Best/correct way to inexpensively sharpen a pocket knife

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223

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Jul 6, 2012
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131
Hi guys.
It's time I learned the correct way to sharpen a pocket knife.
My carry knives usually don't see a lot of use, but I do need to sharpen them every once in a while.

I'm not ready to invest in a full, expensive sharpening system just to sharpen the mostly inexpensive knives I have, but I want to do it correctly.

Can this be done with just a whet stone or one of the all-in-one sharpeners (like the Camillus CMICM19224, Lansky PS-MED01, Smith's CCKS?)
Those seem to be more my speed.

I appreciate any info!
 
I've found my favorite way to sharpen my EDC knives is with a Spyderco Doublestuff. It's also the cheapest, and quickest method I've found. The drawbacks are that you must use it more frequently as a touch-up stone, and you cannot hog off a lot of steel to rebevel quickly. As a daily/weekly sharpener for light use, though, it really works well.
 
For easy touch up sharpening, I use emory paper taped to a paint stirrer. I start with 400, 600 grit emory, then go to a Smith's ceramic 1000 grit stone (Ca $4). Works great. Not great if you are trying to sharpen a butter knife or totally re-profile a blade, but great for doing simple touch up sharpening. Always easier to keep a sharp knife sharp then to sharpen a knife with a butter knife edge.
Rich
 
Yes - a whetstone or lansky or spyderco sharpmaker should get the job done nicely. In fact, with some practice, you can make your folders screaming sharp with any of these sharpening systems. Good luck!
 
Depending on the steel, I use a Norton India stone with fine and coarse sides the most. These are not expensive. For the supersteels, I use diamond bench stones. The V type sharpeners work for touch ups and are very simple to use.
 
Any knife I use would probably be cv or stainless

Thanks for all the info so far!
 
Norton double sided economy tool benchstone at about $8. The hardest part about the knife sharpening stuff for myself is when to realize that an edge needs to be thinned out a bit in orer for it to slice the way that I like a pocket knife to do. This is tougher when I am using a knife with a thicker blade stock. Because sometimes sharpening isn't enough you need to take some metal off the edge aggressively in order to get it to slice.
 
I can't tell you the "correct" way, but only how I do it.

I think there are 3 secrets to sharpening:
1) Learning about edge angles and shapes
2) Learning how to raise a burr and then to hone it away to get a clean edge
3) Learning about the difference between reprofiling an edge and touching up an edge

I personally couldn't figure any of that out while trying to maintain a consistent edge angle.

Using a guided rod system (Lansky) allowed me to figure this stuff out in a controlled manner. Sort of like training wheels on a bike.

Now I maintain my edges using DMT credit card stones and only reach for the Lansky for a major reprofiling job.

But none of my freehand skills would have developed without using the Lansky first. I tried too long.
 
I used sand paper on plate glass for a while. Now I have the DMT credit card with some grinding film glued to the back side. At least one old timer uses the back of a ceramic coffee mug. If I could have only one stone, I'd probably get a Norton double sided crystalon. ?spelling?
 
223 said:
Hi guys.
It's time I learned the correct way to sharpen a pocket knife.
My carry knives usually don't see a lot of use, but I do need to sharpen them every once in a while.

I'm not ready to invest in a full, expensive sharpening system just to sharpen the mostly inexpensive knives I have, but I want to do it correctly.

Can this be done with just a whet stone or one of the all-in-one sharpeners (like the Camillus CMICM19224, Lansky PS-MED01, Smith's CCKS?)
Those seem to be more my speed.

I appreciate any info!
Click to expand...

Do you have a paring knife in the kitchen and a coffee cup?
Take a few minutes , grab a coffee cup and paring knife, turn cup upside down, and get some experience sharpening ... it doesn't take a lot of equipment or high grits or skill to shave arm hair, just don't wobble the blade too much as you rub it on the unglazed portion of cup ... keeping thumb on spine helps with wobble/keeping angle



