Work Sharp WS3000 Wood Tool Sharpener
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List Price: Our Price: $191.70 You Save: $58.25 (23%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $179.99 (click here) Category: Tools See more product details |
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of Work Sharp WS3000 Wood Tool Sharpener
Customer Review: getting beyond the sharpness mystique
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm an amateur building a wooden schooner - have not built a boat before, or much of anything else. I don't want the polished (supposedly non-deteriorating ) surface obtainable with a well-tuned probably Japanese laminated plane, but I do need to put a smooth curve onto most of the stuff (mainly D. fir) that forms the backbone of this boat's structure, and I want pretty-sharp chisels and planes (with a few gouges at times) in a few minutes. For this purpose the WS 3000 is the best I've found. It's going to take three years in all and time is...well, you know: I want to sail her! Four stars because less useful on other edged tools; but learning curve so short as to be negligible.
SS
Customer Review: great and easy sharpening system---some pros, cons, and tips
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't like spending a lot of time sharpening, and like other reviewers, have struggled to get good results using water stones, sharpening jigs, etc. This tool has made it really easy for me to get consistent and excellent results with chisels and plane blades---and much more quickly than when using stones. Heck, I even sharpened my axe free hand on the top of the wheel before splitting some wood the other day, and I was able to get a great edge very quickly.
Here are a few pros/cons/tips for the Work Sharp:
---The sharpening port is great---you can set it easily to your angle of choice, and can also create a micro-bevel easily by adjusting the port one notch steeper after you have honed the main bevel. It would be nice to have some angles available on the port aside from the 5-degree increments that are provided, but so far I've only had to use the 25- and 30-degree settings.
---The included abrasive discs are nice, but make sure to get extras and don't be stingy on swapping out your discs frequently. Once you start to think, "Geez, this is taking forever," it's probably time to put on a new disc. And then you'll be thinking, "Geez, why didn't I do that sooner."
---I ordered an extra glass wheel as well as the leather honing wheel. So I have one wheel with 120/240 grit, one with 400/1000, one with 3600/6000, and the leather honing wheel. Using these 4 wheels, I can pretty quickly move up through the grits and get a nice sharp edge. Getting a real mirror polish without any marks at all, however, has been elusive for me. The rotaion of the wheel always means that some parts of a blade are getting sharpened differently than other parts (ie, a point at the inside of the disc is rotating faster than the outside). So far, I've found that this doesn't prevent me from getting a very sharp blade---just from getting a perfect mirror finish. But who really cares, so long as it's really sharp?
---Another reviewer commented on how you can't use the Work Sharp to put a camber (slight curve) on a plane blade. This is true, and is something of a limitation. I've been experimenting with rotating the blade just slightly as I make contact in the sharpening port, and this seems to be working well. Just twist the blade slightly to the left, then right, then left again, etc a few times, and it seems to put a bit of a camber on the blade. I typically do this only on the micro-bevel, after the main bevel has been fully honed, starting with the 1000 grit disc.
---The unit is nice and quiet when in operation. Mine has developed a little bit of a squeek already, so I hope that's not a bad sign. As other reviewers have noted, you will find that big grinding jobs generate a fair bit of dust, so make sure you don't have anything sitting right behind the unit when using it. I just keep my shop vac nearby and vac up the dust now and then.
Customer Review: jo4hn's work sharp
Summary: 5 Stars
Excellent product. Within a couple hours I had all my chisels trimming hair off my arm (not really, but you get the idea).Customer Review: my experience with the work sharp
Summary: 5 Stars
I tried the scary sharp method because I was trying to go cheap and while it works well, my time for woodworking is very limited so I looked around for something to speed up the process and stumbled across the worksharp.
It is very easy to figure out and getting the dang angles right and trying to make sure the chisels and plane blades are locked into a jig right are a thing of the past.
Customer Review: not that bad
Summary: 4 Stars
tool is not that bad. it's ok for rough sharpening and that's what i do - sharpen paintscraper blades. it's quite convenient to sharpen them with see-thru wheel. i don't think ws3000 is good for very precice work, because the wheel is wobbling and in beginning it was chewing the frame.
their customer service is very helpful. i had problem finding the right way to order new abrasives and i sent them e mail. answer came next day and solved my problem 100%.