Wamery 4-Stage Manual Knife Sharpener In-depth Review

We didn’t have great expectations for the Wamery when we first laid eyes on it: A tall body and jammed sharpening slots are not good signs when it comes to handheld sharpeners.

Sure enough, it didn’t score well in the design department but it did impress us in the performance parameters.

Key Specs

Where to Buy Price at publication $17.50

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Compared to Other Manual Knife Sharpeners

8.1 Performance

The Wamery offered a decent performance. While it didn’t take the knife far beyond the serviceable level, we were impressed with how fast the sharpener brought it back to life from dead dullness. Its ability to preserve the blade material has also been matched by no other.

9.2 Sharpening Time to Cut a Lemon

For this test, we blunted a knife with sandpaper and ran it through the Wamery. It took 70 seconds for the knife to get to the sharpness level where it can halve a lemon in one go. This effectively places the Wamery among the top group of sharpeners in terms of speed.

However, the results had not always been so satisfactory. The Wamery took significantly longer (almost 10 minutes) in our previous attempts to restore the knife’s sharpness. We found that sharpening with the knife tip pointing slightly downward helped.

6.0 Maximum Sharpness Achieved

As fast as it was to bring the knife to the lemon-cutting level, it didn’t go very far after that. The knife only reached Sharpness Level 7 after 6 minutes of sharpening.

You may struggle a bit with precision cutting and thin slicing, but at this level, your knife’s good for most other food prep tasks.

7.3 Edge Smoothness

When put under the examination of our magnifying lens, the knife’s edge looked straight. There are tiny shavings alongside and the grooves are noticeable but evenly distributed along the edge. This suggests that the honing stages did do their job, though not meticulously, to smoothen the edge.

9.0 Material Retention

The coarse stage does take its toll on the knife’s edge, but the metal swarf that we collected after sharpening was rather minimal.

Among the handheld sharpeners we put to the test, this is among the ones that yielded the smallest amount of metal residue.

6.8 Design: Finicky

The overall build is mediocre at best. It has a spacious grip and a wide base but its materials, fit, and finish are nothing to write home about.

In the Box

• Wamery 4-slot pull through sharpener

The sharpener comes in a cardboard package with the instruction manual printed on the back. All additional information (return address & warranty policy) can be found on the official website.

Dimensions

6.6 Build Quality

The build of the Wamery suggests everything but top-notch craftsmanship. The sharpener is bulky but hollow and rackety. Its abrasives are a hit or miss and seem to wear out more quickly than the other devices we’ve tested. While it does look cute, the sharpener isn’t meant or built to last.

Working Section

The Wamery’s working section features a slot for shears and scissors and three for kitchen knives. For knives, you start on the tungsten carbide blades, then proceed to the diamond coated rods and ceramic rods. Without a ‘prep’ slot, we’d expected the sharpener to be harsh on the knife edge; however, that wasn’t the case.

While Wamery claims that the sharpener was designed for a wide variety of knives, it failed to mention the slots’ exact angle. We tried to reach out to the brand but so far have received no response. Certain knives have unconventional sharpening angles, so putting all of them through the same slots doesn’t seem like a good idea.

7.5 Grip

The handle is spacious, which is a good thing with these sharpeners as you don’t want your gripping hand too close to where the blade goes. That being said, we think Wamery can cut back on the height while widening the base of the handle to improve balance.

The top part of the grip is covered in a soft, comfortable rubber padding, while the sides and underneath weren’t graced with the same material.

Base

The Wamery has a wide base, which partly makes up for its excessive height to maintain its balance. The pads underneath are soft and thin, and look cheaply made, but they do well enough to prevent the sharpener from slipping across the countertop during sharpening.

7.7 Ease of Use

The Wamery sharpener scored fairly well in this section, in part due to its simple yet convenient design. The height makes it a little awkward to use at times but other than that, there’s no steep learning curve to master.

9.0 Slot Arrangement

The Wamery has four slots, marked with numbers from 1 to 4 embossed on its stainless steel casing. Slot 1 is reserved for shears and scissors, while the rest sharpens kitchen knives.  

The knife slots progress rightward with increasing grit fineness, so it’s natural to follow through with the intended order. Our only complaint is with the lack of adequate space between the slots.

8.0 Insertion

During the course of our experiment, there were times when the blade wouldn’t position itself properly in the slots. When you look at the size of the entire sharpener, Wamery has been rather economical with its abrasives slots. They were a little too shallow and narrow to accommodate the entire blade’s length comfortably.

To avoid mishaps, we had to take things slowly and re-calibrate our aim before drawing the knife through the slot. But other than that, we proceeded as normal without much to complain about.

6.0 Pulling Through

The sharpening rods were solid and secure. However, the knife glided through the slots, especially the tungsten bars, at times without the slightest hint of resistance. That, of course, means the abrasives haven’t got in adequate contact with the edge to sharpen it. 

A trick we learned after multiple failures is to sharpen with the tip of the knife pointing about 20 degrees downward. Then, a frictious brace can be felt as you pull the knife through. This doesn’t work 100% of the time, but it helped enough to sharpen the knife within a reasonable time frame.

Note that the knife will cut into the plastic frame on both sides when applying this trick, but that’s better than the abrasives not working.

7.5 Stability on Clean Surface

Sharpeners with an elevated design are prone to rocking back and forth, even with reinforced pressure on the handle. However, the Wamery’s underside spreads over a wide surface area, which allows it to stand this test despite its rather flimsy anti-slip pads.

7.0 Stability on a Wet and Dirty Surface

When placed on the slippery countertop, the sharpener managed to hold itself quite well. However, be advised that there was only so much that the slip-proof pads could do. Every once in a while, the sharpener inched back and forth, albeit that was something to be expected.