story from the trenches: sharpened my nephew's SAK today

zyhano · May 21, 2011

So I gave him one for his 10th birthday a month ago and he used the cr4p out of it. Good boy

Making pointy sticks, making small garden fires, using the saw, the whole works.

So today he is at my place with the knife asking me to sharpen it and it is dull as a knife can be, he really used it pretty good, the light was reflecting from the edge from the flat spots on there

So I gave him a basic sharpening lesson with the spyderco doublestuff and a strop.
A small simple tool to show him how it works.

I was pretty amazed at how easy the SAK was to sharpen.

Most of the times I'm sharpening high end steels which
a) take me a much longer time
b) have much less metal removal while sharpening

the white side (F) of the ceramic stone was pretty black pretty fast, testament to the metal removal. Even with the fine side, I was able to make rapid progress on the damaged edge. On other steels and especially on fixed blades (longer/bigger knives), I would have begun with the medium grit (brown).

Well, I was finished pretty soon and was pretty rough on it, it's not like you're handling a sebenza which you want to keep at least a littlebit pretty. Put it on the strop for a couple of passes with chromium oxide (the green stuff) and it was shaving some bald spots on my arm.

Also, I sensed a new level of appreciation for my 'strange knife thing I have going' from my brother.
He even played with my ESEE junglas and buck hoodlum for a bit ('bear killers'

lol)

Mission accomplished

a1boy · May 22, 2011

nice!

it's good to convert people and use the crap outta knives :thumbup:

ChapmanPreferred · May 22, 2011

Well done. I've been aiding my nephews from their birth.

Phydeaux · May 23, 2011

Next is teaching you nephew how to sharpen knives.

Ric

zyhano · May 23, 2011

a1boy said:
nice!

it's good to convert people and use the crap outta knives :thumbup:

hehe, for sure :thumbup:

ChapmanPreferred said:
Well done. I've been aiding my nephews from their birth.

He's my family, so I would never trust him with a knife while he was that young lol, he must have some of those 'do dumb things' genes also

Phydeaux said:
Next is teaching you nephew how to sharpen knives.

Ric

absolutely. It was a quick visit though, so I thought I'd let him know it's possible, next time, he can do it himself :thumbup:

ChapmanPreferred · May 23, 2011

For their birth gift, I gave both boys a Victorinox Mini Champs with their name engraved in the scale. Since they are now 8 and 12 they get to use there knives more often now. They are home schooled, so they have considerably less knife restriction than I did at their ages going to public school. We are trying to schedule a shapening lesson for both boys and my brother.

Phydeaux · May 24, 2011

I'm teaching my son how to free hand sharpen on some cheap kitchen knives. Once he gets the hang of it, I'll move him on to some of our regular kitchen knives that have better and harder steel.

Ric

Chris "Anagarika" · May 24, 2011

Not exactly same situation, but today I just resharpened my old SAK (Spartan Lite) and boy, it does take an edge, so easily shave effortlessly (shave my face, not just arm hair

)

zyhano · May 24, 2011

ChapmanPreferred said:
For their birth gift, I gave both boys a Victorinox Mini Champs with their name engraved in the scale. Since they are now 8 and 12 they get to use there knives more often now. They are home schooled, so they have considerably less knife restriction than I did at their ages going to public school. We are trying to schedule a shapening lesson for both boys and my brother.

Nice, I can't wait till my kids are old enough to teach them, it feels good to teach them skills. I'll have to wait some years though

Phydeaux said:
I'm teaching my son how to free hand sharpen on some cheap kitchen knives. Once he gets the hang of it, I'll move him on to some of our regular kitchen knives that have better and harder steel.

Ric

Cool, the SAK has soft steel, so that's also why there's so much steel coming off during sharpening, and the reason why you can achieve more with a finer stone than on hard steels. Good luck with the lessons :thumbup:

Chris "Anagarika";9635143 said:
Not exactly same situation, but today I just resharpened my old SAK (Spartan Lite) and boy, it does take an edge, so easily shave effortlessly (shave my face, not just arm hair )

Yes, check out these pictures!