Knife Sharpening Made EASY! // Wicked Edge Gen 3 Pro Review

already all welcome to the shop for those of you who don't know my name is James I'm a Custom Knife maker working out of Texas I run this YouTube channel Redbeard Ops and have been doing so since 2018 and I have sharpened hundreds of knives now I've had my eye on Wicked Edge sharpening systems for a long time now and I've always wanted to try one out so recently I emailed Wicked Edge to see if they would send me one of their machines to test on the channel they sent me the system that you see before me here so far in my knife making career I have been using three different methods to sharpen my knives first of all I've been using this wind water cool sharpener for a long time I've used belts on the Belt grinder specifically the Brian house system which is belts and a water cooler and I've also used a hand Stone today I will be evaluating these methods the water cooled system and the belts versus The Wicked Edge to do that in a clean format I will be briefing this video down into six sections section one will be getting familiar with the machine setting it up and sharpening some kitchen knives some cheap kitchen knives from my kitchen that are just the run-of-the-mill production knot this is kind of something I like to do with new sharpening systems anyway just so I can get familiar with the system and not risk messing up any nice knives just by user error in section two and three I will be comparing the wicked Edge's ability to refine an edge versus the wind water cool sharpening system and the belt sharpening system on my 2x72 now to do this I'm going to first test The Edge on knives that I have already sharpened on both of these methods with the edge up Pro sharpness tester and then I will see if I can get the edge significantly sharper in an easy manner on the wicked Edge and how much sharper I can get them I will then re-test the edge on the edge up Pro sharpness tester and the variance there will kind of show is how much more refined you can get an edge with the wicked Edge Pro now in section four I'll pretty much be doing the exact same thing just with a factory knife that I got from Spyderco recently that has a factory Edge on it so I'll test the fact Three Edge and see how much sharper we can get a production knife section five would be geared towards the Custom Knife maker I'm currently making a stainless steel chef's knife and I will be putting my initial secondary Edge bevel onto the knife with the wicked Edge machine so that will show you going from no Edge at all to a hopefully razor sharp edge and lastly in section 6 I will be taking one of these now razor sharp knives and shaping off my entire beard just kidding I would never lose that much strength intentionally so section six will just be my recommendations and observations of the wicked Edge sharpening system so with that let's get started foreign so just some Basics on this machine now you have this slider here that you can set your angle so it basically moves these rods in and out at a set distance and that's really nice because you know that both these rods are now going to be at the same angle to the center of the machine these rods also have fine tuning adjustments on them for the sake of this video I am just leaving these run all the way into the arm and leaving these loose so basically these fine-tuning adjustments are not influencing the rods at all note that if you don't have these tight during operation and if they're loose they can actually move move this ball joint left and right so make sure that these are tight and locked in this lever right here is very nice you don't have to deal with Allen heads or anything like that you can just lock this lever down and it locks your knife into the center of the machine the base is super sturdy it's made out of steel I like that it has a nice place to hold all of your stones and also it has a Plexiglas piece on the back that stop the stones from sliding through and also to act as a place for these rods to rest which is actually really handy when you're using the machine you can rest the rods in the front and they're out of the way if anyone is wondering the base comes in at about one feet in width and about six inches in depth and the overall height looks to be around uh 12 to 12 and a half inches tall it's a nice little system you can pick the whole thing up move it around it comes in that sweet carrying case that I showed you all earlier and it could be portable if you want to move around with this thing if you look at the bottom left there is a place for the depth key and the way this depth key works is it actually goes into the Vise so that you can set your knives at the appropriate height this is especially useful on shorter knives and height so a knife like this a steak knife so that it doesn't go too deep and your Stones hit the Vise itself you put in a depth key and it actually holds the knife up you can rest the knife on both of the prongs of the depth key and then you can clamp the knife down once the knife is clamped down you can take the key out and store it back in its appropriate location now there's a lot of literature on where to put the knife in the Vise whether all the way up here or all the way back here basically it comes down to where the blade starts to curve wherever that curve starts to happen you want that to kind of be at the front and that's a good place to start when you go and start testing where your stones are contacting the secondary bevel you can make some adjustments even in some extreme cases you can can't the blade up or can't the blade back depending on where it's hitting on the front or the rear but in general wherever the blade starts curving that's where you want it to be on the front of the vise so like I mentioned in the intro when I get a new sharpening system I like to start off by sharpening cheaper knives that I really don't care about in this case I ran through about 12 cheap kitchen