This COVID-19 confinement time is a grea opportunity to learn new skills. This week I wanted to pickup knife sharpening.
I remembered when I was a kid, my dad used to have a whetstone that has a very fine grain and I used to play with it trying to sharpen my mum's kitchen knives. Nowadays, I could not find any stones that are that fine in the local hardware store and good ones online cost a little fortune.
But because I'm just starting (again), I've settled for some cheap options and here is my little sharpening tool kit:
A bastard file for repairs
A bastard file is a file that has a coarseness in between coarse and second-cut and is ideal for removing dent and chips from the edge of a knife. How you use it is pushing the file forward against the edge of the blade at the correct angle. A file cuts in one direction so we don't pull backwards.
Using a file is optional as you can use the coarse side of a sharpening stone for repair too but a file is faster and I find it useful for repairing an axe blade.
A dual sharpening stone
I bought a dual coarseness soaking stone. I need to soak the stone 15-20 minutes into water before use. The coarse side can be use for small repairs or cutting a profile to the edge.
For knives that are not damaged, the fine side of the stone is enough to maintain the sharpness of the edge. I would do a push and pull method ending up with stropping strokes for cleaning up the edge.
A stropping board
This is an optional step that is giving a finer mirror like polish to the edge. Although some people also simply use a stropping board for maintaining the sharpness of a knife without the need of a stone. Usually, people would use a piece of leather glued to a solid board for stropping knives but I heard that MDF can work better than most leather because it's flat, harder and does accept polishing compound.
On the photo above, I've applied some SSX (metal) polishing compound on the MDF board. It's a kind of mix of wax and fine abrasive material.
Once the MDF board is loaded with polishing compound, I would strop the knife a few times on each side for a final polish.
So with my tools ready, I went on Youtube and watched a lot of videos about the topic and started to try them out and I'm quite happy with this first result, the knife cut through an envelop paper like butter. I still need to practice a bit more and start dealing with my axe and hatchet. With the round pocket stone as seen below:
I have a Fiskars X7 hatchet and X21 axe. Both are great but the steel is not high quality and the edge regularly get chipped so I'm planning on learning how to fix and sharpen them.
DIY pocket knife from a piece of tile
My next project is to convert this little piece of rectangular tile into a pocket sharpening stone.
The back of the tile has a quite fine grain, feels like 1000 or 2000 grit, I'm not sure but it feels like the fine side of my sharpening stone. My plan is to flatten the back of this tile with a band sander and put it in my fishing gear bag so I can use it to sharpen my fishing knife on the go.
I will document the process and do some tests later on.
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Great article.
How much does the quality of the blade influence the ability to sharpen and hold an edge?
Hi. I’m no specialist but from what I understand if the steel is too soft then it will get dull fast and can get bent if hitting something hard (bone). If it is too hard it can chip. A quality steel needs to have enough carbone and has been hardened and tempered properly to get the right amount of hardness vs softness.
I use a stone and that also works perfect, basically you don't need to buy anything just to sharpen a knife. A hard stone typically that from around the bank of the river works perfect. Just sharing my personal opinion and experience and not trying to be a smart ass. Thank you!
Very true, you can even sharpen a knife with a brick that you flatten against the pavement. I’m planning to fetch some river stone with tight grain and cut them square with a tile saw.
Wow! Impressive! I just sharpened my cooking knives yesterday with the long thin metal with black handle. They have improved a bit!
But your knife if too sharp! It’s scary!
Also I cut my finger two days ago with my bread knife! Luckily it was not so sharp!
The next step fit you is to get a samurai sword!!! LoL
Samouraï sword! Yay! I would be too scared to damage the sword or make it too sharp lol.
I have a knife I forgot in the garden for a while. It has some rust stain on it, I will try to clean and resharpen it
Yes in my country there is completely lockdown everyone of us in our house and have many time to invest on ourself. I also tried to learn many new things during this time.
Please tell us what you managed to learn.
Well i am a computer science engg. Student so I invest my most of time to learn new programming languages ,quantum computing,data management etc
Cool cool. I’m a web developer but I tend to try learn stuffs that takes me away from the computer screen.
Good way to sharpen knives!
It’s one way to do it.
very interesting writing.
Good effort
From that preview I thought it was like a bondage post! Uhhh NSFW, jk lols!
Couldn't carry stones around in my pockets, would lose pants XD We have a sharpening stone here, I have no idea where it came from or how good it is as J is the one that does all the knife sharpening pretty much whenever he feels like (he will probably need to do it soon as most of the knives are blunt, he almost exclusively uses the good knives that seem to hold their edge forever though so XD)
Sounds like fun, the best I do is rub two knives against each other 😄 or rub one against our marble cabinets. I have to say it barely leads anywhere. Great job!
A good, sharp edge is a man's best hedge against the vague uncertainties of life.
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Good work
interesting writing @quochuy
This is a skill that I need to work on. I generally end up with a knife that is duller than I started with. Good luck with the tile project!