Sharpening-----New Tools

ddean

ddean

Joined
Mar 26, 2002
Messages
3,397
After a very nice visit with Yvsa at his home yesterday,
I came back thinking about alternative sharpening tools.

(He had suggested that I could use my karda or a known
hard knife as a chakma for steeling. When I suggested
round bottom half of a drill bit, he said that it usually
wasn't as hard as the drill tip, but I could get drill
rod blanks at a machine shop supply that should be hard enough.)

On the way home I thought about trying thick piano wire.

_______FWIW______YMMV______KAS_______:)

Today I picked up a disposable razor knife (The kind that you
break off the tip as it gets dull, then push out a new section
to use. A quarter to a dollar in cost depending on store.)
to check its hardness.

It's about at file hardness, skates across the hardest
portion of a khuk.

The amazing thing is that it is the best tool I've found for
--quickly-- sharpening a rough blade. It's too flexy to
--really-- steel an edge like a chakma, BUT:

The trailing edge is square/sharp & hard enough to
plane/scrape all but the hardest edge of the khukuri
(or other knives I tried). Held at about a 45-degree
angle to the edge being sharpened. Different angles
give different effects.

The flat when extended only one or two segments is
stiff enough to do significant steeling/polishing of the
khuk edge.

The sharp edge when trailed behind almost flat will
also do significant steeling/polishing.
-------

The piano wire (what I found is about 1/8" thick) is not as hard
as I had expected. The khuk will cut into it if you slice at
the wire. But:

If you use it as a strop, it gives a nice polish/soft steeling
to the edge of the khuk. I held the wire upright with one end
on the ground and (A) with khuk edge down drew the blade toward
me on alternate sides....that worked. (B) Sliced the blade
down in an arc....works but blade can bite into wire.
(C) Reversed the blade and repeated (B)....that works too.

---------

FWIW......Remembered something from Scouting about getting rid of
wire edges by cutting with the blade across a piece of hard wood.
.
 
I think you were damn fortunate to get to talk to Yvsa. I spoke with my father on the telephone today, he was remarking the world had undergone extraordinary change since he was a boy in the 30's. In his and Yvsa's lifetimes, reality has been redefined many times over.

All that and sharpening advice too. What more could you ask from an old ndn?

You forumites in the midwest have it made.

munk
 
DDean,
Your drill rod idea caught my attention. Check out the steels and burnishers at www.handamerican.com. Their burnishers are nothing more than a smooth steel rod hardened to between 62-65 RC. Wonder what they'd think of a chakma? An idea I might borrow from them is a tubular leather sheath that encircles the burnisher. When you get done touching up the edge with the burnisher, you slip it in it's leather case and use the thing as a strop. Just the ticket for the curved edge of a khukri!

Sarge
 
Originally posted by ddean
After a very nice visit with Yvsa at his home yesterday,
I came back thinking about alternative sharpening tools.

(He had suggested that I could use my karda or a known
hard knife as a chakma for steeling. When I suggested
round bottom half of a drill bit, he said that it usually
wasn't as hard as the drill tip, but I could get drill
rod blanks at a machine shop supply that should be hard enough.)

FWIW......Remembered something from Scouting about getting rid of
wire edges by cutting with the blade across a piece of hard wood.
.
Click to expand...

Had a nice visit with Dean, good to put the name with a face. Dean first said he could only stay an hour, but it ended up a little over 2 hours.:)

We talked about a lot of sharpening alternatives and since the chakmas are almost all nearly worthless for what they're made for, I've only seen a couple that will make a spark with flint, I suggested the use of the karda's edge instead.
Now not the exact edge, but the radius above the edge. The kardas are generally somewhat harder than the chakmas are. IMO neither are as hard as they could and should be and never have been although occasionally one does rise above the rest.
Ya also gotta remember that 54 Rc is a decent hardness, just not one that will hold an edge for an extra long time, but easier to sharpen.

And since we talked about so many options in such a short time Dean has forgotten that it was the reamer blanks I suggested instead of drill blanks.
The reamer blanks are hard while the drill blanks are not although they can be hardened.
Dean struck me as one who probably thinks outside the box a lot and his post has proven me right.:)
Anything learned in the Scouts is worth remembering as the hard wood trick really does work.
 
The chakmas I have by Bura don't seem to be too bad. The two by Kumar that came witn my WW11's seem to be fairly hard. I don't use any of them all the time. I have a #4 Phillips Screw driver that was a military tool. It is hard as can be. The shank is right at 10 inches long and does a pretty good job.

I haven't had to do much sharpening lately. I don't like to fix what ain't broke. I still want to get one of the ceramic rods with the handle.:) :)
 
ddean, et. al.

Interesting ideas. I've noticed that many of the chakmas seem more suited to polishing, and not realligning the edge. Just too soft. I may try the kardas as suggested, but from how easy it seems to dull some of them, they appear to be softer than the khuk too.

I've been eyeing the stuff at HandAmerican for a while, pretty neat products. They have some new bench products that accept interchangable blocks coated with their honing leather, or ones that will hold sandpaper that look pretty good. Only thing is that the narrower models aren't quite as long as I'd like for a khuk.

