DMT ABG Aligner Blade Guide/Knife Clamp

Love this sharpener used the first one for 10 years then I tightened it to tight and broke it. It's my fault for tightening to much so I highly recommend this product

I have used just about every angle guide you can imagine. I love this guide because it is lightweight, easy to assemble and use, and is very affordable. It works with its own DMT setup or works with any other benchstones or system. Plus, it won't scratch your blades. It feels like it might break, but it's more durable than it seems. I definitely recommend it.

I'm a practiced knife and tool sharpener with a large collection of various stones and can get a reasonably good result free hand. I decided to purchase the Aligner guide because of it's low cost and the ability to use existing woodworking stones. I found the guide very simple to use and was able to get a very nice repeatable edge on an array of kitchen knives from small to large. including a cleaver. The guide is easily adjustable for various sharpening angles for different type knives. You do need to workout the desired angles depending upon the thickness of your stones. Be prepared for a bit of a mess if using water stones. It does require a decent sized board to work on. I gave the product 4 stars vs 5 as it is definitely usable but not a robust design with the plastic construction however I believe it will last a long time with careful use. For $12 and the use of existing stones it's a great deal for getting repeatable edges. I do recommend stropping after stoning to get a super sharp knife.

No matter what kind of knives you have, they won't work if they aren't sharp. Sharp knives are frankly dangerous. I have had a sharpening stone for some time now and been afraid to use it because I didn't want to mess up the blade angle and ruin the knife. I discovered this sharpening jig and it finally gave me the confidence to give it a try instead of spending a ton of money getting my knives sharpened professionally. Wow! I am so glad I went ahead and got this. It is plastic, so keep in mind that you can't and shouldn't press hard, it would obviously break. The good thing is that you don't need to! It worked like a dream with my first knife and was so easy. I can see where it won't last forever, but for the price, it doesn't have to. Even if it lasts for one sharpening of my block of knives (and it has lasted for so many more than that already) it pays for itself. I highly recommend this item. I use it with this stone: http://www.amazon.com/Zwilling-J-Henckels-Sharpening/dp/B000OWD218/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424289421&sr=8-1&keywords=henckles+knife+stone

Good concept to help those new to sharpening but too bad the execution is just not there. Cheap material means it breaks quite easily. It's not just about how much force is used but also the angle at which you turn the guide. I would have gladly paid another $10 just to have it made in a stronger material.

I really wanted to like this clamp, but it has some pretty serious design flaws.First the positives:- Really like the fact that the plastic material doesn't scratch your blade like the metal clamp system included with things like the Lansky sharpening system.- Holds my blades very firmly with minimal effort. I had issues getting the my previous clamp to really tighten down on the my Benchmade 940. This sharpening aligner does a pretty fantastic job gripping all my my knives, regardless of geometry.Negatives:- After adjusting the guide rods a couple of times, the little plastic bits, that secure the angle adjustment rods broke off, rendering it impossible to set an angle with the sharpener alone. This pieces are brittle plastic nipples and break very easily.- In conjunction with the previous negative, its a little hard to get the rods to "lock in" at a specific notch.I have rigged this sharpener with some painters tape to keep its angles set. I haven't had any issue with this slipping, but I am pretty liberal with the application of tape. Although it broke within the first few days, I have to say it works incredibly well with my DMT whetstones, and for the price I wasn't really expecting this to be a bombproof piece of kit. I suppose you get what you pay for, but given that there really are not many great adjustable angle aligners, this may be one of the best options still.

Just what I needed

This thing looks pretty cheesey in the photos -- and in real life -- but surprisingly it seems to work well! I have a favorite 15 degree santoku which was losing a bit of its sharpness, so I dialed this in for the thickness of my resilient bench strop doped with green stropping compound, using a 15 angle guide I cut out of wood, and then did a half dozen alternating side stropping passes. And the sharpness picked up very nicely. Using this with my stones and bench strop, the short length of the clamp means that I can only use about half the length of my stones and bench strop, so that is a decided disadvantage. I usually stone and strop perpendicular to the blade edge, but because of the short clamp with this I may have to switch over to 45 degrees ala Bob Kramer. In any case this tool is a great value!