Brand new WE owner. Having trouble getting an edge on my fillet knives. They flex too much to be able to put any pressure on the stones. Sharpened a few folders and a hunting knife and can shave with them but the fillets have me going. Used the little steady brace to no avail. Dang knives flex on both ends. Any help would be appreciated!

Is the tip in the slot on the brace. Also make sure it is centered correctly. The brace should hold the tip and a free hand can hold the handle. You can just sharpen on side at a time freeing up ur other hand.

I am not a expert on this, have had to deal with one knife with a lot of flex. I just forgot about trying to center the knife. I set it up to sharpen in three stages where I moved the knife, worked the tip, then move to the center and then close to the handle. I only worked one side at a time so I could use my other hand to brace the knife and stop the flex. Will be interesting to see what other offer as a solution. Moving the knife in the vice, may not be the best, but it got my sisters fillet knife very sharp.

Hi John - welcome to the forum. Glad you are getting going with the forum and the sharpener right away!

I use the same technique James describes. I do try to work both sides staying close to the vise with the handles if possible but it isn't always. When setting the bevels I support it with my other hand to stop the flex, after that I work as lightly as I possibly can (which is a good rule to follow in general once you are just honing the edge and not creating it) and use my hand to stabilize the blade when the blade flexes "a ways" off center (very precise measurement here ). James makes an important point in how to do the blade - Do start out at the tip and work backwards - since the blade is much narrower out at the tip you can figure out what angle to use so that you don't have to grind away part of the vise to hit the edge (which might happen if you set the angle at the wider part of the blade near the handle). Also, when you move the knife you may have to adjust the angle settings on the base rod to match what you have already done (by overlapping your work) since you can't use the depth key to keep the knife at the same depth. Hope that last sentence makes sense....

Welcome John. I think you should choose more accurate title I reprofiled and sharpened my 270 mm sujihiki yesterday. It is guite flexible knife also. I clamped it twice when i create a burr with coarse stones - once in the rear part and once in the front part. I clamped it quite up. Then I clamped it near the middle and little bit lower. This lowering of the position slightly increased sharpening angle, it justified hitting the edge. I followed with finer grits and use as low pressure as I can to prevent flexing. Using low pressure is good for resulting sharpness anyway. I used diamond stones up to 1000, then super and micro ceramics and 1/0.5 um diamond pasta on balsa and attained hair whitling edge on almost all length of the blade. Fillet knives are maybe more flexible, so you I don't know if the same progress are reasonable. But I think that it can you teach to use very low pressure, and low pressure is the key to great edges

I know this is not exactly a filet knife, but it may help.

I sharpened a cheap, very thin, 4.5" kitchen paring knife last night. The tip was flexing.

1.) I pushed the opposite side of the tip while sharpening the other side to keep it from flexing, mostly with the 100# grit stone to re-profile
2.) I did tip to heel strokes, it seemed to flex less and the stone made even contact with the edge vs. going heel to tip.

I know this is not a filet knife, but this worked for me.

I very often brace the tip with my "off hand" while trying to raise the burr. I find I have a lot of knives which are pretty flexible and need this. Long blades often need bracing as well. I try not to reposition the blade in the vise unless really necessary as it's hard to match the two sharpened sections.

Rgds,