Stropping, power tool or what?

Hi Juan,

If you want to stay on top of sharpening your Camp Blood what I suggest is looking at the knife in the pic below you will see the polished area of the edge that has been created by using a belt sander to sharpen the blade.

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Get a sharpie marker pen or any other type of marker and colour this polished area "black" with ink ...

Then go out and invest in a cheap 1 x 30 belt sander such as I have which is pictured below ... they are cheap and cost about 60 Euro's from DIY shops which are bound to be on the large shopping industrial estates in Germany ... search the internet to find one in your area ...

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Then get some good leather hide and cut a few sections out which can be glued onto the platten behind the belt as seen below ...

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Then look in the shop for some belts to go with the sander ... if they have one course belt and one fine belt in their range they will do ... even if they are designed for "wood" and not metal they will work to learn with ... but by checking on the internet try and find a good supplier of belts for working with steel ... 240 grit is ideal ... then buy some blue tack or plastercine and some string and a simple bamboo stick or get one from the garden and buy an angle protractor like that which we used at school ... they are half moon shaped with the angle lines showing ...

Mount the stick using the blue tack on the top of the sander and anchor the string using the blue tack on the frame near the platten ... use the protractor to judge the angle of the string to the belt ... tie off the string on the stick so that it gives you an angle of 20 degrees to the belt ... it then acts as a reference point as to what angle you have to hold the blade to the belt to get a consistant edge angle ...make sure the string crosses the belt at the point on the platten where you want the edge to "contact" so the angle is truly 20 dgrees ... then use some cheap knives to practise on and starting near the handle draw the knife along the belt to the tip. As you get to the belly of the blade lift the knife towards you to increase the angle steepness so you compensate for the belly curve and when you come to the tip pull away from the belt so you don't round off the tip ... rounding off the tip makes it look like a pizza cutter ... you want a sharp point not a rounded edge ... the steeper the angle you hold the knife to the point the better ... do a few cheap knives using the marker pen to show where the metal is being removed ... and practise doing one side of the blade and then the other ... this means using your left hand as well as your right ... but practise will give you "the knack" for doing this.

Go slow and steady ... you will get the hang of it and even if you ruin a few cheap knives the "knack" of doing it will come in time ...

Once you have sharpened a few cheap knives well ... you can try the Camp Blood ... it will work best on an old smooth belt which removes very little steel ... you only want to centralise the edge if it has rolled slightly from chopping ... the "profile" for the edge is already there ... when it is sharp enough so that you feel the edge burr is going from one side to the other with each stroke ... then revert to the leather strop to centralise the edge with light strokes ... the knife will then start to take a razor edge ... one strop I recommend is the Bark River one as the instructions for using it are good and so are the video's on their web site ... start at the tip so you preserve the point and don't round it off ... drawing the knife towards you on one side and away from you on the other ...

With practise you can take the knife out for the day and beat the living hell out of it and a few strokes either side on the belt sander and finishing with the leather strop will restore the edge in about 20 mins or less ...

Don't be afraid of "power tools" to sharpen ... when you have got the hang of using them they make life so easy ... you litterally save hours compared to hand sharpening ... and if you have to re-profile a blade then keep a large glass or bowl of water handy to dunk the blade in to stop the knife blade from getting too hot ... also get some face masks for the dust ...

This sort of skill is a great benefit ... in time the leather backing will develop a curve caused by the erosion of the back of the belt ... this enables the covex profile to be achieved easier but remember to change the leather if the curve becomes too much ... leather "gives" when pressing the knife to the belt and a flat bit of leather or a slightly curved bit works best ... the leather stops the knife from "chattering" against the platten. If you have a large knife you can use the belt above the platten to start the process but if there is not sufficient tension in the belt you need to finish the edges using the leather backed platten. This gives you a good consistent steep angle for a really great edge profile. It basically enables the string to work properly as a guide. After a while you won't need the string ... the angles and muscle memory start to work for you as to the right way to hold the knife to the belt.

Hope this helps and good luck with learning all this if you decide to give it a go :thumbup:
 
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Hi Juan,

If you want to stay on top of sharpening your Camp Blood what I suggest is looking at the knife in the pic below you will see the polished area of the edge that has been created by using a belt sander to sharpen the blade.

100_0533.jpg



I know you were trying to teach a class here, but that teaching aid was too distracting. What a sexy knife,,,
drool1.gif
 
Hey Peter, do you have a pic of how the protractor is set up?

Sorry I have'nt ... how it works though is if you look at the close up pic of the sander belt and platten and place it vertically so it is parallel with the belt and platten you can look through it ( they are usually clear plastic ) and see the angle the string makes with the belt ... and then adjust it so that it is 20 degrees ...

Another way to do this if you have'nt got a protractor but do have a scientific calculator is to do an inverse tangent calculation. Just measure the length of the belt from where the string crosses it to the height of the stick at the top. Then measure the distance from the belt to where the string is tied off on the stick. Divide this last figure by the length of the belt and inverse tan it on the calculator ... this gives the angle of the string to the belt at the platten. ( The "opposite over the adjacent" rule from trig maths ). Work out the distance to tie off the string on the stick so this is 20 degrees.

Another way is get a simple surplus plank and cut out a 20 degree triangle wedge and place this between the knife and the belt to act as a guide as to the right angle to hold the knife. I have used all of these one way or another when I first started sharpening with the sander.

The best thing I have seen though was a specialist spirit level that could clamp to the spine of the knife. This could be set for 20 degrees and all that was needed was to focus on the bubble and keep it steady when making a pass with a knife on the belt. No idea where these can be bought from but saw one in a photo on a knife build project ... should have saved the pic but did'nt think at the time ...

Anyway ... hopefully one of the above methods should make sense and enable you to use it ... sorry it is more done in words than pic's ... here are a couple of pic's of my using the trig inverse tangent method on a Lansky system ... it is the same principle with the belt sander ...

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Measure the adjacent length as per above ...

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Then the opposite length as per above and the angle the stone makes with the edge of the blade can be calculated from the formula mentioned earlier.
 
I see...so the protractor isn't actually mounted, but rather serves as a guide for setting the angle created by the string with respect to the belt. Then just follow the string's angle when holding the knife up to the belt. Gotcha. Low-tech, but effective. I like that. Thanks a ton for the info!
 
I see...so the protractor isn't actually mounted, but rather serves as a guide for setting the angle created by the string with respect to the belt. Then just follow the string's angle when holding the knife up to the belt. Gotcha. Low-tech, but effective. I like that. Thanks a ton for the info!

Exactly :thumbup::thumbup:
 
Is it possible to strop a Horton hawk?


Yes, and the hawks are and can be incredibly sharp. On our last camping trip I used the hawk almost exclusively as my knife and wood processor along with a Silky Gomboy 300. The Horton Muk and SPDR Chopper attached to each side of my were jealous.

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I stopped mine after I dinged the edge cutting up a dead tree in my back yart :(

Straightener the ding with a small screwdriver then 400 / 600 / 1000 grit sandpaper placed on top of the strop followed by black and pick compound...

.500 thick and slices paper....Love it...
 
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Thanks Peter, there is a lot of info in there.
It will take me some time to put it on practice.
Again, thanks.
 
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