Ragweed forge has ceramic sticks for a buck or two--and what appear to be pretty good deals on other sharpening tools as well as some nice looking knives.

Pappy, I know you can figger out a handle for these things! Heck, you can buy a knife and throw a couple of ceramic sticks for less than a lot of places want for the stick with a handle.

These ceramic products look interesting:
http://www.CeraHone.com/
They are aluminium that has had the surface converted to aluminium oxide which is similar to ceramic. Should be unbreakable--question is will they dent, and how long will the outer oxide last before the underlying aluminum is exposed. Anbody seen 'em?

I was given to high-end aluminum cookware (Calphalon -sp?) and it didn't take me long to beat through the anodizing in the bottoms since I hate to use blunt wooden impliments or bendy plastic ones. I can see maybe similar wear on the CeraHone.

Anybody know of any other "unbreakable" ceramic-like hones? A bunch of cheap ones would be great around the house, but it would be nice to have one that could be counted on to stay together when away from the house!
 
They have tried miracle coatings on cookware for over 40 years and all of them fail eventually. Cast iron is the original miracle. It doesn't fail.

I've seen there are coatings to blades too. As with guns,applications like that leave me skeptical. It is hard to improve upon nickel as a coating for firearms, but that is no longer seen as 'tactical'.

We need a 'tactical' deodorant.

munk
 
Munk,

I'm with you on the cast iron cookware!

Nothing like a cast iron skillet. Cheap too, compared to most other stuff. People are too hung up on trying to cook without any oil now, especially since there's so many kinds available that aren't particularly "bad" for you.

For big pots and acid food like tomatoes, I like stainless steel with thick copper bottoms. Hard to fry an egg in the stainless stuff, since it doesn't cure like the cast iron, but it's pretty much indesdructable too. Buy once, use forever, like cast iron. No plastic handles for me either, why buy something you can't put in the oven too?

The Calphalon stuff was a gift, I wouldn't buy that when I could get SS or a fleet of cast iron for the same price! It wasn't the "nonstick", just "hard anodized". Maybe one "nonstick" pan for special uses only--For general use they all seem to turn useless pretty fast.

The secret to the cast iron is the "coating" is regenerated with most use, or they can be easily recured if needed. Any coating on a knife blade that can't be redone by the end user is something I'm certainly not interested in.

Anyway, if hard coating over soft metal soon sucks for cooking pots used with ordinary metal implements, I'm pretty suspicious of that plan working for a honing tool used with hardened steel.

Hey, are my flat black/dark grey cast iron skillets tactical cookware? Remember the "Sprockets" Saturday Night Live skit with the German "techno" guys where the clothes and everything was black? Was that tactical?
 
that's right- cast iron skillets are tactical.

I know guys who carry the little ones backpacking. Won't cook on anything else. I keep mine away from my wife. She uses miracle ware and I use cast iron. We look at each other's with a little sneer.

For tactical use, the skillet would have to have, 'lightening' cuts in the handle, and the edge of the pan should be razor sharp.

I wonder how you carry that?

munk
 
almost forgot...for tactical use, the back side of the pan should be engraved with demarcations, so that if you place a twig or stone of the proper size in a slot on the handle you'll have a Sun dial. This for those occasions you're stranded in the Alaskan wilderness and winter's coming, and you only have your trusty Khukuri, a 8" iron skillet, and _________(?) Fill in the blank. For modern man my vote is a small black and white television with a battery pack.


munk
 
"For tactical use, the skillet would have to have, 'lightening' cuts in the handle, and the edge of the pan should be razor sharp.

I wonder how you carry that? "

Is this a trick question?

Why in a custom molded camo Kydex holster--what else?!
preferably designed for multiple modes of carry, including horizontal and inverted, and quick-draw capable of course.
 
Don't forget to make sure the television screen's output is in the near-infrared, and viewable only while hearing special goggles. Don't want to give away your strategic location while watching a hard-hitting celebrity expose!
 
...a spinning, iron frisbee of death! ( with eggs )
Click to expand...

I think I saw the saucepot version in an old James Bond movie...I featured a detachable handle and was conveniently and discretly carried atop the head.

Nothing's really new, is it?
 
Cast iron and ss are the way to go. I can't get over my weakness for an enamel coating, though.

S.
 
If the Aluminum oxide rods are anything like the wheels, they won't last very long. the wheels cut fast but they ware away at a pretty good rate too.

You're right about the handles for the rods, that shouldn't be any problem at all.:)
 
I have tried, and used many different items over the years to sharpen and realine edges.
1. the Spyderco Sharpmakers triangular rods work quite well
2. kitchen steels and kitchen ceramics of the same style work well
3. a piece of carbide boring bar makes a great chakma ( I work in a machine shop)
4. I think the best strop I have tried was one following one of Ysvas posts on sharpening. Using the dowel and thick leather glued to it. I have two of those. One I use the white rouge and one I use either the green or gray. Those strops make for a keeeen edge!!
It is fun to experiment with different methods of sharpening, I still want to try the sandpaper on rubber that one of you gents has mentioned. That sounds like a great was to keep a convex edge sharp. I must try it sometime.
 
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