Update in the Work Sharp Ken Onion Mk.2

hello everyone Nate here with SimplySharp and today I wanted to do a followup on my review of the new uh Work Sharp Ken Onion Mark 2 uh this little guy right here um one of the uh one of you commenters Dan um suggested like hey it’s been a couple months why don’t you go aad and do a followup to the review so just as a recap or if you didn’t see my initial review of this video um one big thing I did was I modified this little plastic G here and the reason I did that was because it was making it very challenging to get the belts on and off uh subsequently I’m even more glad I did it because getting in there and kind of cleaning all the dust out has been a little bit of a challenge but what I thought I’d do is uh my dad dropped off his dull knives so here’s one of them I thought I’d sharpen this guy uh while kind of explaining um how I feel about this after two months all right so um first things first I got to put a belt on and trimming this down certainly has made it easier uh still this knob right here kind of gets in the way it’s it’s this is not terrible but I got to kind of lift it up and get around it’s not the end of the world um it is quite a lot easier um with the rest of the Guard removed and you know nothing’s kind of getting caught or hung up anymore um so you know it works pretty well no noticeable real difference um that exasperates me or anything like that while I’m sharpening um now one thing I’ll point out is I’ve really kind of come to love this here and just in general I’m Expo I’m opposed to um you know adding a bunch of fancy Electronics to things that maybe just don’t need it you know when when you could just use a regular switch or something why do you have to make something fancy um but this has really turned out to be uh a lot better than I thought it was going to be um in fact I I really highly value Val it so if I get this thing started and then you hit the continuous run up there uh I start at the lowest speed uh I use I’ll go a and stop that for a second I use uh a three belt progression starting with a p120 and then I move up to an a30 and then I do a leather drop um shout out to Cliff Curry I get all of my belts uh when possible from him um they performed great they last a long time um there’s five of us here at SimplySharp uh using these things to sharpen on we use all of Cliff’s belts and I would guess on average we’re probably still hanging in there in the anywhere from 120 to 150 knives um on these P1 120s so uh we do take a little bit of care of them by um you know cleaning them off with uh kind of the um uh whatever that little Gummy stick is that you hit it with I can’t remember what it’s called right now uh also when I’m doing like any sort of heavy repair work I use old P1 120s I don’t I don’t use a brand new one um because that’ll really eat some things up so for example this knife you know I should probably do a little bit of a bolster reduction right there um I’m not going to do that for this video because it’s going to take longer than I feel like doing it um Dad sorry I’ll fix that for you next time um but yeah so this is my progression this is what I use let’s get started slow speed so what I additionally like about this unit over the previous one is that it is actually a bit quieter like obviously not with the knives on it but just running on its own it is a bit quieter I also feel like the belt sits flatter on things and the way you can space this out so I can if I need more uh slack in there I can move it to this position if I want to uh make this a little stiffer in there I can move that make move these wheels closer together uh the previous one had that feature as well but you had to like unscrew it and put it back in um honestly I didn’t even know it had that feature till somebody at um the the Western sharpeners around pointed that out to me um I’ve not adjusted any of my old ones at all um to do this but I I do definitely adjust this one uh um so we’ve had a few passes per side I’ve got a decent bur through most of it missing a little bit right here so let me give it a few more all right there we go nice consistent bur all the way I can see it I got some decent light in here and but I always kind of do the little feel test all right so now the next part of this getting the belt off um that was actually the hardest part before I reduced this area getting these things off um now they come off fairly easily still got to get around this little horn down there from the from the uh from this lever but it’s way better than it was um let me put the next belt on I got to start my air filter I don’t need to breathe this crap in still got the air filter rocking love this thing I’m probably about do for a new uh actually put a new filter on it all right so I stopped there um I want to do enough passes to refine The Edge um but and I want to get a good amount of the Burr worked over worked off but now I’m just going to move on to the STP now interestingly originally I also did another video of how I couldn’t run a leather belt with this little clip on here I accidentally did that the other day and it worked just fine so we’re going to try it again see if I can be a two for two on that um this is just uh this might this belt might be