to change them. As it happens changing the stones was a breeze, a few seconds work only, I would have wasted a lot more time using too fine a stone taking out larger scratches if I had skipped any grades.
This was the first time I had used waterstones and I found them extremely good. With the stone upgrade kit you have a wide range to work with, from coarse, which cuts metal like a hot knife cuts butter, to the 600 grit that puts a semi polished edge on the blade. The polishing tapes are also great, and put a literal mirror finish on the edge bevel.
I had four medium sized folders in dire need of re-profiling, and as luck would have it they were 4 different steels, ATS-34, VG-10, S30V and CPM440V.
I was interested to see how the Apex would cope with the various steels I was going to re-profiling, and I was interested in how the steels would differ from one another. In the end the only disappointment was that the Apex went through them all so quickly that I couldnt determine any difference in the steels.
I had heard that waterstones could be a bit messy and that the slurry produced could scratch the blades as you moved them across the support bed, I kept a paper towel beside me when I sharpened and every time I turned over the knife I wiped it in the towel and hardly had either problem. Even the very slight scratching I had could have been eliminated by taping the back of the blade as suggested on the video for when you sharpen expensive knives.
My intension was to use the Apex to re-profile blades to either 30degs or 40degs and use the Sharpmaker for day-to-day sharpening. Whilst the Sharpmaker is slightly faster to set up and produces no mess at all, I was so impressed with the results of the Apex that I can see it taking over a lot of my day-to-day sharpening.
If you do have a need to re-profile some of the toughest cutlery steels on the market today, or just want that mirror polished finish with very little effort, then I would strongly recommend the Edge Pro Apex.
For those of you not familiar with the Apex, its a waterstone based sharpener where you hold the knife in one hand on the supporting bed and move the metal arm which holds the waterstone back and forth with the other hand, the angle of sharpening is adjusted by moving the pivot point of the metal arm up and down to suit, as its a simple thumb screw clamp that holds the pivot you can sharpen at any angle you want, although there are about six presets marked on the pivot spindle.
Go here for more info Edge Pro
Considering that this is meant to be the budget version of Edge Pros Pro sharpener I found the Apex to be very well put together. The body is of thick hard plastic, all the sliding elements slide well for adjustment, but just as importantly lock quickly and tightly when you are happy with their positions. The whole thing came in a neat carry case which included everything you would need to travel with your Apex, right down to water bottle and cleaning cloth, even as far as to include some sand to flatten out your waterstones when they become worn.
After watching the video a couple times I was ready to start, although I did have some worries. The part where you hold and move the knife across the supporting bed (adjusting the angle where necessary to keep the blade perpendicular to the waterstone) with the left hand and move the pivoted arm back and forth with the right hand seemed doable, but I was not so sure I could do it the other way around (right holding knife, left moving arm) in order to sharpen the other side.
I neednt have worried, after the first knife the action became second nature either way around. Like the maker Ben Dale says in the video, you can go as slow as you like until you are comfortable, but by the third knife I was zipping along and finding the motion quite therapeutic, a bit like stropping, the forth knife I hardly remember doing at all.
Even though the kit I purchased came with 5 grades of waterstone and a set of polishing tapes, I thought I might skip some stones as it looked a hassle to change them. As it happens changing the stones was a breeze, a few seconds work only, I would have wasted a lot more time using too fine a stone taking out larger scratches if I had skipped any grades.
This was the first time I had used waterstones and I found them extremely good. With the stone upgrade kit you have a wide range to work with, from coarse, which cuts metal like a hot knife cuts butter, to the 600 grit that puts a semi polished edge on the blade. The polishing tapes are also great, and put a literal mirror finish on the edge bevel.
I had four medium sized folders in dire need of re-profiling, and as luck would have it they were 4 different steels, ATS-34, VG-10, S30V and CPM440V.
I was interested to see how the Apex would cope with the various steels I was going to re-profiling, and I was interested in how the steels would differ from one another. In the end the only disappointment was that the Apex went through them all so quickly that I couldnt determine any difference in the steels.
I had heard that waterstones could be a bit messy and that the slurry produced could scratch the blades as you moved them across the support bed, I kept a paper towel beside me when I sharpened and every time I turned over the knife I wiped it in the towel and hardly had either problem. Even the very slight scratching I had could have been eliminated by taping the back of the blade as suggested on the video for when you sharpen expensive knives.
My intension was to use the Apex to re-profile blades to either 30degs or 40degs and use the Sharpmaker for day-to-day sharpening. Whilst the Sharpmaker is slightly faster to set up and produces no mess at all, I was so impressed with the results of the Apex that I can see it taking over a lot of my day-to-day sharpening.
If you do have a need to re-profile some of the toughest cutlery steels on the market today, or just want that mirror polished finish with very little effort, then I would strongly recommend the Edge Pro Apex.
). As said earlier, moving the blade with one hand whilst moving the sharpening arm with the other hand quickly became second nature and aforded me much more precision than I had known with other systems.
