Originally Posted By: spotstalkshootI am not a knife guy, but I hunt and fish what is needed to have shaving sharp fillet and skinning,gutting and caping blades. I have Kershaw,Cold Steel and various brands of fillet knifes.
I have tried all kinds of sharpeners and the clamps with the diamond stones and of all of them.. I have found that the work sharp is the easiest and best of them all. IMO
http://www.worksharptools.com/sharpeners-28/work-sharp-knife-and-tool-sharpener.html
What i like about it is that it's small, and it's fast. Couple passes through and the blades are sharp. If you have something that is really dull, you can start with a low grit and work up quickly and put a nice bevel. Easy to use and hold the knives at the right angle. It makes the knives very sharp. Changing belts takes less than a minute.
What I didn't like about it was the belts. the ones that are factory are 80 grit (i guess you would use that on the lawn mower) 220, and 6000. It's a huge jump. But in todays world that is an easy fix. I took an old belt and cut it, layed it out and measured it. then went on line and ordered a bunch of belts that were 600, 800, 1200, 2000 grits.
I find that most of the time, after it's sharp i only use the 1200 to touch it up and then a honing rod to de burr.
my wife uses the knives (no matter how many times i ask to use a cutting board) on the granite, or plates. Once a quarter i run all the kitchen knives through the sharpener and it takes 10 minutes to do a full butcher block of knives and the steak knives.
In the field when dressing and boning Elk, it plugs into the truck and we had nice sharp knives the whole time. The 5 guys at camp this year were all lined up to sharpen their knives after the first elk.
It makes short work of a fillet knife that allows me to fillet out trout without an issue (i have a knives of alaska steelhead knife) I am able to walk up with a stringer of trout and fillet two or three at a time while others are just trying to clean one.
