The Wicked Edge Gen 3 Pro produced the sharpest edge here and kept it. It
scored 90 straight off the stones, the only result under 100, and it was still
the sharpest knife at 120 after 40 weighted passes across Osage orange. Holding
the blade high in the vise makes the stroke noticeably easier to control than
on the Pro Pack 1, the lever angle adjustment moves in half-degree steps with
0.05-degree micro-adjustment, and it was tied for the fastest sharpening at
about 4 minutes. What it does not do is justify the price gap on results alone:
its margin over a $120 sharpener is ten points on a scale where a brand-new
knife reads 140.
The two to buy are the Work Sharp Precision Adjust Elite at $120 and the Lansky
Deluxe Diamond at $88. The Work Sharp tied the $600 Wicked Edge Pro Pack 1 at
100 and matched it again at 125 after the hardwood, running seven abrasives
from 220 grit through a leather strop; the trade is about 8 minutes per knife,
the slowest in the group. The Lansky is quicker at roughly 6 minutes, finished
at 110, and lost the least sharpness of anything tested at 13.6% — budget an
extra $15 for the universal mount, which the system really wants. The $355
Hapstone earns its money differently: oversized diamond stones cut sharpening
to about 5 minutes and it held up best of all across the hardwood, losing only
25 points, but it arrives with no guidance on how to use it and needs an angle
finder sold separately.
The pull-throughs are a different product rather than a cheaper version of the
same one. The $2 Gordon took a 1,160 blade to 350 and then flatly refused to
improve — a second full round of twenty passes left it at exactly 350 — before
finishing at 470. The Kitchellence, the three-slot sharpener with tens of
thousands of Amazon reviews behind it, reached 265 and then degraded worse than
anything else, ending at 575. The $36 Orange Ninja scored 410 on its first
pass, worse than the $2 Gordon, and needed a second complete round through all
three stations to reach 240, though it was the only pull-through to leave a
clean, polished bevel after the hardwood. All three take seconds rather than
minutes and will put enough of an edge back on a kitchen knife to get through
dinner. None of them will make a knife sharp, and more passes will not change
that.