I just sharpened my Fiskars splitting axe last night with an 8" mill file. Stroked from the body of the axe head to the edge across the blade from bottom to top. It took out all the dings, made a nice burr, and snapped off easily. It looks just fine now. Then I got to work on a POS Sarco Khukri that I mangled badly in some landscaping work a couple months ago. I figured I couldn't ruin it worse than it already was, so I don't really have anything to lose by filing it out. Over the course of about half an hour I got all the rolls out of the blade and got the point sharp again. It's got a working edge on it for the purposes of chopping stuff in the yard now, guess I'll use it again. I've never done freehand sharpening before and thought I'd probably ruin my stuff but it seemed to work OK.
Then I rescued a pair of dull trauma shears with the file. Since I was on a roll, I set up my Sharpmaker and did all the kitchen knives. It probably took me an hour, hour and a half to do all the blades that needed attention. Probably 20 knives altogether.
A couple weeks ago I took my Svord Von Tempsky bowie to the butcher shop to get it professionally done. What a waste. I paid $5 to have it sharpened, and it came back rough. As I was told to do here, I marked the edge with a Sharpie and repaired the damage on a Sharpmaker. Doubt I'll go back to that "professional."
I'm not very good at sharpening and have kind of a cheap kit. Still, it was no big deal to make everything serviceable in a fairly short period of time. The guys with paper wheel setups can get anything stupid sharp in no time. Just get busy with what you have and figure out how to do what you need to do with what you have.
