Here I have a 1917 US Gunners knife that my collector boss sold me a few months ago. The knifes primary intended use was to chop brush in front of a machine gunners position, but during the course of battle, gunners found that it was excellent at quite literally lopping the limbs off your enemies. However, this ones edge had blunted beyond even chipping wood.
It's got clear and identifiable stamps, and with the added confirmation from my boss, I got the real deal here.
A couple notable specs is that the blade is 10 inches of quarter inch steel, pictured here at the spine next to my BK2
And of course, a full tang handle with some sort of spike on the end.
I'm typically known at my unit for putting an excellent edge on just about every knife, and many guys pay me to sharpen their tools, so I get to handle all sorts of knives and edges. In my 2 years of doing this, I've never had to sharpen a knife with an edge this steep. While it's only steep on the one side, I estimate that it's included angle is somewhere between 60-70 degrees at its belly- which is more than most hatchets and some axes that I've sharpened. I played with idea of using a file to sharpen it, like I do with axes, but I decided there is no way I can hold the knife stiff enough with one hand on the knife and a file on the other to give it a pretty looking edge. So I broke out my 800 grit diamond stone and spent nearly an hour on it. It was a lot of experimenting, and I ended up with a lot of marks that weren't even close to the edge, but I was ok with giving everything about a centimetre from the edge a bit of a polishing as it looked like someone before me had also tried sharpening it, but quickly gave up due to its steepness. The following photo shows roughly how steep I had to put the knife on the stone before the stone met the edge at a good angle.
And here is how steep the edge itself looks after sharpening.
After about an hour, I finally made it cut paper. It's obviously a little bit rough, but it gets through paper and that makes me happy at that angle! I can do this with axes as well, but I typically choose to put a much rounder edge on those to prolong effective use since most of my customers are pretty abusive with their tools.
Satisfied with that, I used one of my brown Spyderco Ceramic stones to clean up the whole edge but keep that rough old used look.
Obviously those cuts could have been made with any knife, and the Gunners knife stuck in there for the photo, so here's a video of it in action!
[video=youtube;FKttK5H-Ddg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKttK5H-Ddg[/video]
I'd say it's ready to lop some heads off! And with that angle, I'd reckon it could probably get through quite a few before needing another sharpening.
Thanks for reading! Please share any experiences you may have with steep edges on knives like this.
It's got clear and identifiable stamps, and with the added confirmation from my boss, I got the real deal here.
A couple notable specs is that the blade is 10 inches of quarter inch steel, pictured here at the spine next to my BK2
And of course, a full tang handle with some sort of spike on the end.
I'm typically known at my unit for putting an excellent edge on just about every knife, and many guys pay me to sharpen their tools, so I get to handle all sorts of knives and edges. In my 2 years of doing this, I've never had to sharpen a knife with an edge this steep. While it's only steep on the one side, I estimate that it's included angle is somewhere between 60-70 degrees at its belly- which is more than most hatchets and some axes that I've sharpened. I played with idea of using a file to sharpen it, like I do with axes, but I decided there is no way I can hold the knife stiff enough with one hand on the knife and a file on the other to give it a pretty looking edge. So I broke out my 800 grit diamond stone and spent nearly an hour on it. It was a lot of experimenting, and I ended up with a lot of marks that weren't even close to the edge, but I was ok with giving everything about a centimetre from the edge a bit of a polishing as it looked like someone before me had also tried sharpening it, but quickly gave up due to its steepness. The following photo shows roughly how steep I had to put the knife on the stone before the stone met the edge at a good angle.
And here is how steep the edge itself looks after sharpening.
After about an hour, I finally made it cut paper. It's obviously a little bit rough, but it gets through paper and that makes me happy at that angle! I can do this with axes as well, but I typically choose to put a much rounder edge on those to prolong effective use since most of my customers are pretty abusive with their tools.
Satisfied with that, I used one of my brown Spyderco Ceramic stones to clean up the whole edge but keep that rough old used look.
Obviously those cuts could have been made with any knife, and the Gunners knife stuck in there for the photo, so here's a video of it in action!
[video=youtube;FKttK5H-Ddg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKttK5H-Ddg[/video]
I'd say it's ready to lop some heads off! And with that angle, I'd reckon it could probably get through quite a few before needing another sharpening.
Thanks for reading! Please share any experiences you may have with steep edges on knives like this.
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