Ken Onion Elite Mk 2 Initial Thoughts

hello everyone Nate here with SimplySharp and it’s an exciting day because we have the brand new Ken Onion Elite Mark I from Work Sharp uh if you’ve been following along you know that we use the existing Ken Onion and the blade grinding attachment for almost all of our knife sharpening here at SimplySharp and today I’m going to go ahead and um give my take on this new unit uh compare it to the original one and if the kind of thing that you’re interested in and just want to learn more about stick around all right first difference the whole thing comes in one box uh the previous system was actually two products it was the Ken Onion sharpener and the blade grinding attachment they came in two separate boxes now it all comes in one box um the original system currently cost $1.99 this cost $2.99 so it’s $100 more expensive I do however think I recall that when I first started started buying these the can onion itself was like 150 or something like that maybe 160 and then the blade grinding attachment was like $80 so I don’t know maybe like aund 230 $240 so maybe I’m remembering that wrong but um this is somewhere between $60 to $100 more expensive than the original Mark 1 is is definitely $100 more expensive than Work Sharp is currently selling these things for uh on their website so that’s the first difference now let’s jump into the actual unit so on the right here is the Mark 1 so this is the Ken Onion unit with a blade grinding attachment here is the mark 2 also has its version of the blade grinding attachment and um some of the major differences are number one and this is one of my big complaints is this structure right here that just got in the way with certain things like uh certain scissors some knives garden tools this whole thing just got in the way they’ve eliminated that I haven’t fully tested but just looking at it it seems like this is going to be a lot better of an experience um in this area the other thing is you can now easily adjust how much slack you have in this in this uh sharpening area right here and that’s going to kind of determine how flat your grind is it’s never going to be completely flat but this is less convex than something like that which is a feature I didn’t even know this thing had until Jason out at the Western sharpeners Roundup showed it to me they like oh yeah you can move this thing up here and there’s less slack up here so you’ll get less convex of a curve didn’t even know that was a thing on the original Mark 1 um but there we go that’s a couple differences in that area the other really really big difference about this is the way you adjust the angle so on the mark one the angle adjustment is here you loosen this un tension it loosen it move something around tighten it back up and there you go you and then retension your belt and you’re good to go with this system it’s all done by this knob and the Belt doesn’t need to come off it doesn’t even need to be on tension I I was adjusting it while the thing was running brilliant it’s great uh you know often I’ll be sharpening things at different angles so if I’m going between 15 and 17 degrees on the same batch of knives I’ll do like my p120 at 17 I’ll flip it over to 15 and I got to stop the machine untensioned adjust it retension it start back up again so just this little ability right here that’s a big Improvement I really really like all of those changes uh thus far the next big set of changes is around how you actually operate the power so on the original trigger a little uh latch mechanism that puts it in continuous run mode and then this is how you would adjust the speed so turn it on hold it to speed that adjust it now in practicality especially when I train new sharpeners It Takes a Minute of for them to get it to go and then as soon as they try to adjust the speed they un un variably loosen the hold and then stops running and it’s just this whole thing so you just kind of there a real technique to running that efficiently over here when I first saw this I thought G why are you adding all this Electronics you’re over complicating it like keep it simple I was not a fan of what I saw but holy smokes this is amazing I think they pretty well nailed it pull the trigger hit that button it’s in continuous run speed up speed down stop brilliant I love the way they did it um good job on that guys um some of the other things that they changed is they added this so um both feature a platin back here in a little shelf that you can rest things on I didn’t even know that that was there I asked the guy the lead designer at blade show he’s like oh yeah we kind of had it back there in case somebody needed a platin for something uh I wind up using it for um some more severe uh chip uh removal and any sort of um uh reprofiling or something like that uh but on here they’ve had this feature where this thing raises up um which quite honestly when I watch the video I was baffled like why would you do that but the instructions say it’s another reference plane so instead of putting your knife here and bringing it up you can put your knife here and bring it down so that might actually help some people I’m sure they got a lot of feedback or something that made them do that maybe there’s other cool things that we can figure out how to do with it um tracking knob the tensioner is a little bit different so it just kind of goes in and down and it just feels and operates a little bit differently than this one um I don’t really know how else to explain that also the wheel in there is is on the old warar it’s is this tiny little wheel and that would introduce a little bit of um I don’t know what the right word is but there’s like a little bow that forms in the belt uh because of that and you’ll see it on some of the thinner belts um in here you can’t see it but it’s basically the same wheel it’s the full width and it just feels great um this wheel is also bigger on this one um really really nice job about all that sort of stuff um so I think those are all the Kudos uh now there is in my mind uh two big issues I have with the Mark I um issue number one I don’t know why every manufacturer decides to improve things by adding more plasticky bits to make it look good it must be some fundamental battle between people that want to use products and make great products and people in marketing um don’t know why this is here and it’s more troubling because issue number one is this uh space in here is remarkably useful like you can get like loppers and scissors and pruners you can just get stuff in there because you’ve got all of this space to play with um it’s one of the things that make this really versatile it’s one of the reasons we use this at SimplySharp we’re all mobile so being compact low power draw and having a lot of Versatility is Big advantages of this unit it’s why we use that they’re also pretty cost efficient um now if I want to look at this guy because they had to support all this plastic they’ve got all this metal over here with this stud and so you’ve lost a decent amount of real estate this this wheel’s bigger but you can move that out of the way but I don’t know I did not have the opportunity to see if that’s really going to be an impediment but just looking at it I feel like I’ve lost a good bit of um versatility because of all that but here’s the real issue the mark one do a three belt progression I’m G pop this guy off pop this guy on I’m GNA go take him off I’m put the next one on good to go right easy easy and fast if I’m at a farmers market I am blowing and going I don’t need to fool around with it I think you can look at this and tell this is going to be a problem so for actually so that’s that’s a habit but I go down here load it from the bottom oh sorry there we go load it from the bottom all right I’m running great stop there we go got to get around this thing because it’s all the way down then back up put it back on take it back off that’s a lot slower it I it that might be a deal breaker for me um I don’t know I am hoping that the guys at Work Sharp are clever as they always are and I’m just doing something wrong um maybe they see this and they post some sort of an instructional video or whatever but but getting belts on and off this is not good um I don’t know what this metal clip is for I’m probably going to take it off because I’m also pretty uncertain am I GNA be able to get a leather belt in there I don’t have a leather belt to try with I actually gave my leather belt to uh one of my students and I have some on order but um I will certainly be testing that out but I’m not sure I can get a for sure with this clip on I can I can’t do it with it off probably but that’s not going to be fun to get that in there I just don’t know why they added all this stupid plastic so there we go uh that’s the major differences between the two models um I like got rid of the hardware here I love the way they do the power I love the way you set the angle I absolutely hate this monstrosity in the middle I think it’s really going to affect my speed of sharpening and um the uh uh versatility of it versus The Mark 1 I really hope I’m wrong on that uh on that account um would I recommend it for a home sharpener absolutely abolutely would recommend this over the mark one I think it’s worth the extra $100 it’s so much easier to use it’s just more pleasant it is slightly quieter definitely would recommend it for a professional I don’t know that I can um I am hoping again that getting the belts on and off is somehow easier than I’m making it um but uh yeah if I can’t overcome that I don’t know that I will actually move to the mark 2 um unless I can overcome the uh the belt switching uh hey let’s try this actually this is how it comes apart um it does have a little nubbing that that goes on here as well I just don’t have it on there right now let’s see if I can do this can I get this guy ah why that would have been so nice the last now there we go thank you everyone hope that was helpful