My Sharpening and knife related videos

[grepper]

It took me a few tries to learn the motion.  It helps to play around with moving the blade with the belt grinder turned off.  Then try it on some practice blades.

If you check the sides of the Kallyrest tiltable rest part (the part that tilts that the knife rests against), there are two threaded holes on each side of the rest.  The holes are there so that, “sides” can be added to the rest.  These sides extend beyond the back of the belt on each side of the rest.
 
Sides on the rest completely eliminate the tendency of blades pulling into the belt.    While the tendency of the belt pulling the blade downward is not much of an issue on larger blades, sides can be especially helpful with very small and thin blades like pen knife blades.  While sides totally eliminate the tendency of blades wanting to pull into the belt, it’s still a good idea to use the slight upward pressure on a finger on the spine of the blade simply because that technique provides very precise blade to belt pressure control and increased blade stability while dragging it across the rest.
 
The rest on the Kallyrest is 7/8” wide, 1/8” smaller than the belt width.  It was designed that way to insure that the edge could be sharpened right up to the handle of the knife.  Of course that is not an issue on many knives but it can be on some. 
 
With sides in place on the Kallyrest, the edge can be sharpened up to about 1/8” from the handle.  Sharpening that last 1/8” of the edge right next to the handle can be done by lifting the blade away from the rest and doing that last bit hand held.  It’s not a big deal to do that, but I thought it should be mentioned.
 
With just a little practice sides are generally not needed.  I for instance don’t use them.  That said, in testing, sides work extremely well and make sharpening on the Kallyrest pretty much a no-brainer.  Their only downside is that last 1/8” of the edge issue on some knives.
 
Sides for the Kallyrest will be available soon.  Here is an image of the Kallyrest with rest sides so you can get an idea of how they work: