Knife Sharpening Do's and Don'ts

K

Kliff Stump

Joined
Oct 24, 2002
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59
Knife sharpening do's and don'ts.

1. Use well constructed sharpening implements that are in good working order.

2. Do not lend out your sharpening tools. They will never be there when you need them, or someone will blame you for it if something goes wrong with them.

3. After sharpening, do not test edge sharpness on dogs.

4. Do not test edge sharpness on Stop sign poles.

I bring these up because of two recent incidents involving knife sharpening activities.

The first happened about a month ago and involves a mishap Marty experienced while sharpening his fillet knife. One evening, Marty came over to my house looking for a V sharpener. He’d lent his out to someone and they had not returned it.

I found an old chock stick V sharpener from my work bench and handed it to Marty. He thanked me and headed back home to finish his honing chores. About an hour later I received a frantic phone call from Prudence, Marty’s wife, who normally avoids engaging me in actual conversation, preferring instead to communicate with colorful hand gestures.

“Kliff. Get your butt over here. Marty cut himself using that sharpener you gave him.”

“Prudence, is that you? I hardly recognize your voice its been so long.” I couldn’t resist a friendly bit of chiding. Neither could she.

“Shut up, you idiot. Get over here,” she said with what I’m sure was mock ferocity. “Marty is bleeding all over my new table cloth. He needs to go to the hospital.”

“I’m on my way.”

When I arrived at Marty’s house, Prudence met me at the door with a broom in her hand. In seems whenever I’m around she’s carrying that broom. The woman must do a lot of sweeping is all I can say. “He’s in the kitchen,” Prudence said, waving the broom handle in my face before using it to point toward Marty. “By the way, you weasel, my microwave is still broke from your last little experiment (See thread on Nuclear Tough). Don’t think for one minute I’ve forgotten about it.” Prudence always uses little endearing terms like “weasel” and “idiot” when she talks to me, which goes to show how special our relationship really is.

I found Marty sitting at the kitchen table with a blood soaked towel wrapped around his left wrist. My V sharpener and a fillet knife rested on one side of the table. I noticed the left chock stick was missing from its hole in the base block and lay on the other side of the table. “Had a little accident did we?” I asked Marty. “How bad is it? He rolled his eyes toward the kitchen ceiling and I followed his gaze. The ceiling was sprayed with blood. “Oh, nicked an artery did we?”

Marty said, "No 'we' didn't, but I sure did. I don’t know what happened. I was sharpening away and the left chock stick flew out of its hole and I cut the back of my left wrist on the next down stroke.”

I retrieved the sharpener from the table top and examined it closely. “Hmmm. I didn’t think that would happen again,” I said.

Marty’s head jerked around to look me in the eye. “What do you mean ‘again’?”

“Well,” I began, “I haven’t used this sharpener since I cut myself several years ago.” I pulled back my sleeve to show Marty the scar on the back of my left wrist.

“So you gave me a defective sharpener?” Marty’s tone sounded awfully accusatory considering I was just doing him a favor by lending him my sharpener.

“Ah, well, it only happened the one time. I thought it was a freak accident,” I explained.

“How many times did you use it?” Marty asked.

“Oh, just that one time,” I replied. “Now I use a Spyderco Sharpmaker, you know the one with the little brass rods that protect your hand in case something goes wrong.” I smiled and added, “smart design.”

Marty was not smiling. “So why didn’t you lend me your Sharpmaker.”

“Oh, rule number 2. Never lend out your sharpening tools,” I told him.

It may have been the loss of blood, but Marty was pretty quiet on the ride to the hospital. After we arrived, checked in, waited, filled out some forms, waited, answered some questions, waited, ate a couple candy bars, waited, took a short nap, waited, got told by a nurse to shut up and be patient, we were finally seen by a emergency room doctor. He seemed to be a real nice guy. He even allowed me to watch the procedure as he prepared to stitch up Marty’s wound. I looked into the deep gash atop Marty’s wrist and asked the physician, “I’m not a doctor, but isn’t there suppose to be a tendon right there?”

