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What to use to sharpen these beautiful knives?

B

brward

Joined
Apr 9, 2012
Messages
69
Hey guys,

I am new to this site as well as knives in general, more of a gun guy. I bought one of those smith's pocketpal sharpeners, but i dont like it to much. What are suggestions to sharpen them and what is a reasonable expectation on how sharp they will get? How would you test it?
 
Also paper wheels or wicked edge system. Depends on what you need, and what your budget is. An old mousepad and various grits of sandpaper might do you fine if you're not too picky and want to convex the edge.
 
The Work Sharp Knife and Tool Sharpener is a popular choice and pretty user friendly from what I've seen.

It's been in my cart for a couple months now haha.
 
Mostly a strop with black then green compound. Once the angle is set, it doesn't take much to maintain the edge.
 
If you are new to sharpening, I suggest starting out with a simple bench stone or two. Once you get good with that, all the other methods will follow suit.
 
I just ordered a couple of DMT DIA-Sharp stones. I have the CC set and I liked them so I rewarded myself with some bigger ones.

I want to get better at sharpening freehand ( I recently moved up from terrible to just bad ) so I chose not to get a Work Sharp or Sharpmaker/Lansky system.

EDIT : and crap, thank you thread for reminding me that I forgot to order strop compound this morning when I was on the river stores site.....:mad: hahah
 
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I use a spyderco sharpmaker and it works great. It takes more effort with a knife that you have never used with the sharpmaker, but once the grind is straitened out, it will sharpen easily and quickly with minimal effort.

-orangish ducktape
 
RogueBowie said:
The Work Sharp Knife and Tool Sharpener is a popular choice and pretty user friendly from what I've seen.

It's been in my cart for a couple months now haha.
Click to expand...

This. Then go to their website direct an order a 6-pack of the medium belts.
 
The guided systems are great if you can reasonably expect to have access the guided system enough to maintain your blades.
If you want to be more flexible, get at least a 6" stone and practice. It will teach you a lot about knives as a tool. (and be patient when you start). I like the diamond surface ones because they stay flat.
 
Lookup Smiths DCS4. My all time favorite packable sharpener and toucher upper. At Wally World for $15.
 
I DO have proper sharpening stuff like waterstones and a nice professionally made strop but I still prefer using some old sandpaper and some polishing paste.

Basically I've got:
-80, 120, 180, 240 and 600/1000 (they're all worn out anyway so I'm not really sure what kinda abrasive power they've got left)
-Homemade strop with some polishing paste (Just regular paste used for brass and SS, works better than all 3/4 of those damn compounds)
-"Fake" strop (piece of leather on a wooden backing, leather has the best density for convex blades and will give the IMO the best results...Tried paper towels, foam, mousepads, books and none are as good as leather)
-WD-40 (prolongs the life of the sandpaper and helps lubricate it when sanding and stuff
 
Cam, I constantly have to remind myself that you're as young as you are. You must be the top student in shop classes lol. Thanks for the info man, got any pics of your setup?
 
I use a Surgical Black and/or a butcher's steel.

I've been using my BK-11 as a straight razor for shaving for about 3 months now.

KaBar's 1095CV can be made scary sharp.
 
I'm a fan of Arkansas stones myself... I've heard that a knife is sharp when it can cleanly cut a sheet of paper in half, and an Arkansas stone will give you that kind of edge pretty easily. I'm sure there's better stuff out there, but Smith (same company as your pocket pal) makes a Tri-hone system with a couple medium and fine stones, plus a rather aggressive synthetic stone for patching up an edge that's in really bad shape. They're pretty cheap, I think.
 
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