A knife sharpener that works for under $10

I decided to try out the AccuSharp knife sharpener based on the reviews on Amazon. To be honest: it looked to me like it should have had an "As Seen on TV" stamp on it, but for less than $10, I figured it was worth a try. Note that I did not read anything about it except for the glowing reviews.

When I received it, I was even more convinced that it should have been sold as a package with the food dehydrator (yeah, you know what I'm talking about). However, I figured that something that appeared to be so gimmicky couldn't have gotten the reviews it did for no reason, so I gave it a hard look:

• The device can sharpen serrated and plain blades, which is a neat trick, considering serrated blades normally require some specialized work.
• It's designed to work with the knife blade facing towards you so that you are using gravity to apply pressure against the blade and sharpening surface.
• There's a cover over the part of your fingers that might be exposed to the blade if the sharpener slipped.
• The sharpener blades are pre-angled and hit both sides of the blade.
• The sharpener blades are reversible (i.e., twice the life as would be expected) and replaceable.
• Most users average 5-10 years between blade replacements according to the literature -- guess it's not about giving the razor away and selling the blades.

To try it out, I used it on one of my pocket knives that was less than sharp -- within 25 strokes it had a razor edge, which is pretty incredible. Due to the fact that the knife I tried has serrations, I tried it on that portion as well and the AccuSharp put a razor edge on those as well with no special effort.

Besides looking cheap, this is a great knife sharpener to have around (and what do you care what your sharpener looks like as long as it works?).

Link -- AccuSharp via Amazon