knives these secondary bevels were in Fairly poor shape so I started with a 100 grit Stone on each of them and worked up to around 1 000 to 3000 grit I Then followed by a light strop with the leather Wicked Edge drops not only does this allow you to practice with the mechanics in the machine itself it also allows you to break in your Diamond Stones Diamond Stones will cut more aggressively for the first few knives until the loose grit comes off the stone then they're much more consistent as you can see here even though these knives are cheap the wicked Edge system turned them into razor blades alrighty first up we're going to be the three knives that I originally sharpened on the win water cooled sharpening system just note that none of these Knives have been used since being sharpened none of them have left the shop for various reasons uh this was the rod pump or sucker Rod knife I made it was a sand Mi and there were some cosmetic issues I had with the corbies uh basically made a rookie mistake and ground through the corby's so this one never left the shop I didn't like the proportions on this little buoy and I didn't like the proportions on this Hunter now they're all perfectly good knives it was just me being a perfectionist on why they never left the shop they're super sharp from the wind water cool sharpening system and we're going to test them initially here and then we'll see how much sharper we can get them if we can get a mini sharper I don't really know if I'll be able to get them sharper I have a hunch that I will but uh we'll find out so let's start with testing them we'll start with this big guy and then we'll run through all of them in in order here so let's do this one first all right I got a reading of 255 so that's actually pretty darn good that's a sharp knife right there if you're looking at the best C scale uh 255 would come in uh kind of a high-end high-end knife from a from a production shop so perfectly usable working Edge there so I'm just going to run through the other ones and we'll see how they turn out all right here's the sucker Rod knife 195. very nice all right and lastly we'll do the the little Hunter here 200 even so yeah I'd say we have some pretty decent uh working edges here on these knives from the wind water cooled sharpener let's see if we can make them better the first thing I'm doing on all these blades is I'm marking the secondary bevel with a marker and then adjusting the sharpening degree on the machine to best fit the current angle I feel like this is the most Fair way to test these different sharpening systems on these three blades I started with a 200 grit Stone to make sure everything is evened out and then worked up the Grits on the thick buoy and the rod pump knife I worked up to a 3000 grit before strapping and on the hunter I worked up to a 1000 grit I did an additional side test on the hunter so more on that later when starting out with each new higher grit I found that I save time by using a back and forth motion to do the bulk of the material removal then after that using the alternating Strokes to even out the bevel and get the scratch pattern nice and clean at this point I started playing around with my microscope the footage on this knife is pretty blurry but I do a better job with the rod pump knife where I compare the pre and post conditions of the secondary bevel so bear with me this age came in and a razor sharp 120 grams which is about 50 percent of a reduction from their original reading next up is going to be our little Rod pump knife I used an oil-filled sucker rod and sand mined it with some 1084 to make this knife back in 2020. this time around I was able to get my microscope a little more steady so that I can show you all the initial scratch pattern on the secondary bevel left by the wind water cooled sharpening system I've worked this blade up from a 200 to a 300 grit Diamond Stone then use some of the 4 Micron paste on the leather strops to remove any Burr left behind note that it's recommended to bring your angle down by a half step when strapping to prevent rolling over the edge The Edge tested out to around 130 grams on the sharpness tester which is a 33 reduction under the microscope you can see the difference in refinement between the wind Stone and the 3000 grit Wicked Edge finish last up in this section is the hunter with the Purple Heart handle I decided to try something different on this knife by only sharpening it up to a 1000 grit testing it on the edge up tester without strapping and then strapping it and testing it again now you all may remember the original Edge came in at a 200 gram reading which is pretty darn sharp after refining this Edge to a 1000 grit on the wicked Edge and not strapping the Burr off the hunter it tests in at around 275 grams this really shows the importance of strapping your blades I took the blade back to the wicked Edge and strapped it with some 4 Micron Diamond paste on my leather straps the retest in the 1000 grit bevel came in at 110 grams after being dropped which is a 45 reduction from the original reading so these are the two knives that I sharpened on my 2x72 belt grinder using the sharpening system that Mr Brian house sent me it's a great little system it has an 800 grit belt and a 1200 grit belt and a water Mister so that you don't overheat The Edge so we're going to see how these perform and then we'll see what we can do with the wicked Edge afterwards so this one came in at 200 even a side note I really like this knife this is a raindrop Damascus knife I made and I think it's going to end up being a wedding gift for a friend of mine this one is a little buoy I made a while back for one of the YouTube challenges uh it's a nice small guy it would probably work as an everyday carry but the reason I didn't part with it is because I offset the handle a little bit from the spine and that proportional error there just made it never leave the shop so perfectly good knife may use it one day but that's