First I'll say I'm a novice freehand sharpener at best at this point. But, I do have experience with a KME sharpener and have gotten pretty good at that so I'm looking at this somewhat relative to the KME. I'm also not trying to come across as a KME fanboy ... but I do really like it for some things and others not so much. That said, I think this is interesting system for sure and I think this might actually work but I'm a little undecided about what happens at the tip mostly regarding the angle ... I need to noodle on that some more.
One of the drawbacks to the KME is doing longer blades ... while you can do them it gets challenging around and beyond the 6 inch mark, You have to be more concerned about angles at the extremes and blade alignment in the jaws to maintain those angles but I think this gets around that issue since your moving the blade to the stone and not vice-versa.
Also, as blades get longer that are thin and not a nice and beefy chefs knife - think cheap steak knives or long thin carving knives for example they tend to bend at the outer extremes with a KME. I think that this system would most likely have that same issue. It can be overcome with some care with hand placement over the ends or wherever the blade meets the stone along with careful application of pressure. This isn't an issue freehand sharpening because we are supporting the blade over the stone with our fingers.
Another concern ... the jaws do not appear to have any sort of rubber or anything between the jaw and the knife blade and if not then this is a setup for scratches, marks, ... etc. Depending on the knife it could be a showstopper depending on how much you care about scratches, dings, dents, ... etc where the jaws hold the blade.. But that could easily be overcome with some rubber, neoprene, ... etc.
Another concern with smaller blades - we can easily freehand a 3 inch EDC type knife, or paring knife, but with so much less blade to grab onto what becomes a problem is the thickness of the jaws such that there isn't enough distance from the jaws to the edge of the blade for you to be able to drop to a lower angle - the jaws actually get in the way. KME get's around this by having smaller/thinner profile jaws and for really tiny knives they have a pen knife jaws set - even smaller and thinner allowing for a better grip on the blade and lower angle not obstructed by the base of the jaws.
Enter the magnetic jaw ... that might get around the "jaws to big to get lower angle with smaller blades" but personally I don't think I could trust a magnetic holder that wasn't some kind of powered electromagnetic kind of thing ... hahaha ... but that might just be me.
Another potential issue would be a blade that isn't just flat from spline to edge and or heel to tip. Flat is easy, but with some funky EDC knife designs there are weird things to deal with over a small distance in the "cool" blade profiles - I'm not sure that these jaws could grab at an angle for example that isn't perpendicular to the jaw attaching point ... if that makes sense without seeing it in my mind ... it's a scary place to go
So, all in all I think this is interesting. Some of what I consider to be issues are easily fixed, rubber between jaws, thinner jaws, more robust attaching jaws (do I get a share in the company if they use my ideas?) If you don't care about anything other than big, beefy, chefs knives it might be decent and especially for someone who can't get beyond the frustrations of holding angles or just doesn't sharpen enough to develop the muscle memory of freehand sharpening or just doesn't want to put in the effort to overcome those issues. Maybe if guided systems are going to be your choice of sharpening systems then you just need to buy a few of them ... KME, Edge Pro, and Sharpworx Professional and accept that there just isn't one that is the end all.
They (SharpWorx) do have a website and a YouTube channel - a bunch of videos to see it in action. There's one where he talks about sharpening at an 11 degree angle and the interesting part is the discussion about angles relative to the device and degrees of freedom. I'm assuming what is being said is true - have not fact checked it. To be clear - I have nothing to do with SharpWorx or KME (ther than having one and liking it very much within it's limitations) but I did think seeing the SharpWorx in action in the videos was interesting.
Mike and my $0.02