How many dollars are you ready to invest?
I think $1 is a fantastic start , you can sharpen with a brick from your backyard, but an actual sharpening stone is faster :)

dollar tree has stones for $1 online again ... basic aluminum oxide 6x2x1 stone ... I saw them online in may ... then I bought a few in the store in august ... just rub the corners/edges to round them a bit and you can get sharp in under a minute :)

dollar tree always has popsicle sticks and sandpaper and glue and markers... but I like stones better :)

harbor freight has a sale right now for similar stone but slightly better quality for 0.99 ... they usually have a lot of these in stock in store

your local asian grocery store will have some stones in the 1-20 dollar range, dollar tree type 1 dollar stones, up to king waterstones

home depot will have silicon carbide stone ~$7 tax included Norton 6 in. Tool and Knife Sharpener-87933
this is much higher quality than the aluminum oxide stones, but like all of these, need to rub the corners/edges to round them before you can sharpen ... doesn't take long, 1 -2 minutes of rubbing

other hardware stores also carry cheap stones under 5-10 dollar range ... they're basically like the dollar tree stones



any stone will work, basic sharpening, raise a tiny burr, cut it off at elevated angle, shave how to sharpen a knife - Joe Calton

theoretical framework, visual analogy, pencil edge is like knife edge
sharpen a knife #1 defining what an edge is - Joe Calton
how to sharpen #2, how edges dull - Joe Calton
how to sharpen #3, the ideal edge - Joe Calton
anystone how to sharpen #4 stones - Joe Calton

without knowing much of anything you can sharpen like this How to Sharpen a Knife with Paul Sellers


rabbit hole of information you don't need :) first step is just try it a few times, then decide on a direction
knivesshipfree/knife-sharpening/ knife-sharpening-videos
 
bucketstove said:
Do you have a paring knife in the kitchen and a coffee cup?
Take a few minutes , grab a coffee cup and paring knife, turn cup upside down, and get some experience sharpening ... it doesn't take a lot of equipment or high grits or skill to shave arm hair, just don't wobble the blade too much as you rub it on the unglazed portion of cup ... keeping thumb on spine helps with wobble/keeping angle



How many dollars are you ready to invest?
I think $1 is a fantastic start , you can sharpen with a brick from your backyard, but an actual sharpening stone is faster :)

dollar tree has stones for $1 online again ... basic aluminum oxide 6x2x1 stone ... I saw them online in may ... then I bought a few in the store in august ... just rub the corners/edges to round them a bit and you can get sharp in under a minute :)

dollar tree always has popsicle sticks and sandpaper and glue and markers... but I like stones better :)

harbor freight has a sale right now for similar stone but slightly better quality for 0.99 ... they usually have a lot of these in stock in store

your local asian grocery store will have some stones in the 1-20 dollar range, dollar tree type 1 dollar stones, up to king waterstones

home depot will have silicon carbide stone ~$7 tax included Norton 6 in. Tool and Knife Sharpener-87933
this is much higher quality than the aluminum oxide stones, but like all of these, need to rub the corners/edges to round them before you can sharpen ... doesn't take long, 1 -2 minutes of rubbing

other hardware stores also carry cheap stones under 5-10 dollar range ... they're basically like the dollar tree stones



any stone will work, basic sharpening, raise a tiny burr, cut it off at elevated angle, shave how to sharpen a knife - Joe Calton

theoretical framework, visual analogy, pencil edge is like knife edge
sharpen a knife #1 defining what an edge is - Joe Calton
how to sharpen #2, how edges dull - Joe Calton
how to sharpen #3, the ideal edge - Joe Calton
anystone how to sharpen #4 stones - Joe Calton

without knowing much of anything you can sharpen like this How to Sharpen a Knife with Paul Sellers


rabbit hole of information you don't need :) first step is just try it a few times, then decide on a direction
knivesshipfree/knife-sharpening/ knife-sharpening-videos
Click to expand...


Thank you for such a detailed response!
I think I have a lot to learn and look over here :)

I do really need to start just teaching myself.

Thank you again
 
The most inexpensive way to sharpen a pocket knife is to do it absolutely for free; you can do it, for example, with a river rock. You can do it with the bottom of a coffee cup, as several people mentioned above. In the absence or rocks or cups, you can even do it with sand and a piece of wood, like the old Dutch method. You can do it with a pocket stone (someone mentioned the excellent Spyderco Doublestuff above) or a bench stone (people mentioned the excellent Norton India Stone and Norton Economy Stone above).

But to sharpen a knife with any of those tools requires first the knowledge and skill to use them. I have a sticky at the top of this sub-forum which I recommend new sharpeners to read. In that sticky are links to other threads and lots of videos. I recommend getting a bench stone at least 6” in length. Get a stone and read the sticky, and that will get you started.

As for the three tools you mentioned, those are carbide V scrapers, and they destroy edges. Not only should you never buy one, but if someone offers one to you, you should not accept it. They do not sharpen knives; they are gimmicks.

