Although I haven't met him personally, by all accounts the WEPS inventor, Clay Allison, seems to be a great guy. He's very active over at KnifeForums.com and is very responsive to customer input. I'm not sure what I think of the clamping system- held edge up it looks like it would be really easy to cut yourself. And I wonder how it holds knives that have lots of funky angles and false bevels. But I chat frequently with several very satisfied WEPS owners so I imagine it must work pretty well. And now most of my favorite synthetic stones are being offered for the WEPS thru CKtG and Jende, LLC.

Certainly for routine maintenance it's hard to beat the Spyderco Tri-Angle Sharpmaker. It's simple and easy to use yet very effective. The main issues are the lack of different rods and lack of a rod coarse enough to easily change a bevel angle or grind out chips. But for knives that don't get abused it will do the trick.

The Lansky and Gatco sharpeners will work pretty well and are pretty easy to use, too, but they're a bit cumbersome on longer knives.