- Joined
- Oct 3, 2000
- Messages
- 524
I don't get out too often into the wilderness, so some things I've read about using whatever is at hand for a sharpening stone rarely gets tried out.
However, last week my father-in-law and I replaced the two toilets in my house with modern low-flow versions. The toilets that were in the house were the originals from 1969. (!)
The heavy-duty cardboard boxes (double-thickness) the toilet components were packed in needed to be cut up and so I picked a knife I wanted to thrash on a bit. An old Cold Steel Pro-Thrower. I had previously sharpened it to a decent working edge and thought it would be a good test for the knife.
[Correction: It's a Cold Steel True Flight Thrower]
http://www.coldsteel.com/trueflight.html
I started along the seams of the boxes as well as chopping down the middle of each side of the box. (sorry no pics to this thread... should have taken some pics...)
The True Flight Thrower was starting to dull after ~10 cuts. Since the lid was off the old toilet tank and was just sitting next to my trash cans for future recycling, I saw the top edge of the tank and decided to 'touch up' the knife edge on it.
It actually worked and I could tell the edge was sharper and more finely honed than it was after all those cardboard cuts!
Chopped up the rest of the cardboard and touched up the edge 2 more times on the toilet tank. (As a side note, I tried touching up the edge on the more polished rim of the toilet bowl itself, but that didn't work. Too smooth of porcelain - needed the slightly rougher and unfinished porcelain of the toilet tank.
This may be a rather odd story, but it did prove to me that even an old toilet tank could stand in to sharpen a knife if absolutely necessary.
Regards,
Mike
However, last week my father-in-law and I replaced the two toilets in my house with modern low-flow versions. The toilets that were in the house were the originals from 1969. (!)
The heavy-duty cardboard boxes (double-thickness) the toilet components were packed in needed to be cut up and so I picked a knife I wanted to thrash on a bit. An old Cold Steel Pro-Thrower. I had previously sharpened it to a decent working edge and thought it would be a good test for the knife.
[Correction: It's a Cold Steel True Flight Thrower]
http://www.coldsteel.com/trueflight.html
I started along the seams of the boxes as well as chopping down the middle of each side of the box. (sorry no pics to this thread... should have taken some pics...)
The True Flight Thrower was starting to dull after ~10 cuts. Since the lid was off the old toilet tank and was just sitting next to my trash cans for future recycling, I saw the top edge of the tank and decided to 'touch up' the knife edge on it.
It actually worked and I could tell the edge was sharper and more finely honed than it was after all those cardboard cuts!
Chopped up the rest of the cardboard and touched up the edge 2 more times on the toilet tank. (As a side note, I tried touching up the edge on the more polished rim of the toilet bowl itself, but that didn't work. Too smooth of porcelain - needed the slightly rougher and unfinished porcelain of the toilet tank.
This may be a rather odd story, but it did prove to me that even an old toilet tank could stand in to sharpen a knife if absolutely necessary.
Regards,
Mike
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^^^^