Cardboard...

stabman said:
If the rock was flat, I'd go for it. It can be hard finding a nice, truly flat rock laying around though.
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True. I have some flat agate (I believe) from a lapidary. He was tossing boxes of it. Probably a better word than flat. Planed? I use that stuff when I feel kinda "Viking."

And hey, if I could sharpen a popsickle stick on the curb, push comes to shove I could probably get a cutting edge on some steel, too. :) I think us knife geeks over think it. Just like strops. Cardboard, newspaper, belts, pants legs, toothpaste, etc etc etc.
 
marcinek said:
True. I have some flat agate (I believe) from a lapidary. He was tossing boxes of it. Probably a better word than flat. Planed? I use that stuff when I feel kinda "Viking."

And hey, if I could sharpen a popsickle stick on the curb, push comes to shove I could probably get a cutting edge on some steel, too. :) I think us knife geeks over think it. Just like strops. Cardboard, newspaper, belts, pants legs, toothpaste, etc etc etc.
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You can strop with toothpaste? :o My God, the knowledge...
 
I strop on cardboard all the time. It makes a great strop to freshen an edge. I usually strop my blade on the piece I just cut through.

It also takes off wire edges QUICK. If you find yourself with a wire edge you just can't get off with a leather strop (keeps flopping side to side, but not coming off) just use a piece of cardboard and it will take it off in most cases.
 
RedLynx said:
Good point, old friend. ;)

So question for you or anyone, I mean, would you feel comfortable using a regular rock to sharpen one of your knives? This might be a stupid question (my geological experience was not super in depth) but there would be no reason to worry about damage to the blade in some way?
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Depends on the rock, if she is rough around the edges it's a no. If shes smooth with a nice curvy figure and flat where I need her to be than she might be able to do the job.
 
RedLynx said:
You can strop with toothpaste? :o My God, the knowledge...
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Not really. Toothpaste is made with abrasives softer than steel. If it was hard enough to abrade steel, it would destroy your teeth. I don't want to rub rocks on my teeth...
Bob6794 said:
Depends on the rock, if she is rough around the edges it's a no. If shes smooth with a nice curvy figure and flat where I need her to be than she might be able to do the job.
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Remember, rub two rocks together and they will flatten each other. If you find a naturally flat stone that is cool, but natural sharpening stones are cut and flattened, and sharpening stones have been flattened manually for thousands of years.
 
I've had to cut up a lot of boxes after we moved, plus opening boxes that were taped up and so forth. I was using my beater Manix 2 and I noticed that after cutting open a bunch of boxes there would be a lot of tape residue on the blade, but after slicing up a box or two the blade would be very clean.
 
Have done and still do a lot of work off of paper. With a firm enough backing (wrap it around a stone) it can polish and burnish steel, so it makes a great finish polishing agent - have to be careful using this method on the edge itself but also works well and was one of the inspirations for my Washboard block.

It also holds many compounds and polishes very well. Baking parchment is about as thin and tough a material you can imagine as a surface for applying compounds.

Have had OK luck using river and lake stones for sharpening - works great on softer carbon steels and cheap stainless, not so good on higher RC steels.
 
HeavyHanded said:
Have had OK luck using river and lake stones for sharpening - works great on softer carbon steels and cheap stainless, not so good on higher RC steels.
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While reading this thread, I was wondering this very thing! I was thinking it would work just fine on the softer steels, but some of the new super steels might take a real long time! I suppose though, with patience you could achieve what you need. I'd rather have a 'proper' sharpening tool for my real work, but in a pinch, go with what you have on hand.

I'm willing to go a few passes on cardboard to clean all the crud off my blade, I can always finish her off and clean up my edge later!
 
I once found a piece of red southwestern sand/siltstone, picked up literally off the ground, which I later used wet, like a waterstone, to completely re-bevel and put a great toothy edge on one of my Case stainless knives (420HC). Extremely uniform & fine grit (for a 'rock', that is), which shed particles just like waterstones do; feedback was wonderful and sort of 'muddy-slick', using scrubbing strokes. A few edge-trailing strokes to finish, after which I used some of the shed slurry on a piece of leather to strop the burrs away. That was perhaps one of the best educational experiences I've had in sharpening. I'm still hoping to find a larger piece (or a whole 'quarry') of that stuff; only downside to using it is, it abrades & sheds away very fast, as it's used.


David
 
One thing to note about most natural rocks is that they won't really work on modern steels. Even something like D2 is pretty hard to do with a natural stone. Natural stones work great on carbon steels (NOT ALLOY, those are on a steel by steel basis) and simpler stainless steels, like 154cm and lower. Anything with a high carbide count will be REALLY hard to use a natural stone on (likely why my AlOx belt barely marks S110V). Remember that a steel like 1055 or 420HC is better than what mankind had access to for thousands of years (excluding mythical Damascus steel). Natural stones worked perfectly on their (by modern standards) garbage steels, but even a steel like S30V would be unbearable to use a natural stone on.
 
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