busybee Food

The first issue is that the included manual does a terrible job of showing how to set the angle. There’s somewhat more useful instructions on the website, but they’re still somewhat unclear. Here’s a procedure I found which works well:

1. Clamp the knife into the holder, and loosen the height adjustments on the sharpening arm
2. Open the “Measure” app on an iPhone (or an equivalent app on Android, or get a digital level, or whatever) and rest it on the arm between the knife clamp and the counter clamp
3. Zero out the level
4. Put the lowest-grit stone in the holder and gently rest it on the middle of the blade
5. Carefully (without touching the screen) rest the phone on the back of the stone holder, and adjust the height of the sharpener arm assembly until the angle is 15° (or whatever angle you’re trying to sharpen to) and clamp it down
6. Move the height adjustment stop up until it’s supporting the angle clamp and then lock it in place

Now your angle should be set, or at least close enough, and you can start to sharpen.

Another issue I ran into is that the clamp that’s ostensibly meant to keep the stone in place actually prevents the spring from holding the stone firm, and so I ended up breaking one of my stones when it fell to the floor. Fortunately it was the 160-grit stone which is only really needed for extreme knife beveling, but it’s still annoying.

You also want to be very sure that the attachment clamp has it held tight to your countertop. Every time I pulled on the knife clamp to flip it over I was worried it would come loose and cause me to slice my hand open. Definitely use two hands while doing that, and use caution.

Anyway. My knives are way sharper than they have been since I bought them, and this device makes it way easier to get the angle correct. I eventually got into a pretty good rhythm with my sharpening, and while the actual edge could probably be better (if done by a professional sharpener) this sure worked better than the whetstone I was using before.