I Have a Simple Question

Uncle Timbo

Uncle Timbo

Joined
Nov 23, 2005
Messages
5,305
And I'm NOT trying to start any flaming wars.
Hypothetically speaking, you've got a knife with a 4 inch blade. Let's call it your everything knife. Anytime you go fishing, hunting, camping, hiking, basically, whatever gets you out in Gods Wild Blue Yonder, you strap this knife on your belt.
Ok, now, my question is this, what edge would you want on that knife, with respects of ease of maintaining that edge. I'm not necessarily looking for the best edge for the job, I'm looking for the easiest to maintain in the field when you have minimal sharpening supplies.
What if you get in a full blown survival situation and all you have is a small sharpening stone?
And please, once again, I'm not trying to smack a Hornets nest and run, I want to know what you think.
 
Well, in terms of angle, I just posted a couple days ago that I have a natural free hand angle right around 15 degrees. So I'd just stick with my natural angle, whatever that maybe for each person. I don't really do micro-bevels and likely wouldn't here either.

As for grit, probably something in the 600 range. You could do well with 300 if you had to. Probably whatever grit a double-sided DMT DiaFold course/fine is because for that scenario, I'd probably get and carry one of those.

That's about as high-level, non-specific as I think I can be.

My daughter goes with her husband and his family into the very rugged Blue Mountains along the Washington/Oregon border and elk hunts for a week or so. We're talking pretty serious back country, in deep, dark timber, with the chance of sudden weather changes. So, naturlly as a dad I worry about her getting separated and lost. She knows what to do, but it is a possibility, and again, I'm her dad so...I put together a small satchel that she carries every time she goes out. In it, is little waterproof plastic container, like 4"x6"x2" and inside of that, among other things, is a lighter, matches, striker, a small folding knife (can't remember now exactly which one I put in there, I think a byrd Robin) and one of those little plastic "V" sharpeners with the ceramic rods, course on one end, fine on the other. She knows that sharpener is not to be used for anything other than emergencies. She knows it is hard on the edge, but, it is so small and provides a good enough edge that she could definitely make use of it in a survival situation.
 
When sharpening with a handheld 4” diamond stone in the field, the edge that was on the knife doesn’t really matter. It ends up getting the edge I can put on, while freehanding with a small 4” pocket stone. Which is an unintentionally convexed sort of v. And if it’s got a convex primary grind, I’ll blend that edge bevel into it.
 
Uncle Timbo said:
And I'm NOT trying to start any flaming wars.
Hypothetically speaking, you've got a knife with a 4 inch blade. Let's call it your everything knife. Anytime you go fishing, hunting, camping, hiking, basically, whatever gets you out in Gods Wild Blue Yonder, you strap this knife on your belt.
Ok, now, my question is this, what edge would you want on that knife, with respects of ease of maintaining that edge. I'm not necessarily looking for the best edge for the job, I'm looking for the easiest to maintain in the field when you have minimal sharpening supplies.
What if you get in a full blown survival situation and all you have is a small sharpening stone?
And please, once again, I'm not trying to smack a Hornets nest and run, I want to know what you think.
Click to expand...

With a small sharpening stone especially, any of these below could be a no-brainer for me & my uses:

>> Diamond in either of a Fine (600) or Coarse (325), or both in a double-sided configuration. Maybe even an XC diamond, though I haven't found as much need for it myself. Examples of these might include 'credit card' hones (from DMT, I carry C/F/EF in my wallet everyday), or DMT's Dia-Fold hones in double-sided config, or essentially identical offerings from EZE-Lap.

>> A small-to-medium SiC stone, say in the 4" - 6" size ballpark, in a double-sided C/F config. Examples would be Norton's Crystolon, or similar stones from ACE Hardware. If your favorite knife happens to be in simple carbon (1095, etc) or low-alloy stainless (420HC, 440A, etc), a similar stone in aluminum oxide (Norton India, ACE, etc) could work fine for that, and would leave the working edges a bit more refined than the SiC stone's fine side will. But they'll both work well enough.

I formed almost all of my freehand sharpening habits on pocket/portable hones & stones as described above, including learning how to completely rebevel small-to-medium-sized blades up to ~ 4" or so on these smallish stones. I know it can work, as I've proven it to myself with the objective of having something that gets all the work done & will go with me, wherever I happen to be.

If going with ONLY ONE small hone in a single grit, I'd likely carry a diamond hone in Coarse (most likely) or XC. That'll be aggressive enough to fix most any kind of edge damage or severe dulling on a medium-sized blade in ANY steel type and, at the same time, leave a good-to-excellent working edge for any of the tasks one might see in a field or survival situation. I favor the Coarse diamond to the XC, just because I feel it still leaves a cleaner working edge overall than the XC will.

For simple touch-ups, diamond hones are by far the quickest to make an edge sharp again, often done in just a handful of light-touch passes (2 - 5 per side) with minimal burring & edge cleanup, and almost no mess. Use them dry or with water, or with some mineral oil if it's available; any way will work, though oiling the diamond hone does a much better job in keeping it from loading up. This is more important when doing big grinding jobs on smaller hones, in particular.
 
DMT makes a newer product called the survival sharp. Small DMT fine stone with a small diamond rod and small rod to start fires.

I would go with something like that over everything I have as a backup way for fire is nice. So pretty much any edge I put on it freehand, in some situations sharp is sharp and having the ability to put it back to that so you can get the job done outweighs advantages of going a more complicated route.
 
Great answers everybody. Now, given the same setup/scenario, let's say you were thinking about having a custom bushcraft type knife made in let's say, 3V, what edge would you want on that same knife? Ease of sharpening in the field with minimal supplies is optimal.
 
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