Kai AP-118 Electric Knife Sharpener

perfect

I read several bad reviews of this sharpener AFTER I had purchased it and was worried about it being expensive and useless. I am a chef of 20 years and love my Shun knives. Once the edge has gone though it is very difficult to get it back with conventional whetstone or diamond steels. The Shun stone is very expensive so I thought I would give this a go first..My main tip with this product is to:a) Read the instructions as to exactly how you use it.b) It will take some work to get your blades surgical in sharpness again.. The reviews I read that scored this badly seemed to say that it could not achieve this level of sharpness, but like all good things you need to put time and effort into it. It took me around 20 minutes of work on my fairly blunt Shun cooks knife to get it to the point where I could shave hair from my arm. I was cursing it after 5 minutes as a piece of crap, but I persevered and the final result was fantastic.The only bad point of this product for me is the fact that you cant put blades through that are slightly thicker or short. I have Sabatier knives in my home kitchen and the thick end would not move through the grinder at all. Some different size attachments to do this would have been great, especially at the price.If you want to sharpen hard, Japanese steel though it is great.

There must be a nick in the sharpening wheel, because the process of drawing a knife through it is very rough and results in an uneven edge. I had this exact same sharpener branded by Shun Knives that worked much better.