Wicked Edge Tips for Beginners

Top Tips For Beginners, From our Forum Experts

When you’re new to sharpening with your Wicked Edge system, what are the best tips and tricks for success?

We asked our forum members to let us know the most important best practices.

Below are some highlights, and we highly recommend reading the forum thread. We especially recommend asking your own questions to the forum – you’ll notice that questions in the forum receive multiple thoughtful answers.










  1. Start with a cheap / practice knife
    • Stones perform better when broken-in (after a few sharpening sessions); it’s best to learn, and to break-in your stones on a knife you’re not nervous about.
  2. Find the right angle
    • Use a sharpie to blacken your blade edges; then observe where the stones are removing the black, and adjust your angle accordingly.
    • Raise a burr, and ensure it’s there before progressing to the next grit.
  3. Find the right front-to-back placement to clamp your knife
    • Don’t let the stone rotate around the tip; keep it moving forward.
  4. Keep your strokes light / gentle
    • No need to push the stone against the blade; keep a light grip on the stones
  5. After sharpening, record your settings to reference them the next time.

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