Improvised resharpening techniques?

Jeff Clark

Jeff Clark

Joined
Apr 27, 1999
Messages
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I was helping my wife to assemble a display at a home improvement store the other night and was using my Victorinox Adventurer SAK with 3.25" 420HC blade. It zipped through boxes and plastic banding just fine until I accidently tried to cut through some steel. On one of the boxes there was a heavy 1" box staple (made from something like 1/8" wide my 1/16" thick steel). I didn't see it and tried several times to cut through it right at a bend where the staple material was probably cold work hardened. I really wiped the edge on my knife.

I could still get the knife to cut boxes and straps when I applied enough force, but polypropylene packing tape was just driving me crazy. If I applied real force or used the tip I could cut it, but I wanted to cut it neatly while gripping the tape with one hand. With a dull edge the tape would partly cut and partly tear, often it would get stuck to itself. I usually have at least a couple razor sharp knives on me so being stuck with only one dull one was maddening. The store did not have any demo hones sitting around that I could use.

OK, here's my question. What do you use to perk up an edge like this if you don't want to buy anything or damage anything in the store?

What I did first was to steel the edge on some metal shelf framing. That only helped a touch. Then I stropped on some various plastics, wood, and fiber materials. That helped just a little more. Finally I went to the ceramic tile section and stropped and honed on the back of some scrap tiles. That got me to the point where I could get the packing tape to cut fairly easily.

Do you have any better ideas?
 
Some of the diamond sharpeners are available in a credit card card size, with a medium and fine as I recall, so always having one in one's wallet might help. The ground edge of a window should work ok, the edge of a lid on toilet or the bottom of a plate, the small ceramic sharpener(s) in the knife sheath, the sharpener in one's car, the couple of pieces of wet/dry sandpaper in one's wallet (that sounds good, I might even try it :^), the India stone in the sheath on the Victorinox Champ or the stone in the sheath on the pilot's survival knife, etc.
 
For years I used to watch my father sharpen knives on the bottom of coffee mugs or on the top edge of a car window. It sounds strange, but it works-in a pinch.

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"Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n"
John Milton
There are only two types of people; those who understand this, and those who think they do.
 
Sal Glesser's Sharpmaker 204 video mentioned the use of the inside rim of a cooking crock as an old way of not only abrading the edge, but of keeping a consistent angle.

I know the latter item isn't of interest to some folks, but seems like there may be a ceramic pot lying around in the gardening section somewhere that could get commandeered for sharpening.

Home gardeners also use porous ceramic cones to do automatic watering for plants... kind of a crude sharpening steel.

Of course, QA for crockery and ceramic tiles probably don't take knife sharpening into account and an occasional stone or anomaly may bite or chip the edge ... something I found when trying to do the same on a piece of hard tile back.

Ceramic/porcelain is also found in electrical items ... maybe a good size insulator or ceramic base for a lamp or fixture could be used?

I liked the lid of the toilet tank idea, tho that'd draw some stares for sure (not to mention that the wife'd never let me cut food with the knife again).

Ol' Desert Rat (remember him?) touted sharpening on a brick and stropping on the sole of your shoe, but I guess this will depend on how hard your blade steel is.
 
Top edge of a car window works great.

Remember: with a relatively "soft" steel and a relatively thin blade such as on a SAK, you don't need to grind the edge but rather draw the knife backwards on the window edge (like stropping) so that you "push" the edge into alignment again.
Same technique works with the plain edge/flat ground Spyderco Calypso jr in AUS-8 steel.
 
I guess that I should clarify that I had done a lot more than rolled the edge on that knife. The square corners on the staple had actually scraped metal off of the edge. My first attempts at improvised steeling and stropping pulled up any bent over edge material and I was still looking at a thin flat surface when I looked at the blade edge-on. What I needed at that point was a significant improvised abrasive.

On other occasions I have used rusty steel to some good effect. I particularly like stropping on rusty steel cable (aka wire rope). This combines steeling with abrading. I have generally found red brick to be too soft to be useful and cinder block material is awfully coarse. Toilet tank sounds very good to me.
 
Sandpaper! I keep a dollar bill sized sheet of fine sandpaper in my wallet for such occassions. It aint the best but it does work.

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Can it core a apple?
 
I wouldn't call this an "improvised" sharpener, but I generally have one of those little pen-sized Eze-Lap diamond sharpeners on my person. It fits nicely next to my Victorinox SwissTool in the pouch designed for a Benchmade AFO. That pouch, incidentally, gives you the option of horizontal or vertical carry.

David Rock

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AKTI Member # A000846
Stop when you get to bone.
 
Ol' Desert Rat (remember him?) touted sharpening on a brick and stropping on the sole of your shoe, but I guess this will depend on how hard your blade steel is.
Click to expand...
Works great on 1095 bladed pocket knives. Don't know what hardness that would be, but it held a descent edge for a good while. My father used to do this. He always work leather soled shoes (an important point). Actually, he would just use the shoe, not anything else. Consider this: In walking around during the day, the leather sole picks up a lot of grit, which stays imbedded.


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It's just a ****ing staple!
Outlaw_Dogboy, Pax River NAS, Republik of Marilundt

 
One of my problems is that I am leather deprived. I wear suspenders (not a belt) and Vibram or rubber-soled shoes. I've tried a lot of other material for stropping and none are nearly as good as leather.
 
Hey Jeff.

If you've got leather suspenders then there's a built-in stropping rig
smile.gif
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