Field Sharpening

[The Reaper]

Originally Posted by wfraser

Mr. Harsey,

The other day I had my Recon 1 out and my light bulb and could not get a edge on the knife. A friend of mine told me to try a car window...??

Well....I went and rolled my window down half way and started slicing away.
After a few minutes the blade became sharp. I have seen sharper however it did the trick and seemed field worthy.

If you get a chance give it a try and tell me what's your input. Thanks -

That one is already up here, maybe in the Redneck Engineering thread if not this one.

Look at Post #9 on this thread.

TR

[Jeff Randall]

Here's another good primitive technique that requires no rocks, glass, commercial hones, etc. Find a small hardwood sapling about 2 inches in diameter and split it in two with your knife. Smooth the heartwood side down until you have a good flat surface. Take the point of your knife and make multiple small holes in the flat surface, then grind in a pasty mixture of sand and water. These improvised hones are slow but eventually become saturated with the gritty material and provide a decent pocket hone capable of touching up the edge of your blade. One thing to remember with this process is to stroke away from the blade so you don't gouge the wood. Any wire edges produced can be removed on a strop or smooth rock. These sharpening devices take some time to wear in but are really useful when nothing else is available. As a side note to this technique, primitive cultures used the same principle to drill holes in stone by using a fibrous stalk dipped in a paste of sand and water. Constantly adding grit to the hand drill and having a sincere amount of patience eventually punctured the rock.

Jeff

[Ambush Master]

Thanks Jeff, very interesting!!

[Bill Harsey]

Originally Posted by Jeff Randall

Here's another good primitive technique that requires no rocks, glass, commercial hones, etc. Find a small hardwood sapling about 2 inches in diameter and split it in two with your knife. Smooth the heartwood side down until you have a good flat surface. Take the point of your knife and make multiple small holes in the flat surface, then grind in a pasty mixture of sand and water. These improvised hones are slow but eventually become saturated with the gritty material and provide a decent pocket hone capable of touching up the edge of your blade. One thing to remember with this process is to stroke away from the blade so you don't gouge the wood. Any wire edges produced can be removed on a strop or smooth rock. These sharpening devices take some time to wear in but are really useful when nothing else is available. As a side note to this technique, primitive cultures used the same principle to drill holes in stone by using a fibrous stalk dipped in a paste of sand and water. Constantly adding grit to the hand drill and having a sincere amount of patience eventually punctured the rock.

Jeff

This is good stuff. Thank you Jeff!

[MILDOT]

Bill,
Thanks for the extra bandaids the other day, they came in very handy. You will be happy to know that I sharpened 60 blades today without cutting myself...LOL. Took your advice and added a combined light and magnifier to the process. It worked out very well and we are doing the newspaper test on every blade.

Say hi to the folks for me.

Mil-Dot

[DanUCSB]

"a sincere amount of patience"

That is a fine turn of phrase.

[Bill Harsey]

Originally Posted by MILDOT

Bill,
Thanks for the extra bandaids the other day, they came in very handy. You will be happy to know that I sharpened 60 blades today without cutting myself...LOL. Took your advice and added a combined light and magnifier to the process. It worked out very well and we are doing the newspaper test on every blade.

Say hi to the folks for me.

Mil-Dot

Your welcome.
Nice change to hand someone else a bandaid for once.
That's a lot of blades to do in one stand.
Newspaper works better for testing sharpness than ones arm. No, I won't put a smiley face here.
You are getting the edges extremely sharp too.

[voord05]

Since I am the new guy, playing "catch -up" on many of the posts adn this one seems to be at it end of the conversation...

I'll add this gem of information that was jokingly put out during a land nav class at the Q.

"Gentlemen; If you ever find yourself hopeless lost here or in any part of the world, take off you racksack. Pull out you field knife and shaping stone, begin to shapen your high speed knife... within minutes you well have a half dozen guys pop out of the wood works to let you how to do it better!"

enjoy gents!!

[Bill Harsey]

Originally Posted by voord05

Since I am the new guy, playing "catch -up" on many of the posts adn this one seems to be at it end of the conversation...

I'll add this gem of information that was jokingly put out during a land nav class at the Q.

"Gentlemen; If you ever find yourself hopeless lost here or in any part of the world, take off you racksack. Pull out you field knife and shaping stone, begin to shapen your high speed knife... within minutes you well have a half dozen guys pop out of the wood works to let you how to do it better!"

enjoy gents!!

I'm going to write that in felt pen on the shop wall

Thank you.

[Team Sergeant]

That is funny as hell!

[Bill Harsey]

Here is a quick drawing I did to show what a dulled edge looks like in cross section and the material to be removed to restore sharpness.

[mark46th]

I ran a seafood plant for about 10 years where we hand cut our fish. We were a Japanese owned company so we used a Japanese made santoku knife. I can't remember what grade Stainless was used. I used to sharpen them using a belt sander with a 400 grit belt then buff them out on a jeweler's wheel. For lubricant, I used a mixture of 2 parts parafin with one part Crisco shortening melted together which I poured into loaf pans to make bricks. The procedure was to make 3 or four passes across the belt at a 30 degree angle on each side of the edge. Then make 5 or 6 passes over the buffing wheel on each side. The polishing was the key. The damn things came out as sharp as scalpels. You could literally touch the blades lightly and draw blood.

Out in the field, I carry a whetstone, using water to lube the plade when I skin out a pig. I use a 3 inch Case for field dressing and skinning them. Then a Sawzall to quarter them so they fit in the cooler...All hail the Sawzall!

[S.Gossman]

My two favorite sharpeners for field use are the Eze Lap Sportsmen diamond rod/brass handle and DMT two sided paddle sharpener, fine/super fine. With these two i can bring my edges back in no time. I strop on my pants leg.
Scott

[BearW]

I'm in the category of 'terrible knife sharpeners' as well. My problem is the technical know-how and just memorizing the angle at which the blade needs to be honed to for manual work.

Sometime i'll make a few passes each way, say ten a side-check the blade and it's worse than before.

I bought a cheapo- 17.99 "Redi Edge" sharpener which, if you've never seen it, has the same type of set up as a very small handheld kitchen block sharpener. It's only a few inches long and the diamond sharpener is built into a 2 sided whetstone, which i'm guessing is for re-conditioning the blade( of an ax, say) or some sort of manual work well above my level of expertise.

I usually lube the blade with a few drops of olive oil before and after. I prefer olive oil for CLP or other lubricants because though they may work better, they're not fit for consumption. If i want to slice bread, make a PB&J sandwich with my blade and it's something to think about. I've heard some use butter for just this reason but butter has high salt content and could rust the blade.

This seems like an older thread but maybe someone will stumble upon it and learn a thing or two as i just did.

Bear

[Bill Harsey]

BearW,

Did you read this whole thread?
Yes it takes some time and I am going to re-read everything I've written here to try and make it better.

Some thoughts on your post:
As I hope I've already stated, the purpose of any lube on a sharpening stone is to keep the blade particles that have been abraded off the edge while sharpening from sticking to the surface of the sharpening stone because said particles, as they load into the surface of the stone, keep it from working.

What I don't want stuff on my sharpening stones is something that is going to smell bad later.
Anything we lube a stone with can be wiped or washed off of a blade.

Personally I think a little WD-40 makes my sandwich taste better.