read a lot of positive comments about this sharpener, especially on this website. So, I bought two of them, one as present to my friend (they cost almost 3 times more in the UK than in the USA, by the way). Today I got the sharpeners.
First of all, you cannot keep the right angle on the sharpener. It seems to me the angles at the rubber bottom are about 30 degrees. You cannot keep your knife vertical and sharpen the knife with right angle as shown in instructions, in my opinion. So, keeping the right angle is not that stright forward as on spyderco Tri-Angle.
Because you cannot keep the angle, I do not see much difference of this sharpener from ordinary sharpening stone - you can keep a stone under desired angle in your hands and sharpen knives. The only difference is you can buy for the same money a bit larger stone, so it will be more convenient to use.
Another problem I had is that I could not make Victorinox Pickniker sharp enough to shave my hair on my hand - my usual test which I do after I sharpen knives on grey rods of Spyderco Tri-Angle before they are ready to be sharpened on white rods.
So, I am disapointed. I thought it would completely replace Tri-Angle on long trips, but it does not look even near to Spyderco in quality. I completed sharpening my knife on Tri-Angle, so I cannot say if Tri-Seps really improved the sharpness of my Pickniker.
Could you advice me if I expect too much performance from this sharpener? Can I sharpen knives with steels harder than of Victorinox that they could shave a bit, or at get to acceptible sharpness? I am thinking one of the reasons for such poor performance might be brand new stone - I had to rub Spyderco rods on each other before first use, as was recommended in instructions. I did rub Tri-Seps using my Spuderco rod as well, but did not feel any difference.
Advice is much appreciated.
Regards,