The New KS-123 Knife Angle Setter from Tormek

I’ve just spent the day playing with the new KS-123 Knife Angle Setter from Tormek.

This is a big improvement over the WM-200 Angle Master when it comes to setting an angle on your knives. The Angle Master is great for single-bevel tools like plane irons, chisels and gouges. But it measures using the tool’s bevel as a reference, which can be tricky with knives. Most knives have such small bevels compared with woodworking tools.

The Knife Angle Setter measures from the edge apex, so it doesn’t matter what kind of bevel or even secondary grind your knife has. This will be able to give you an accurate sharpening angle for pretty much any kind of knife. It can set an angle anywhere from 8 to 25 degrees per side.

We’ve tried it with all of Tormek’s current knife jigs. The KJ-45, KJ-140, and the SVM-00 and it works great. Tormek always strives to make new accessories backward compatible. And this is no exception. We’ve got some older SVM-45 and SVM-140 knife jigs in the workshop and they work great with the Knife Angle Setter.

So far I’ve sharpened some kitchen knives, outdoor knives, pocket knives, a sloyd knife, even a machete, and the Knife Angle Setter makes accurate sharpening a breeze.

I really appreciate that once you’ve set it up, it’s calibrated to that knife and jig you’re using. So I can move between the diamond wheels, the original grindstone, the Japanese waterstone, even the honing wheels, and use the Knife Angle Setter to make sure I’m always sharpening at the same angle even though I’m on different wheels.

This will definitely be a regular component I use in my Tormek knife sharpening setup.

If you want to see it in action, we’ve got a video you can watch here. If you’re interested in improving your Tormek knife sharpening, you can buy the KS-123 Knife Angle Setter here.