Sharpening on a coffee mug? Yep!

[tknife]

An extremely slow work day, I thought I'd try something I'd read about. Flipped over my (empty) coffee mug, and stropped my BM940 on the exposed ceramic on the bottom. With a few passes, it put a very sharp and toothy edge on it. The knife wasn't extremely dull to begin with, but had lost it's hair popping sharpness. The mug brought it right back. Kinda cool!

 

[mete]

Yes it must have been a VERY slow day !!

 

[ZENGHOST]

That's a trick that my grandma showed me a few years back. She was a cook at a retirement home and that's one way they used to do touch ups. I used to use it every once in awhile in the kitchen when I was too lazy to break out the sharpener.

 

[bruce]

John Larsen, writer for Tactical Knives, wrote once of the practicality of sharpening your knife on the top edge of an open automobile window!

 

[airyq]

Over here it is quite common to see cooks stop cutting, grab a ceramic plate and give their knifes a few swipes across the bottom of the plate. It makes sense!

 

[Peter Atwood]

It depends on the ceramic. Some handmade pieces will have a lot of coarse grog in them which I would think not be good for your edge. Most commercial pottery is usually white stoneware and would work fairly well. If the pot is from Italy, Portugal or Mexico and is brightly painted and chips easily then it is low fire ware and probably will not sharpen your knives worth a damn. Porcelain would work the best because it is so finely grained and is highly vitrified but you don't often see it.

 

[PhilL]

You can also use a plain water glass as a butcher's steel, works great.

 

[GRMike]

I never understood why crock sticks were called that until I got a Spyderco 204 and watched the video. Sal demonstrates sharpening with the inside rim of a ceramic crock, which he says was a well known technique on the frontier.

 

[Sword and Shield]

John Larsen, writer for Tactical Knives, wrote once of the practicality of sharpening your knife on the top edge of an open automobile window!

This works fine, until you get a bit of an angle, or use a pinch too much pressure. Friend of mine cracked his driver's side window doing that. Hasn't stopped me, though.