The sharpener:
The sharpener contains four ceramic rods, a dark gray coarse pair and a white fine pair, which are stored conveniently in the wooden body (which is a nondescript, varnished hardwood of the type found in cheap folding furniture, for example.) In use, these rods would be inserted into two pairs of holes drilled into the wooden case. The holes serve to hold the rods at a particular angle, letting you create properly shaped, repeatable edges on your knives.
How to use it:
If you are starting with a dull blade, you start with the dark rods. You put them in the pair of holes that are spaced farther apart (as in the product photo.) Those holes are drilled at 20 degrees from vertical, which will create an edge that is very close to the proper shape, and make further sharpening go faster (I will explain that below.)
You hold the wooden body with a free hand down on a countertop or tabletop, then grip your knife in your other hand, edge down and pointing forward, and draw the knife edge against one of the rods downwards and backwards. You have to be careful to keep your other hand out of the path of the knife. You do a few strokes on one side, then switch to the other.
Since most knives have curved edges, you should ideally draw the handle up as you draw it back in a rocker motion, to keep the edge at a constant angle to the rods. With an 8" chef's knife, it wouldn't matter much, but with smaller knives with a deeper curve, it might be important, especially if you want the knife to be equally sharp from tip to heel.
After the edge has been shaped (if you have a magnifying glass, you can see when the "V" of the edge has flat sides that come to a point) and the knife doesn't seem to be getting sharper, you remove those gray rods and take out the white rods and insert them in the other pair of holes, and repeat the process. Those holes are closer and offset from each other, so that the two rods actually cross, so you can tell the two pairs of holes apart easily. Those holes are drilled at 25 degrees from vertical, i.e. the rods slant more. (That means the knife edge will form a 50 degree angle, which is a good compromise between sharpness and edge durability.) Because you formed the edge first with the coarse rods at 20 degrees, the white rods will contact the knife only at the exact edge, which is the only part that really matters. This allows sharpening to go faster.
This process is a little fussier. You do four strokes on a side for a while, then two strokes, then one, so you are alternating between one side and then the other. At those last stages you should use very little pressure. You will end up with a razor sharp knife.
After that, you should be able to go for quite a while with using only the white rods in the 25 degree holes to touch up the edge. Eventually though, you will have to start over with the gray rods in the 20 degree holes.
So what is good and bad about this sharpener?
The good:
The sharpener reliably produces sharp edges with the correct angles. That 25 degree angle is difficult to achieve with any consistency using most other sharpening systems, but this one makes it easy.
It is cheap. I have done a fair amount of research, and I believe this is probably the cheapest sharpening system that actually can produce edges at repeatable angles. There are other, more flexible systems (including one from Lansky) but they cost more. And there are cheaper systems (like a simple ceramic rod with a handle) that require you to eyeball the angle, which would almost certainly mean either a weak, inconsistent edge or lots of wasted effort, or both. Other systems offer only one set of rods, or only one angle.
The entire thing packs into a self-contained, convenient package. The rods go into holes drilled lengthwise in the wooden body, and an attached endpiece rotates to cover both holes. When it is packed up, it forms a little wooden brick. It is actually a pretty clever design.
The bad:
The entire thing is small, so there isn't much room to hold on to the body with your other hand. So it is relatively easy to cut yourself. Fancier and larger sharpeners of this type (like the Spyderco system) have some kind of hand guard. With this one you should take extra care to place all your fingers in a safe position. And you should proceed slowly, and in a well-lit area.
The rods are only five inches long, and only 4 1/2 inches of is usable when the rods are mounted. That means there is little space to draw the knife downwards, and you end up using a mostly horizontal motion, drawing the knife back towards yourself. Otherwise you will end up slicing into the wood body or hitting the other rod. This means that sharpening goes relatively slowly. I have been experimenting with drawing the knife up instead of down, while drawing it back. It is an odd motion, but it seems to work well.
The body is relatively slick and light, and has no rubber feet, so it can slide around on the countertop a little. So if you were particularly careful, you might want to set it on a piece of no-slide pad used under rugs (you can find similar stuff used as shelf liners or toolbox liners. It resembles a rubber-coated mesh.)
(This is a quibble.) The wood and the finish are just adequate, nothing special. Since I like doing this kind of thing, I sanded off the varnish and finished the entire thing, including all the holes, with tung oil (mixed 30% with mineral spirits.) The holes on top are a slightly tight fit for the rods, so I had to make sure to remove any extra oil from the holes which might keep the rods from fitting. It took about 20 minutes from start to finish, and it is much nicer, and probably more durable.
Lastly, like all sharpeners that use rods, it doesn't work well for super-hard steel like that found in some Japanese knives. The tiny contact point can actually make that steel fracture and chip. Those knives would do better with a large traditional whetstone, like a Japanese waterstone. (This sharpener also doesn't work with serrated knives, but most serrated knives, like those cheap flexible stainless steel knives, aren't intended to be sharpened anyway. The Spyderco system is one of the few that can handle serrated knives.)
Good luck!
Pros: Easy to use, works very well to hone blades, economical, compact, and stores easily.
Cons: ceramic sticks wobble, not 20 and 25 degree angles.
This is pretty simple to use and it works fine. However, mine has holes that are oversized and allow the ceramic rods to wobble a bit and the sharpening angles are closer to 22 and 28 degrees. It still works fine, but this is a bit annoying. If your knife is truly dull, this will gadget will take forever to sharpen the blade. Instead, use the Accusharp sharpener to sharpen and use this to hone the blade to hair cutting sharp and keep them there.
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The sticks are a little short for my taste, but overall they work very nicely. I really like that the stand double as storage for all 4 sticks.
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My parents have owned this set for years, and growing up and even now I use them when I'm at their place. I think they are good knives. Sturdy. We have never had a problem with them. Dishwasher safe. About the only problem was having to resharpen them, but what knives don't you have to resharpen after years of use? I am purchasing this set for myself.