from leather beltman um Cliff does also sell these but uh I like his I like leather beltman I just get them from wherever I can get them um and it’s I’m looking down it’s it’s maybe every now and then making some random contact but otherwise it looks looks pretty good clearance wise back there so maybe I was wrong maybe my belt’s stretched I don’t know but um actually this belt probably is pretty stretched out I don’t take anywhere near as good care of it as I should but it’s working all right me personally I ramp up the speed so I just like being able to just do that right here all right I’m just right I’m usually at four when I’m stopping I’m all about this blue compound now again I got it from Cliff others sell it as well um what I like about it is uh the white compound does a good job and doesn’t really Gunk up anything um the green compound does a better job especially a burr removal but holy crap couldn’t make a gunky mess uh this blue one seems to just be right in The Sweet Spot good um good uh ability to remove any remaining Burr and polish the knives and does not gunk things up all right and then we’ll do our trusty microfiber cloth test so I’m just drawing it across that microfiber if you’re not doing this uh really this is an exercise to see how much Burr if any is still on there um sometimes obviously a visual inspection will work but there’s a lot of stuff you can just miss so um you can you can feel that and you’ll also feel any defects so if you miss a chip or something like that it’s going to snag there and you’re going to notice it so highly recommend just doing that little test um I will always cut some paper um a everyone seems to like it um B of course all right here we go so I’m kind of feeling for any sort of uh if it starts to drag if it kind of starts to to if I feel a pop usually a pop is a sign that I didn’t get a chip out that I missed if it’s dragging I’m not done I might have left bur on there I might have just not done a good job in one of the earlier steps uh you saw that towards the back of the of the knife here and that’s CU I couldn’t get back here because I didn’t reduce the bolster like I should I’m going to have to fix that now but um anyways there we go that’s sharpening on this all right so I’ve been using this thing for a couple of months now um what are my final opinions on it um this is the one I use every day now I still got a bunch of uh the Mark 1es um I’m I’m using this one every day now I I kind of committed to like hey I’m just going to try it out and and see how it works um and that’s what I did but it’s just the one now um I carry both with me I carry one of the old ones as a backup unit in case something happens and I need to um you know swap them out or something like that but yeah I mean I’m I’m using this guy guy consistently every day um I don’t know that I would do that without having modified this um maybe I’ll do another experiment where I I grab I actually have a couple still in the box um maybe I’ll do an experiment where I grab one that’s not been modified and try to use it for a month and see what happens um but yeah I’m actually quite happy with it um I don’t use this thing right here in case anyone’s wondering I’ve yet to find this guy pops up I can do it right so you can guess do your reference plane up here and pull it down I don’t know never used it um the other actually one important thing that I I forgot to mention so um if you don’t use this clip take it off you don’t use this clip there is this lip right here right and um that actually winds up mattering when you’re doing some things so I’ll do some knife repair back there I will especially do things like uh if I’m sharpening mandolin blades I’ll do that back there um and that little lip even with the thickness of the belt um matters uh it gets in the way it’s just a problem so you got to make sure you put this clip back on I actually revert to the old Ken Onion when I’m when I’m doing something like that I I just there it’s ready to go um I just pull that guy out and use him instead um so yeah but other other than that um I guess I could just put this clip on now that I know have to take it off every time for my leather belt um other than that this is my everyday driver now um it is quieter I feel like it has uh a little bit more power to it um I’m hoping it’s a little bit more resilient I have blown up two of these of the old ones now um I honestly feel like dust gets in there no matter how hard I try to keep dust out I clean these things after every sharpening um I feel like dust is getting in those Motors and blows them up hopefully this one is more resilient to that um I really get a lot of value out of this digital control especially if I’ve got knives where I’m going from having to you know really uh fix something all the way down like I I I start sharpening there at the lowest level um that’s I did that entire sharpening on the on the first belt there um yeah so there we go this is my everyday driver love that feature still love my uh ability to quickly while running adjust the angles um that’s a lot easier so it’s my everyday driver I think you have to make this modification though if um if this is going to be something you uh do a lot of Ni with hope that helped thank you everyone