The nice man looked at me and said, “You’re right. You are not a doctor. Now shut up and let me stitch this cut.” At that point I rubbed the scar on the back of my wrist and reevaluated my opinion of this quack’s personality and medical knowledge.

It took five stitches to close Marty’s wound. And of course I was right. A week later when he had the soft cast removed and the stitches pulled he found himself unable to move his thumb. A visit to a hand specialist and an MRI revealed that Marty had not cut one tendon, but two. Corrective surgery repaired the tendons and Marty should be out of his hard cast in about five weeks, and if I know Marty, he’ll start talking to me again a week or two after that.

The other event happened a week ago. I was sharpening my Busse Battle Mistress and went to test my efforts by shaving the hair off my forearm. Unfortunately a couple days of sharpening knives and testing them had left both my arms as smooth as Bunny’s lovely face. I began to search about for an alternative and found myself in the backyard. At first I considered shaving some hair off of Frito, my playful little Mexican Chihuahua, but a prior knife test had made him a little skittish around large knives and he wouldn’t come out of his doghouse. Just then I remembered my next door neighbor, Jerry Bigashel, kept a nice German Shepard named Mad Max in his back yard. I grabbed a handful of doggy treats and climbed over the fence that separated my yard from Jerry’s. The Shepard was there to meet me when my feet hit the ground.

At first Mad Max did not care for my sudden appearance. He bared his teeth and growled, but I gave him a doggy treat and this calmed him down. Soon I was petting him on the head and it was like we were old chums. I unsheathed my Battle Mistress and proceeded to test the blade sharpness against the hair on the dog’s back. Yep, shaving sharp, just as I had thought. I shaved a little more, but this time the blade bit a little deeper than intended and I nicked the dog’s skin. The dog yelped, growled, and then leaped at my midsection. Fortunately, his jaws closed on my jacket and not my skin, but the dang dog would not let go, so I began whirling around madly trying to dislodge the dog by centrifugal force all the while waving my Battle Mistress wildly in the air.

It was precisely at this point that Jerry Bigashel looked out his window to see what appeared to be a crazy man attacking his Mad Max with a large knife. He grabbed a knife of his own and burst out his back door heading full steam in my direction. “What are you doing to my dog, you idiot.” He yelled.

I looked up from the dog to see Jerry, who is quite a bit bigger than I am, heading toward me with a knife. I decided that things were getting out of hand fast, so I used my knife to cut away the front of my jacket. This released the dog’s hold on me and I made a dash for the gate leading to Jerry’s front yard. Clearing the gate, I looked back to see Jerry in hot pursuit, clutching his knife like a machete, slashing it left and right as he continued the chase. Behind him I noted that Mad Max had finished ripping apart the portion of jacket I’d left him and was now following Jerry in my direction.

Once I reached the front yard I altered my route and headed for the street corner. Jerry caught up with me at the intersection’s Stop sign. I quickly noted that Jerry carried one of those big, POS, knock-offs designed to look like the popular notion of a Bowie knife. I danced behind the Stop sign pole just as Jerry swung his blade in my general direction. I’m sure he didn’t mean to actually cut me because the blade hit the pole and snapped in two. There he stood, broken knife in hand while I still held the fully functional Battle Mistress.

“What the Hell were you doing to my dog, Kliff?” Jerry asked between deep breaths. I was obviously in better shape than he, although his size still gave me concern.

“I was just doing a knife test,” I explained holding up my knife for display, “when your dog attacked me for no good reason.” By this time, Mad Max had come up beside Jerry, where thankfully he held his ground and simply growled at me.

“I told you before, Stump. No more knife tests in my yard. You already cut down two of my birch saplings.” Jerry looked at my knife. “Say, what kind of knife is that, anyway?”

