- Joined
- Nov 29, 2005
- Messages
- 887
I've got a few thoughts on this.
1. Bottom line, I recommend that you at least make it your goal to learn freehand sharpening as soon as you can do it--because your presence on this forum suggests that you're at least giving pretty serious thought to how to do things with knives under survival or wilderness conditions, and not counting on having carried your Lansky set with you is a good thing. You DO want to get to the point where you can keep your tools sharp with just a little rectangular stone in the pouch of your sheath, or, better, some flat stone you find out in the field, don't you? So, in what follows, remember that that's your overall goal.
2. Most people who start trying to sharpen knives have trouble the first several times. This was definitely the case for me, though I finally got to be the go-to guy for sharpening for my entire extended family--people now save their dull knives for me for months, and I return them hair-shaving sharp. If I can learn it, I figure so can anybody. But I'll admit, freely, that it can take a while. In fact, after I'd learned to do the sharpening-stone thing very well, it took me a few hours of work to re-learn how to do it for a convex edge using sandpaper over a mouse pad. I was very frustrated, but when it finally "clicked", I was happy to have done it.
3. A Lansky or Gatco-type system can be fun, but I've got two issues with them. First, they're bulky, and a pain to carry around. Second, they do count on putting a very consistent V-shaped edge on a (rather thin-bladed) knife. If you freehand, you may end up actually producing a slightly-convex edge, just because of the natural variation in the angle that even a solidly-hand-held blade will get with a hand sharpening. Oh, that brings up a third issue: a lot of the thicker blades (e.g., hatchet, khukuri) have part or all of their blades configured so that a Gatco-type apparatus won't work on them at all, as they won't reach the edge.
If I were in your position (or, to put it another way, when I get around to teaching my kids how to sharpen knives, I'll tell them that) I'd practice with not-too-dull knives, using a regular, medium stone. I'd start with some non-stainless-steel knife that I don't care too much about, and just get to where I'm comfortable with it. If you start with an extremely dull knife, it'll take a very long time to get even close to a decent edge, and therefore the first half-hour or so you're working at it might not give you the kind of success-or-unsuccess feedback that will tell you when you're on the right track. Stainless is hard to sharpen, often, too, so I would try to start out with some cheap carbon-steel kitchen knife you have in a drawer, or can borrow from someone in your family.
One thing I find very helpful, by the way, are the diamond-dust plastic honing blocks you can get from Harbor Freight Tools. Those will take steel off even the hardest knife edge, so hardness isn't an issue. I might wait on those until after you've sort of got the hang of the motions by using actual stones, however.
1. Bottom line, I recommend that you at least make it your goal to learn freehand sharpening as soon as you can do it--because your presence on this forum suggests that you're at least giving pretty serious thought to how to do things with knives under survival or wilderness conditions, and not counting on having carried your Lansky set with you is a good thing. You DO want to get to the point where you can keep your tools sharp with just a little rectangular stone in the pouch of your sheath, or, better, some flat stone you find out in the field, don't you? So, in what follows, remember that that's your overall goal.
2. Most people who start trying to sharpen knives have trouble the first several times. This was definitely the case for me, though I finally got to be the go-to guy for sharpening for my entire extended family--people now save their dull knives for me for months, and I return them hair-shaving sharp. If I can learn it, I figure so can anybody. But I'll admit, freely, that it can take a while. In fact, after I'd learned to do the sharpening-stone thing very well, it took me a few hours of work to re-learn how to do it for a convex edge using sandpaper over a mouse pad. I was very frustrated, but when it finally "clicked", I was happy to have done it.
3. A Lansky or Gatco-type system can be fun, but I've got two issues with them. First, they're bulky, and a pain to carry around. Second, they do count on putting a very consistent V-shaped edge on a (rather thin-bladed) knife. If you freehand, you may end up actually producing a slightly-convex edge, just because of the natural variation in the angle that even a solidly-hand-held blade will get with a hand sharpening. Oh, that brings up a third issue: a lot of the thicker blades (e.g., hatchet, khukuri) have part or all of their blades configured so that a Gatco-type apparatus won't work on them at all, as they won't reach the edge.
If I were in your position (or, to put it another way, when I get around to teaching my kids how to sharpen knives, I'll tell them that) I'd practice with not-too-dull knives, using a regular, medium stone. I'd start with some non-stainless-steel knife that I don't care too much about, and just get to where I'm comfortable with it. If you start with an extremely dull knife, it'll take a very long time to get even close to a decent edge, and therefore the first half-hour or so you're working at it might not give you the kind of success-or-unsuccess feedback that will tell you when you're on the right track. Stainless is hard to sharpen, often, too, so I would try to start out with some cheap carbon-steel kitchen knife you have in a drawer, or can borrow from someone in your family.
One thing I find very helpful, by the way, are the diamond-dust plastic honing blocks you can get from Harbor Freight Tools. Those will take steel off even the hardest knife edge, so hardness isn't an issue. I might wait on those until after you've sort of got the hang of the motions by using actual stones, however.
I've been trying to find something like this as a reference...my sons are becoming interested in sharpening and I think this would be a good teaching tool.
