Smith’s 50933 Knife & Scissor Electrical Belt Sharpener – Wonderful, Medium, & Coarse Belts – Straight Edge Blades – Handheld Sharpening – Workshop & Device Sharpener

Finally, a sharpener worth getting!
I’m not one of those guys that finds their zen spending 30 minutes with different stones and what not putting an edge on a knife that can bisect a human hair. I just want to be able to cut a steak/tomato/onion/etc. without having to fight with it. This does an excellent job at quickly getting a knife sharp, took me under 10 minutes including assembly and playing around to sharpen the 5 knives I actually use. It also very quickly cleaned up the “ragged” edges that my knifes got from those pull through ceramic sharpeners. I only used the 80grit for a few passes and it was more than sufficent for what I need. If you wanted to take more time and use the finer grits you could probably get some very sharp knives out of this thing.

It works as long as you are careful
So I had doubts after reading some reviews. Many said the 20 degree angle was unfit for pocket knives, I have found that isn’t totally true. I found out 20-23 Degrees is what most pocket/folding knives use as a basis. Using that information I used the sharpener on a handful of various blades and each one came out much sharper than before without much effort or changes to the geometry of the edge.Pros:+It works fast and well. You have to follow the directions closely, and use a fair bit of pressure to ensure the blade stays in contact with the belt, especially when grinding on the edge where the belt will try and lift the blade out of the guide (the left side of the grinding tool).+Its compact and easy to use. Once you have it set up it is fairly simple to use and effective, though I can imagine if you are left handed it would be a bit harder as it seems the on switch is not ambidexterous in it’s positioning and you can’t really flip it around and use it.Cons:-Belts are a pain to get in. It is not a fast or easy switch between belts. It can take a few minutes of careful prodding to get them in and out and I was afraid of breaking or damaging them a few times.-The belts run down quick. The belts do not have a robust grit to them and it wears down rather quickly.-Won’t sharpen the heel. So at the bottom of a blade (the part closest to the hilt/ricasso) is the blade heel and in many circumstances I could not get the sharpener to sharpen this because you cannot push the blade far enough into the guide to get it to grind there.

Knife sharpening tools
The sharpener works good for quick and easy operation it does a good job on smaller knives

100% failure rate on 2 units.
While I like the design and ease of use, it simply is built with substandard materials. I bought 2 of these and both have broken one of the wheels that the belt spins on. They are made out of simple hard plastic and spin at a relatively high speed, it is apparent this creates more stress than the plastic can handle. The first one, the smaller wheel shattered when it was turned on the first time sending high speed shards flying in all directions. I simply sent that one back to Amazon for a replacement and have only used it one time since replacement. The second one broke on the 3rd use, the larger plastic wheel split in two. This time it is outside of the 30 day return so good and bad news. The good news is they claim a 3 year limited warranty, the bad news is I’m out the cost of shipping this back to Arkansas for them to repair/replace it. At the current failure rate I will have more invested in shipping them back for repair/replacement than they are worth. I wouldn’t recommend this sharpener.

Product has been working fantastic

No belt with the sharpener??? No way to sharpen a knife! Really!