Thread: Getting The Knife Sharp

Sharpening knives is certainly something that I continue to learn more about. Spent fifteen years using them daily at the meat works in the bonning room and make the odd knife at home now (also have a lot to learn here). One of the most helpful things I found when steeling your knife was to shift your grip from normal to having the back of the knife between index and middle finger, surprising how much easier it is to see the actual angle you are steeling your knife at. This was how we taught some of the newbies and had surpising results for a lot of the old hands too, takes away the tendency to roll your wrist.

Originally Posted by McNotty

I enjoy the whole process. Quite relaxing standing at kitchen bench sharpening all the knives. We love cooking so have decent Japanese/European knives. Still only use the cheap works knives for hunting and butchery. Bugger the pocket knives for hunting, tried going light weight option over the roar, not a fan of breaking down animal with small knife, just didn’t feel right, way better with bigger blade IMO
Bought some decent quality Japanese whetstones.
Quick going over on the 1000, then quick polish on 3000 then onto homemade strop which is a leather welding gauntlet unstitched and staples onto a piece of matai floor board. Touch of autosol polish and the edge comes up like a mirror.
I use the strop for taking the burr off in between stones as well.

Yeah, I pretty much don't use a folding knife for anything animal related now - had a fairly expensive folder lose it's locking device on me (the lock mechanism literally failed and broke apart internally). This resulted in the bloody thing trying to fold up and attack my fingers on a puncturing cut into an animal - luckily it pushed through the skin prior to folding all the way up and slicing me. Had a piece of fairly stout wire nearby on the ground, managed to jury rig the thing very securely in the open position to finish the job and at the end it went for a quick flight off a cliff into a deep, dark hole in the river below never to attempt that trick again. Now, the only knives that try that trick on me are the buggers that come from China with concealed handle bolster with several rivets down them, but only the first one is actually through the steel in the blade of the knife. Shitty trick that!

Originally Posted by Low box

Most of the knife sharpening systems work on the same principle of a constant angle - I have a ScarySharp and it's definitely helped get my knives sharp, especially the ones with the really hard steels that I found difficult to sharpen freehand. I think a lot of practise could also do the trick but I only sharpen knives monthly at most so appreciate the ease of a guided system.

Geoff is a talented dude. We have used all 3 models. I have model 3 and a spare at home and my son has model 3 as well.My son now sharpens knives for 3 other blokes around him. LOL. I have sharpened some Victory and Knifecut knives on a stone using WD40. They are very sharp but not before a fair amount of cursing. It is an art.

Not sure which model the one I have is (or was as its a bit bastardised by back yard improver haha). It has a flat across the back as the angle guide not the two vertical rollers and the knife clamp is part of the base, not able to be rotated like the version 3. I actually quite like it for reasons of OCD, the knife support is wider and the stone can be made to travel perpendicular to the entire length of the blade not leaving lines radiating from one point if that makes sense. Looks a bit nicer when sharpened I feel, but just as effective in use. Little bit slower as you have to manually flip the knife over and reclamp it not rotate it clamped...

This will be interesting to see how it goes. Very old piece of leaf spring at guess 60-70 at least.roughed it out 9 years ago and revisited it in last week.LOTS of grinding down to thin it back..must have been 5mm to begin with.its still got slight bend in it from spring.its ok as bends inwards/upwards for right handed user lol. Maybe 5mm over entire length at most. Poked in oven at 220 degrees for nearly hour then left it alone to cool down.went from shiney to the bronze it is now and seems to hold edge well,or at least will steel up sharp now which it wouldn't before.time will tell if any good or will be relegated to garden tool.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

your mercator photo shows what I would call a perfect steeling angle.
another lesson was how much better the green river is compared to the knifecut...the sound is so different when using steel,one is swish the other a screech.

Reckon you be sharpening my knife from now on.

Back when I made knife in workshop over the weekend via gift voucher from my wife,there were many handy tools that caught my attention
One of the most handy was a rotating kind of vice which allowed person to clamp handle of blade with blade itself sticking out horizontal towards you. Rather intimidating looking at blade pointing at my fat puku but very handy to draw file the last bit of edge/put angle on edge. It's stuck in my mind and yesterday I worked out red neck way to do it myself. Simple G clamp in my bench vise. G clamp holds blade right up by handle and bench vise grips G clamp wherever on curved bit of its body makes suitable angle,this allowed not only draw filing but I took stone to blade while held there and worked on it some too. Might revisit this later as if stone held flat and drawn across blade it's sort of how commercial sharpeners work with blade held at fixed angle. Keeping stone flat would be the key.