Sharpening knives, axes, or saws?

M

minipyro23

Joined
Oct 12, 2006
Messages
131
Hey, for Christmas and my birthday and going to focus on getting out door king of stuff. For cutery I wanted to get a HI kurkri, maybe some gransfor bruks axes/hatchets, and several smaller scandinavian type knives. Probably a small gerber exchange a blade saw too. Then I was thinking... How am I going to keep all this stuff sharp? The knives I have now are mainly small and cheap (under 20 dollars). I picked up a ceramic and metal part sharpening system at a hardware store for around 4 dollars. It has preset angles so I don't have to worry about messing thing up with freehand. It works nice and puts a pretty good edge on my knives. I'm not sure if it is too good for them since it might be removing metal and I cannot choose the angle. I mainly use the ceramic side but none of my cheapie knives are to hard to sharpen. (I mainly was using it for soft steel not sure on the hardness). For christmas or my birthday I was looking at some diamond bench hones that were about 11" by 2.5-3" or something like that. They had fine and coarse and together they were around 80 bucks. I read on some sites these don't last long but I'm not sure what are your guys experiences? Then I was looking at the sharpmaker by spyderco since it is a guided system but it looks like it would be hard to use for larger knives and bent ones like kurkri's. I'm also not sure how the sharpmaker works. I'm not interested in in systems like the edge pro since they are a lot and you couldn't really take them with you like you could with the sharpmaker, but I'd probably just get a smaller hone for that. Anyways I thought I could get the large diamond hones by smith or the Spyderco sharpmaker or both. Then I figured I could go to the hardware store and buy these really cheap knives they have, I mean they are really like 2 bucks. Then I could try it with my systems but I'm not sure which I should get or how to use thems. I'm also pretty clueless as how to sharpen a saw or a serrated blade. Thanks
 
You can buy a large coarse/fine stone in the hardware store for about $2 which will sharpen the khukuris, axes and scandinavian knives. To refine the edge and for field sharpening just carry a small folding DMT in fine/x-fine. A file will sharpen the saws unless they have been impulse hardened in which case diamond pads are usually used in the rare case they are sharpened.

-Cliff
 
Cliff, for someone who has never free handed before how hard do you think it would be for me and would the results come out good? Well I guess I have nothing to loose since they are only like 2 bucks. I'll try to head out to the hardware store for some of the stones you mentioned and maybe I'll buy some cheap knives to practice with. And I'll get the DMT when I get the my knives. Thanks
 
Freehanding is a skill that takes time to acquire but keep at it and you will see remarkable results with very low start-up costs and gear that you can pick up virtually anywhere. It's a bit like learning a musical instrument -- practise pays off.

And use a marker -- it is a remarkable aid to helping you keep your angles constant.

Good luck. It's good fun.
 
you mark the beval edge of the knife, as you running it over the stone stop to check where the marker has been removed, if all has not been removed change your angle to suit. then reapply and keepgoing untill sharp
 
minipyro23 said:
... for someone who has never free handed before how hard do you think it would be for me and would the results come out good?
Click to expand...

It is fairly easy once you understand the goal. The main problem is trying to sharpening knives made from really unsuitable steels or really sub-optimal grinds. All of the knives you listed have high grindability and the steels are well suited to them so sharpening them is not very demanding as long as all you want is to just get them to cleanly slice a piece of paper. Joe has written a very nice sharpening FAQ which is in the ToolShed forum which you might want to check out.

-Cliff
 
theres lots of threads in the HI forum about sharpening the kukris...

most of the guys that have been around longer recomend using a strip of mouse pad with sand paper over it to sharpen the kukris... keeps the convex edge...

i'd never done a convex edge before my HI kuhk and it seems to have held better and longer then any other edge I've put on a knife before...

going to start trying it on my other blades and see what happens.
 
Alright thanks for all the info guys I'm going to the toolshed forum to check out that sharpening post.
 
Hi Minipro,

Sorry I've not replied -- been away from the computer.

But Forrie has basically told you about it already in his post -- the main thing is that the marker shows up which part of the blade you have and haven't been grinding when you are freehanding. Once you know which part of the edge you are actually striking when you grind, you will be able to adjust the angle at which you hold your blade to make sure that you are hitting the right parts of the blade.

And I really recommend you checking out Joe's Sharpening FAQ as Cliff suggested.

Good luck
 
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