the story here so let's test it wow that one was definitely not sharp in that spot maybe you picked a dull spot I'm going to try that one more time just because it's so much different than the other knives well that's interesting this guy came out definitely not as sharp as I thought it would be with two tests there on two different portions of the edge the best thing I can think is that maybe I sharpen it to a little obtuse of an angle you know so a very obtuse angle with the with the belts that's one issue with the belts you can't really pick an angle you kind of have to have a feel for it so maybe I messed up there it does seem to see if it can cut paper yeah it does still seem pretty darn sharp so I'm not exactly sure why I tested High uh just for good measure and for the sake of testing this fairly I think I'm going to test it one more time and uh see where it turns out 300 on the dot okay so the higher end of the blade is a little sharper than the ricasso area so we'll go with the lowest number just to be as Fair as we can to the belts and roll with that funny story about this Damascus chef's knife it actually started off as a buoy but in the process of chasing my mistakes I reduced the thickness so much that it made more sense to reprofile it as a kitchen knife on the wicked Edge I worked this knife up from a 400 grit Stone to a 3000 grit Stone and strap The Edge it came in at a 125 gram reading on the tester which is a 37 reduction from the original sharpness achieved with the belts on this little buoy I decided to do a test just like I did on the hunter in the previous section where I stopped Sharpening at a lower grit this time around I stop at the 800 grit stones and then drop the edge it's worth reiterating that I'm not reprofiling the secondary bevel on any of these knives and then I'm matching the original angles foreign ER we achieved a reading of 145 grams which is just over a 50 reduction from the original reading last but not least I have this Sweet Factory Spyderco knife I was actually given to me and it has a company name on it that I'm not going to show YouTube but it's a brand new knife so I'm going to test this guy on here 210 not bad for a factory Edge I'd say this is uh has not been used I think I may have opened one box with it so a 210 coming out of the factory uh that seems like a pretty darn sharp knife on this Factory knife I'm going to try something I've never done before and that is putting a mirror polish on the secondary bevel I carry this knife around pretty frequently and honestly I just wanted to show it off to my friends as you all just saw I also recorded the position on the vice this knife is sitting with the provided ruler so that I can quickly repeat this exact sharpening orientation I work the edge up to a 3000 grit finish then use these three Micron Diamond lapping films to get a nice shine these films stick to the glass platens on the other side of the 3000 grit Diamond Stones for good measure I also strapped The Edge after but I'm not sure it was necessary when looking at it with the naked eye you can see this secondary bevel looks pretty darn shiny but you can see here under the microscope that I probably could have done a better job evening out the grits and removing the lower grit scratches the sharpness came out at 175 grams which is a 17 reduction from the factory Edge this is the chef knife that I'm working on it's made out of aebl stainless right now the edge thickness is around 10 to 12 thousandths of an inch at the edge uh so it's gonna be pretty cool to see uh if this wicked Edge can put a secondary bevel in a knife now I have to note here the manufacturer the guys over there at Wicked Edge did tell me that this system really isn't designed to do that to put an initial Edge and they actually advised putting that initial secondary bevel on the knife with either a stone sharpening system like I have like at the win or with uh with my belts first and then refining it with the wicked Edge but that being said I do have some pretty low grit Stones here these are 50 to 80s so I think I can probably do this and I was curious how hard it would be to do this on a brand new knife I don't really think it's going to be that bad but we're gonna find out just one last I've only brought this blade up to a 320 grit sanded finish and I haven't really started refining that finish I think I'm going to do 600 going straight and I wanted to just sharpen this knife for the review video and then I'll go back take the edge off so I don't hurt myself during the rest of the build at a handle and all bring it up to a 600 grit finish and finish it and that video will be coming out probably in a few weeks so keep your eyes open for it so yeah we're not really doing something this machine was designed to do but these low grit Stones I personally think will get the job done in reality this chef's knife is really setting up this test for Success since it's a thinly ground blade and it has a 10 000 of an inch flat at the edge whereas on a larger buoy there could be more meat behind the edge as an aside on knives like this one I generally take them down even further to around a zero to a five thousandths of an inch so this one is a little beefier within the chef knife category within about 11 minutes I had the initial secondary bevel put onto the knife and was able to start refining it with 100 grit Stones 25 minutes into the process I was able to start with the 800 grit Stones I ended up stopping at a thousand grit on this blade lapping The Edge and then dropped on the sharpness tester we achieved a reading of 135 grams so it took about 33 minutes to go from no Edge to a very sharp thousand grit strapped edge here note that I have 10 000 of an inch behind the edge so I would say that's pretty good performance I've definitely taken longer than 33 minutes in the past with more traditional methods sharpening a knife uh some of that's because I'll go back and forth on grits chasing my own tail