Thanks to Bucketstove for linking the vids by Joe Calton. I like Mr. Calton’s no-nonsense approach to getting a working edge, and I like his stone/refinement recommendations for most users: DMT Coarse (blue) (although I personally would add a strop if you’re going to stop at DMT Coarse). He’s also spot-on about the best angle: the best angle is the lowest possible angle that won’t sustain damage during what you consider to be “normal use” for that knife. I also appreciate that he says anybody can sharpen a knife -- he says that if you can use a pencil and scrub a pot, you have the dexterity necessary to sharpen a knife, and I agree. Enough of this, “I tried and tried, but I personally just am not able to sharpen a knife,” that gets posted a lot here. Unless you have a physical and/or learning disability, you absolutely CAN sharpen a knife.

I don’t agree with everything in Mr. Calton’s vids. Note that I am not criticizing Mr. Calton, and I’ll only mention these points because I strongly feel that new sharpeners can avoid these issues. I believe he’s using too much pressure on those diamond bench stones, which may be why he says he has to replace them 3 or 4 times a year. Even if you are sharpening three or four knives daily, they shouldn’t wear out that fast. They do wear out, but I don’t think they should wear out quite that fast. He might be dislodging diamonds. That's just my two cents. Regarding his Norton India and Crystalon stones, I personally believe that he’d be better off keeping those saturated (in zip lock bags, for example), and not out in the open where they will dry out. If you can’t keep a sheen of oil on the surface of a Norton stone, you won’t float the swarf properly, which will cause the stones to load. That may be why he says he has to regularly clean his Norton stones with a file. If the stone is kept saturated, just a few drops on the surface will create a sheen that will float swarf properly. You can also substitute honing oil for Simple Green mixed with water in a 1:2 - 1:4 ratio. And I never thought I’d be on here defending guided-rod systems, but to be fair to those systems, he’s wrong about them -- most of them do indeed allow you to adjust the sharpening angle; you’re not stuck with one angle. Finally, I found the pencil analogy difficult to follow, and so I had to power through the second and third vid to try to get what I could out of those videos (and there is a lot of good information in them). So if you are not getting the pencil analogy, you are not alone; I had difficulty with it, too. If fact, so does Mr. Calton: at 05:50 of the #3 video, he says, “If you think about our pencil again… okay, umm, no… the pencil won’t work. Go back to the knife, okay?”
 
Magnaminous_G said:
As for the three tools you mentioned, those are carbide V scrapers, and they destroy edges. Not only should you never buy one, but if someone offers one to you, you should not accept it. They do not sharpen knives; they are gimmicks.
Click to expand...

Carbide V gadgets are indeed scrapers and not sharpeners. This is what they do to your knife (photo taken with a USB microscope)

24660380086_9644c016b6_z.jpg


Freehand sharpening is a very useful skill but it is not for everyone. Some learn fast and just need a coffee cup or cheap stone to get great results. Some need a bit more practice but will get good results eventually and some will never learn and give up. For a few dollars you can certainly give it a try.

For $20 - $40 you can get a guided system like the Smith's or Lansky which are proven systems and if used correctly, can give excellent results but whichever way you go, make sure that you understand the basic principles of sharpening.
 
With all due respect those carbide scrapers can do a respectable job, but unfortunately it helps if you already understand how to sharpen a knife before using one. It also helps if you tune it up prior to use. If you do use one without tuning it up first, make sure to swap sides often at the very least.

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...micrographs)?highlight=dollar+carbide+scraper

That said, the simplest and cheapest method that is also the most reliable IMHO is far and away the Norton Econo stone at Home Depot. Use with mineral oil from the grocery store/pharmacy.

Other methods such as sandpaper and ceramic bowls will all work, but if the paper loads up, or the unglazed ring plugs, the steel is of some quality that doesn't play well with improvised means, you don't know the grit of your river rock, your generic combination stone plugs, glazes, sheds a ton of grit etc etc and you don't otherwise understand what's happening, you'll spend more time scratching your head than working toward good results.

Used with oil, the Econo stone will grind any steel out there without plugging, glazing, or disintegrating. Learn on knives that have little value to you, start on the coarse side, switch to the fine. Wipe the stone and steel residue on a sheet of paper and wrap around the same stone for a strop.
 
If you have a Lowe's Home Improvement store close by, they sell a Smith's guided system (similar to a Lansky) for $30 odd bucks.
 
I've had my spyderco sharpmaker since 98... It was an expensive investment (50$) for a college student at the time. Now I've got the wicked edge 2 and my go to sharpening system is the sharpmaker. Whichever you choose enjoy yourself
 
You can get a coarse DMT or a fine Crystolon, either would be able to take a very dull knife to quite sharp rather easily with a bit of practice. And both can be found in the $20 range & will last a very long time.
 
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