Anyone here who sharpens their knives with something other than the (already discarded by me) traditional water or oil whetstones?

My goal is twofold: to avoid the effects of essential tremor and the difficulty of keeping a constant angle.

I recently came across advertisements for those systems where the angle is fixed by a magnet, plus a rotating disk that does the grinding.

Comments appreciated.

 

A lot depends on the quality of the knife and how the steel blade was tempered. Manually sharpening with a whetstone does not (generally) heat up the edge as you sharpen it, thus keeping the original characteristics of the steel (hardness, strength, etc.).
Using a mechanical grinding may (or may not) heat the edge of the steel, changing the temper of it, possibly making it softer (annealing it). If the mechanical grinding has cooling fluid, then more likely the temper will remain as it was originally designed by the factory. A "quick" pass of a mechanical grind may not cause too much heating if the rest of the blade can draw away any heat.
There can be other factors as well. You may not see a difference with mechanical grinding anyway, except the edge does not hold its sharpness as long as it used to...

 

I found these, we had a similar thread somewhere and remember these.

kv

 

I have one of these and love it. It's meant for fast fixes in the field, not for perfection. But if you can get 90% of a good sharpening in just seconds, it's tough to justify what it takes to go that last 10%.

https://www.lansky.com/blademedic.html

 

I have Ouchita Arkansas stones of various hardness used dry or with oil, I've had ceramic sticks that I don't care for, I have a high quality set of whetstones of varying grits, a sharpening steel that I use every time before using the already sharpened kitchen knives, and I have a mechanical clamp system that uses diamond hones of various grits. Also, a leather with fabric backing razor strop with polishing compound to put a finishing polish on after sharpening. The mechanical diamond system gives the best repeatable angle as it stays fixed in the clamping system. Don't get a cheap one but look for a more robust clamping system. i.e.

Coarse for removing nicks if needed, medium to sharpen, and fine to put the finishing edge on. Then strop to polish the edge even sharper. I miss high grade carbons steel blades as I can sharpen them much sharper than stainless steel blades and they stay sharp longer. Hard to find anything other than stainless these days. I only hand sharpen as the rotating motorized sharpeners remove too much material. I've seen too many blades ground down to almost a spike from oversharpening which is a waste of good steel. I have some blades over a hundred years old that I use almost daily.