every once in a while but this system's really easy to be consistent with now one thing I will note this is a very tall blade and it's also pretty long so these Stones actually have the opportunity of coming off the secondary bevel and scratching your primary bevel and I definitely did that right here on the back so this can be mitigated with first of all practice and knowing how to use the stones appropriately I'm still new to the system and then second of all I've seen guys like Tyrell from Tyrell Knife Works put an entire piece of tape on both sides of the primary bevel to protect the primary bevels from mishaps like this so there are some ways to mitigate that in this case I have a 300 20 grit finishing the blade I'm not done with it so I'll take the edge off to finish completing the knife and I'll just fix that on the hand sanding bench so yeah I'm pretty darn impressed with this machine from going from no Edge at all to pretty much razor sharp in 33 minutes so I think that's a pretty good performance there all right I think I've put in enough time behind this machine to give some pros and cons to the system first and foremost in the pros column are the results which are excellent I'm confident that I've never gotten knives this sharp before and definitely not in a manner that is disrepeatable every knife I've sharpened on this machine came in at under 175 grams on the edge of professional tester and I think that's a pretty solid accomplishment second up is the ability to hold such a uniform Edge bevel I know there are other guided systems out there so this point isn't 100 unique but I really enjoyed that the wicked edges rendition of a guided system I was able to notice some secondary bevel inconsistencies With the Wind knives the knives off my belt grinder and even the factory knife next up is the build quality of this Pro unit I haven't tried any of the other Wicked Edge systems but I can vouch for this machine being well built it is obviously a Precision system and I can understand why I see professional knife sharpeners using this machine in the same vein a pro feature of this system is the adjustability the tension on the Vise can be fine-tuned and even the arms can be slightly adjusted to the left and right to match the exact secondary bevel the stones in this unit are very nice and they seem to cut well after being broken in they also make reasonable jumps in between grits I've read that users have had great results with their ceramic Stones so I think I may pick up a set of those in the future the lapping platens and the diamond paste strops are pretty awesome and help me achieved a mirror edge on the Spyderco knife which is the first time I've done that lastly I really like the repeatability of this machine using the provided ruler I can write down where each of my personal knives fit on the clamp and then tune up the edge quickly in the future now that we've gone through what I think are the best parts of the system I want to outline a few points that could be considered cons the elephant in the room in the cons section is the price the pro unit does come in at a fairly high price tag and may not be justifiable to the new knife maker or knife Enthusiast however they do have some less expensive models that I'm sure will provide great results if you fall into the intermediate or Advanced user category I consider this price worth paying to give your clients a very sharp edge on the knives that you produce con number two is the max blade thickness accepted by the default clamp this is a minor con since Wicked Edge does provide a larger clamp for larger blades which I'll probably be getting my hands on in the future in relation to con number two I think this system could struggle with odd shaped blades like a dagger with a fuller down the center or something like that I'm sure there are some Creative Solutions there but I just figured I'd raise that flag the last point to mention in this Con section is the time it takes to sharpen a knife on the wicked Edge now note that I am a novice with this machine so my speed could likely be increased but it did take me between 20 and 30 minutes per knife to work up all the grits and strap The Edge if you're re-sharpening a known blade I'm sure this time could be greatly reduced as you all saw during the sharpening of my in progress custom chef knife this machine can form the initial secondary bevel however I could see myself roughing in the secondary bevel with my 2x72 belt grinder to reduce the amount of time I spend hogging off material on the wicked Edge this is precisely what the team at Wicked head suggested for me to do with the system so I will give that a go in the future with that pros and cons list in mind I want to reiterate that I'm very impressed with the results I was able to achieve on this machine and I want to thank the folks at Wicked Edge for providing this unit for testing on the channel it's safe to say that I'll be incorporating this system into just about every Custom Knife that I make from this point forward if y'all enjoyed this review it would help the channel a ton to hit the like button down below drop a comment in the comment section and share this video with your friends and if you're not already consider subscribing to the channel so that you don't miss out on future Red Beard Ops content until next time I'll catch y'all on the flip side

Channel: Red Beard Ops

Views: 29,264

Keywords: red beard ops, wicked edge, wicked edge sharpener, wicked edge gen 3 pro, wicked edge sharpener tutorial, wicked edge knife sharpener, wicked edge review, wicked edge gen 3 review, how to use the wicked edge, how to sharpen a knife, best way to sharpen a knife, easiest way to sharpen a knife, knife sharpening, knife sharpening tool, knife sharpner, knife sharpening tutorial, professional knife sharpening, best sharpening system, blade sharpener, work sharp vs wicked edge

Id: R9K7idCh_VU

Length: 24min 38sec (1478 seconds)

Published: Fri May 05 2023