“It’s a Busse Battle Mistress and its nuclear tough, unlike your blade. Watch.” I took a light swing at the Stop sign pole and the Busse bit deep into the soft, galvanized steel. “See, not even any edge damage.”

Jerry looked it over. “Yeah, you’re right,” the anger fading from his voice. “Can I try it?”

“As long as you keep Max at bay,” I replied, always eager to share my knife knowledge with others. Jerry told the dog to sit and it did, whereupon I handed him the Busse. While I described the knife's characteristics, he hefted the blade and then swung at the same pole I had just hacked into. At that point two unfortunate things happened in succession. Being bigger and stronger than me, Jerry’s cut into the pole went a little bit deeper than mine, so deep in fact that he actually severed the pole and the Stop sign toppled like stalk of corn shorn by a scythe. At that moment, Officer Feathers happened to drive by in his patrol car, which as far as I’m concerned he does more often on my street than any other street in the neighborhood. At any rate, Officer Feathers saw Jerry cut down the stop sign and so he flipped on his siren and lights and drove right up on the curb next to the both of us, nearly running Jerry and Max over in the process.

Jumping from his car, Feathers pulled his sidearm and said, “I saw that. That was willful destruction of city property. Drop that knife. You are under arrest.”

Jerry sputtered and said, “but I was just testing Stump’s knife. He does **** like this all the time and he never gets arrested.” Jerry release my knife from his grip and it clanked to the ground.

“This is not about Mr. Stump, sir. This is about you.” The Officer looked at me. “Besides, Stump here knows the inside of our little jailhouse, don’t you Kliffy?”

“That’s Mr. Kliffy, er, Mr. Stump to you, Feathers. I am a tax paying citizen if you recall.”

When Officer Feathers began to handcuff Jerry, Mad Max decided he'd had enough, and jumped the Officer in a misguided attempt to protect his owner. He grabbed Feather's pant leg in his large teeth and drug him to the ground. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to retrieve my knife and made a quick retreat toward my front door, where I entered my house and made good my escape. Looking out my side window I watched the scene play itself out. Feathers threatened the dog with his gun, but the dog would not let go. He then threatened Jerry with the gun, but Jerry was handcuffed. As he struggled with the dog the pistol flew out of his hands and went off when it hit the pavement, sending a bullet richocheting around the neighborhood. This caused the dog to let go and make a run for the backyard, leaving its owner with the now thoroughly enraged Officer Feathers.
However, the results of my little edge test did not end there. Although, Officer Feathers brought Jerry to justice without shooting the dog, Jerry or himself, he did call Animal Protection, who came and carted Mad Max off to the pound.

Not to end on a sad note, I think Jerry will post bail in time to retrieve his dog from the pound before those animal haters put Max to sleep. At any rate, I plan to stay out of Jerry’s yard for quite some time.

I hope these two incidents can be a lesson for all of you knife sharpeners out there.
 
I'm tellin' ya, Kliff ... Prudence is HOT for you!

But, then again, maybe she just identifies with the Battle Mistress.
 
Damn Kliff, that is absolutely eerie. That episode that you had with your neighbor and his dog; the exact same thing happened to me. Small world.
 
Damn, Kliff i dont know what you do for living, but maybe, just maybe you should become writer. Or serial killer. Or both...
 
Do you do seminars Kliff? I for one would pay my hard earned to sit at your feet for a few hours.
 
What the hell are you talking about? I don't get it. Are you trying to tell me not to use my knife on Fido?

Besides, if my wife, Fido, doesn't like it, I can always try on the dog.
 
Kliff, I have to thank you for your "wisdom", I needed a good laugh tonight.

On a side note, was there really no edge damage even after Jerry's whack on the pole? I might have to really look into a Busse...
 
Thank you, Mr. Stump. That's the funniest, most well written thing I've read in ages (which I suppose is a pretty sad commentary on my reading habits).
 
Kliff,

Did you use the Sharpmaker to sharpen both edges of the Busse or do you sharpen per their recommendation?
 
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