The Elite Knife Sharpener is our favorite way to sharpen a wide variety of knives and tools, and with a few quick modifications or adjustments, you can add a lot of horsepower to your Elite Knife Sharpener. If you don’t like reading check out our video about these tips and tricks!

Adjust the Pulleys: You can do that?? Yep! the rear pulley on top can be adjusted to one of two positions. The standard position allows for the most belt deflection to create a strong convex edge. If you want a flatter grind you can reposition the pulley to a secondary position closer to the front pulley (use an Allen key). This reduces the space between pulleys, reducing belt flex and creating a flatter grind.

How many belts do you need? All the belts! Work Sharp offers replacement abrasives at many retailers and at Worksharptools.com. However, Work Sharp offers more than just replacements. There are a wide variety of additional belts on our site, everything from coarse 80 grit belts for repairing and re-profiling a blade, to cloth belts with no abrasive, designed for use with compound – they come with green compound. One of the options is a stiff belt kit, these have a thicker backing and do not flex as much as the standard belts. Flexible belts are excellent for creating consistent sharp results on many traditional blades with a curved or recurved shape. If you are sharpening straight blades a stiff belt may deliver more consistent results. Or, if you are making modifications the stiff belt offers a different contour which may deliver the shape you are looking for. Try them out! Available here!

Add Leather? Once upon a time we created leather belts for the Elite Knife Sharpener…. it didn’t work out. Leather stretches and cracks. So we switched over to cloth belts which hold their shape and hold compound exceptionally well! This is not the leather we are talking about. On the Blade Grinding attachment there is a flat metal plate on the back of the sharpener. This is intended for accessory grinding, perhaps flattening the spine of a knife, restoring a sharp 90-degree edge, or whatever your imagination dreams up. Many of us at Work Sharp have found we prefer grinding on that surface with a slight adjustment. Adding a strip of leather to that plate provides a different density of material to grind against – and eliminates the gap between the plate and the belt. We’ve found that the replacement leather strips for the Guided Field Sharpener are excellent for this application. Use two strips to fit the width of the plate, and trim them to fit for length. If you’re interested check out those leather strips here.

With unlimited possibilities the Ken Onion Edition Elite Knife Sharpener is a tool to be reckoned with. What will you sharpen next?