Freehand setup for my 10 year old

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Brian.Evans

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Hey all. I found a decent shape Girl Scout knife in a pawnshop yesterday, and would love to give it to my oldest daughter. She's a girl scout and my hiking/outdoors buddy.

However, I want to teach her proper maintenance of her new tool. I wondered what would be a good, inexpensive setup for a new sharpener. I have a Chosera 1000, and Norton 4000/8000 stones and strops, and pasted balsa for my razors and knives, but a brand newbie is getting nowhere near that stuff. Plus, it won't work to take into the field anyway. Locally sourced is a great thing as well.

Thanks all. I look forward to hearing your suggestions.
 
I've heard good things about the Smiths tri-hone for a cheap half decent freehand sharpening setup.. As far as field maintenance goes, I'd deffinitely recommend a Spyderco doublestuf med/fine stone. Its very compact and extremely high quality which you can expect from Spyderco. I own a doublestuf and I love it! Hope this helps.
1badcj_7
 
For under $30 from a local hardware store: Crystolon coarse/fine combination stone + a package combo wet&dry SiC sandpaper 320 through 2000grit + optional(green rouge + balsa).

Some Hwstore carries DMT stones. If so and for another $45, instead of SiC sandpaper, get 4" F/EF/EEF - note EEF is non-continuous. With proper technique an EEF edge could whittles hair.
 
Do you know if it's carbon or stainless steel? If carbon, that could simplify sharpening requirements considerably, with simpler stones/hones, and pretty basic stropping materials. I don't know if the Girl Scouts teach or encourage knife use or maintenance, but it may also be worth finding out what methods & materials they teach & use, and see if that'll be compatible with the knife you have. I'd think from a scouting perspective, a 'simpler is better' approach would be best, if at all possible.

Post a pic of the knife, if you like. :)
 
Here's the knife.

IMAGE_1000001162.JPG


It's definitely carbon steel, and at a fairly low Rc as well. I got it hair popping sharp from no bevel in a short time on the Chosera 1000.

As far as I know, the GS don't teach knife skills. I am going to make sure my girls know how to hold and use a knife.

IMAGE_1000001116.JPG


Purple, orange and white are mine. Blue is purple's friend. My son was a trooper. 18 months old and only carried him the last half mile of a 3 mile hike.

IMAGE_1000001135.JPG


Here's a better picture. Finding sticks on the prairie was difficult. Next time we are going to hike in the woods and get some hiking sticks to "customize" and keep. :D

Purple is the scout.
 
I would get a fallkniven dc3 or 4

Small, portable, and very effective in the field. If she doesn't like it or use it, you could keep it as a field/camping piece of kit.
 
Carbon steel is a big :thumbup:. That opens up a lot of very simple possibilities.

I've gotten into the habit of 'stropping' my carbon-bladed (1095) Schrade 8OT stockman to keep it in shape, which also includes using wet/dry sandpaper over my strop block. Some 400 or 600 grit is great for forming a new edge on pocketknife-sized carbon steel blades. It can easily be touched up after that, with just a handful of passes on the same or higher grit. As for stropping, chromium oxide (green) compound on leather works great, as does silicon carbide (black) or even some 1 micron diamond paste. The green compound is usually ~ 0.5 - 1 micron particle size, and the black compound I use is ~ 1 - 3 micron. With carbon steel, since it abrades easily and takes a very fine edge, I always prefer to keep the stropping compound's particle size small. For sheer simplicity and availability, I think green compound is a no-brainer. The others can be purchased and experimented with at your leisure, if you wish. Here's a pic of the type of strop block I use, with some sandpaper wrapped around it:

The block is made from some red oak stock (2-1/2" wide x 1/2" thick), picked up at the home improvement center. This could obviously be done with much simpler wood; lots of options there. I used some 2-1/2" wide carpet tape to attach the veg-tanned leather to the wood. That's quick & easy, and mess-free. Many use contact cement or other glues to attach the leather, all of which should work fine. The sandpaper is wet/dry type (3M or Norton brands are very good), and grits up to ~ 600 or so can also usually be found at the home improvement center (also where I bought the carpet tape, BTW).

I also have a 1-1/2" wide x 1/4" thick version built from the same/similar materials, which is all the more 'pocketable'.

My point in showing this is to emphasize how simply & inexpensively this knife can be maintained. Obviously, there are many, many options out there. But, if you'd like to keep things simple, as well as indoctrinate your daughter to a real skill (freehand stropping and sharpening), I think the example above is a easy way to start. I'm confident you already have the stropping technique down, based on your post. So, I think passing that skill on to your daughter might be a natural. The technique is exactly the same, with the sandpaper or without. I really wish I'd learned this method when I was her age. :)

Forgot to add, you can also use the sandpaper directly on top of bare wood. Same stropping technique, but the firmer backing reduces the chances of rounding off the edge. I usually start this way, when re-forming an edge on the sandpaper, then I'll flip the paper to the leather side as the edge becomes more refined. Use a conservatively low angle and light pressure on the leather side.
 
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It sounds like what you need, or she needs to put it that way, is a low cost but effective sharpening stone. Let her parctice on some old paring knives until she gets the feel of it. Use a dry erase marker so she can see what she's doing with the stone, and she will understand the idea faster. The silicate stone was all we had when I was in the boy scouts, but we managed to get our knives very sharp. Just for yuks, my old boy scout stone is what I've been using the last year for the nostalgia of it, and I can get my pocket knife shaving sharp. A stropping on the back of an old belt finishes it off.

Get her one that has the little leather pocket case so it's field portable, and she can sharpen anywhere.

Carl.
 
To learn sharpening there are a few basic steps that must be learned. First and most important is establishing a edge by coarse grinding. Using a coarse stone to form a uniform bevel until a equally uniform burr arises. Next will be burr removal by a light touch, using the same coarse stone use a feather light touch to reduce the burr size and remove it. Remember to frequently check grind pattern for consistency and progress.

Once the edge has been established it can now be sharpened by a medium grit stone. In the sharpening phase the goal is to refine the coarse grind pattern while maintaining angle. Once the grind pattern has transformed and matched the medium stone a medium grit burr will form. Repeat burr removal steps.

Once the edge has been sharpened it cans be polished by a fine stone. Repeat step two with the fine stone.

Strops can complicate the above process if introduced too early. They can be used in any phase as long as the burr has been removed first.
 
I learned on that very same knife (just different letters on the escutcheon plate.) It was a dirt-cheap double sided stone to create the edge and an emery cloth glued to a paddle to refine it. (They don't seem to sell such fine grit emery cloth these days...) I was eight years old, and these were what the shoemaker around the corner from my house used to keep his leather-working knives sharp. He taught me to get an edge that would easily cut through sole leather, and I doubt the stone cost more than $2 at the local hardware store!


Stitchawl
 
While camping I once sharpened a knife on some flagstone and it turned out almost as good as with my diamond/ceramic combo at home.
I guess if you know what you're doing a $2 stone will do wonders in capable hands.
 
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