Razor Edge Sharpening Guides 2-Piece Set

Agree with the last review. I got tired of having dull knives at work. I bought the 8 inch version of the Norton IM200S then I went for the Norton 313 11 1/2 inch stones to have at the house and I keep the other stone set at work. I have 10 knives. A diamond steel (I don't like it). Also have the Forschner magnetic blade guards which is a must buy item. 6 Forschner knives 3 Update international which I really like better so far and a Clauss titanium bonded boning knife which I love so far. I just went crazy trying to figure out how I can always have the best knives for meat cutting at work. The only thing that matters is having the Razor Edge guides the big stone and the knives. The Razor Edge makes it happen and without it the knives dull out pretty fast because the angles are off doing it by hand without the guides. I'll pay the money to get it right. Only other thing that would help is a pull through electric sharpener to keep the angle constant which was recommended to me by a meat cutter I used to work with a few years ago. Trial and error money spent but at least I have it right now

It works with a little effort on my side. It was not as smooth a finish on the stone as I expected but I will locate a finer grit stone or this one may smooth out with use. We had a real fine stone in school but that was too many years ago to check the grit.I will work with it and hope it comes together.

awkward to use even with a very large sharpening stone. A roller would be much better than sliding the guide on the stone.

The Razor Edge system will allow you to produce razor sharp, paper towel shaving edges on all your kitchen and other knives. However, there are several drawbacks inherent in the design witch may lead you to consider another sharpening system like the Edge Pro or Wicked Edge.First of all, the adjustablity of the edge angle is limited and determined by the width (knuckle clearance) of the knife. You can make the angle steeper by attaching the guide further from the edge, and increase the angle by setting it with the set screws nearly touching the spine of the knife. If you have an extra wide chefs knife, you may be able to adjust the angle from something like 15-20 degrees, but on a short pocket knife blade you may only be able to choose between one or two degrees.Second, this device is not the best for sharpening large kitchen knives with a big belly. Sharpening the belly and the tip requires you to lift up one edge of the guide, and even if you are very careful to keep the one edge that contacts the stone from sliding off, you end up with a steeper angle toward the tip. Though this isn't really a problem for most knives, if you want a consistent edge angle from tip to heel on knives with a belly this is not the product for you.Because the placement on the spine determines the angle, it is quite difficult to resharpen a knife at the exact same angle as it was before. Even a slight difference in placement will cause the angle to change the next time around, causing you to need to grind off much more metal than necessary to raise another burr. Some forum-goers have even used an etching tool to mark the precise placement of the guide for later sharpening (but there are problems with this method, as discussed below). If you want to find the precise guide placement to match an existing edge, you can use a sharpie to mark both sides of the edge and slowly test different places until the sharpie is wiped off cleanly--but this is difficult as adjusting the placement requires tightening two screws.Finally, the guide itself isn't made of super metal, and will grind down itself as you grind it across the stone. This is why etching the placement of the guide will not give you a perfectly consistent angle every time--the angle gets slightly steeper every time you use it, especially on a coarse stone. You can expect to use these guides for many years, but be aware that they won't last forever. If you want to avoid this problem, you can make a wooden block the exact height of your stone and rest the guide on the block instead of the stone. This will make your Razor Edge guides last forever and increase the life of your stone. However, the angle will change as your stone wears away (not an issue with diamond stones) so you may want to plane off a bit of your block to match the height of the stone.Even with these drawbacks, the Razor Edge guides are awesome. The other chefs in my kitchen are incredible hand sharpeners, but their edges have absolutely nothing on the ones made using the guides--they have all given me their knives to get them "scary sharp." I highly recommend you find and read The Razor Edge Book of Sharpening, written by John Juranitch, the designer of these fine guides. If you dont feel like shelling out hundreds for a more advanced system, these are the way to go and will be more than adequate to get your blades shaving sharp.

ZDP-189 is the current champ for knife steel. It is incredibly hard and more flexible than anything before and can hold wickedly sharp edges. Sharpening it can be trick, though. The key is absolutely consistent edge angle control. pyderco's "Sharpmaker" didn't work for me, it depends on how accurately you can judge vertical, and for me, it limited edge sharpness. These Razor Edge Sharpening Guides have made my Spyderco ZDP-189 blades sharper than my razor. I shave my neck with my knife, seriously. I use the Guides with one of the Spyderco triangular sharpening rods included with their "Sharpmaker" product. The coarse rod if I need to re-profile an edge, and their "ultra fine" rod for everything else. Using the tinniest pressure, no more than the weight of the blade, is also important for the last few strokes.

Honestly, they were kind of hard to use. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but I couldn't really sharpen the tip end of my knives well. Once I saw the angle I was supposed to be using, I just did it by hand and I came out with scary sharp knives.

For the most part, it worked reasonably well. The problem was that it's a metal contraption rubbing against a device that's meant to wear away at metal. I have been trying a few different angle guides and this one would have been a winner if not for the wearing of the guide. This will mean that as i'm using it it will subtly change the angle. I think i'd give it a much higher rating if it had ceramic inserts to prevent wear.

I bought some of these over 20 years ago, and still use them on some knives. Like everything, they have their limits. The best part is they don't slip around and come off like the cheaper friction-fit ones. I use the small one on medium pocket knives up to 4" blade length, but for pen knives and paring knives with narrow blades, the angle gets much steeper than I want. But practice with these also trains your muscle memory to keep a faitly constant angle, which greatly improves your freehand sharpening skills. You will need a larger stone than you would without the device, so invest in good stones.