Hi everyone,
I've been doing a great deal of sharpening lately, practicing on some of my old wall hangers and most recently I sharpened a new Tinker Bastard sword that I just acquired. I did a relatively good job on the Tinker, getting a paper cutting edge. However, the more I inspect it I find the edge is not consistent along the entire blade, and I find I have real difficulty maintaing a consistent angle while sharpening. I've read mostly all bad things about the accusharp (despite it being used in the sharpening instructional found on swords of valor), so I've stayed away from that. However, I came accross the Spyderco Tri-angle sharpener on Amazon and it appears to make a great deal of sense. It seems to have gotten great reviews for knives, but I couldn't find anyone mention it for swords. The rods are angled already so you simple have to run the blade straight down the rod. Anyone use a system like this, or have a strong opinion one way or the other? Would it be a good tool to ensure the edges are angled the same on both sides of the blade?

It's a good tool for knives, but it is not appropriate for sword edges. Not only is it not of a size to adequately handle the blade length (multiple passes with restarts would be required), it would put on an inappropriate edge that is not really suitable for most types of swords. Swords should not really have the same edge geometry as a pocket knife.

Something like this is better:
http://myArmoury.com/books/item.B00004WFTW.html
http://myArmoury.com/books/item.B001EIE01W.html

I actually primarily used a smith's diamond sharpener (one side 350 and the other side 700) to sharpen my sword. I'll have to look into the two you mention below. When you sharpen with one of these, is the correct style to run the sharpener down the blade lengthwise (such as from crossguard to tip of blade), or use the sharpener more like a file (going across the blade)?

Thanks for your input, it is greatly appreciated!

if your using a type of wet stone (which it sounds like you are) you'd what to keep the stone in contact with as much of the blade as you can when honing it down. that would ensure a level bur to create on both corresponding sides of the bevel, but you also want to attempt to wear down the stone evenly as well. getting that edge to come out completely center is just something that will take practice.

keep in mind this is a sword your sharpening, in no way does it need to be knife edge sharp to do damage. i once saw an arma video (i believe it was them because of their red and black attire but it's really old) where a participant used a blunted longswrod to cut through 3 bamboo rods about 2 inchs thick that didn't have enough of an edge to cut himself on.

a sword gets most of it's cutting power from blade geometry. primarily profile taper, and a little more from dis-taper in the blade. to illustrate that idea, think of what's called a dead cut, it's where you'd take the blade of a knife or sword and try to push it through something. doesn't really do much good. then think about taking that same blade and dragging the object your cutting along the edge bevel, *slice* i used to laugh when i watched the late night knife collecting shows where they took a piece of paper and cut it up by using that idea. that's almost like a magicians trick, done right you can shred paper with a pretty dull blade (though it may have a little bit of a raggy edge)

a sword works upon that same principle, its not meant to hit something and dig in by a dead cut. think more about dragging the sword through the object rather than just hitting it, and you'll see that you don't need a razor edge on your sword to get a good cut. think more like a heavily used stake knife kinda edge.