An important part of manhood has always been about having the competence to be effective in the world — having the breadth of skills, the savoir-faire, to handle any situation you find yourself in. With that in mind, each Sunday we’ll be republishing one of the illustrated guides from our archives, so you can hone your […]
This reeks of subtle right wing propaganda.
That’s the general shape of it, and I’m sure others will have plenty to kibitz about regarding these rather skeletal instructions.
My, er, fifty cents is that using a quarter or whatever to set the angle of your knife is a really hokey way to do it, and claiming that placing two quarters under the spine of any random knife is likely to result in an edge angle of 15° per side is highly suspect. The breadth of your blade will impact the ultimate edge angle quite noticeably if you try to use that as your technique.
It’s also not a given that the existing edge angle will actually be 15° per side before you start, and that’s actually a pretty shallow edge angle for many steels. A garden variety cheap or low quality pocketknife is bound to exhibit rather suboptimal edge retention at that angle.
Here’s some different advice instead: Take a Sharpie or similar marker and draw a stripe down the edge of both sides of your knife. Start with the fine side of your stone, not the coarse one, and do very light passes slowly increasing the angle until you find that one swipe rubs off all of the marker ink across the entire sharpened portion of the edge. That angle right there will be what your knife’s edge angle already is, and honing that will be a damn sight easier than beating the thing into a new and entirely different edge angle, especially if you’re using a cheap stone. Hold the spine of the knife firmly against your thumb with the side of your thumb resting on the stone and keep it there. That will keep your edge angle consistent as you work.
Can you take a picture of what you mean with your sharpie suggestion? I’m very intrigued.
It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Take any old permanent marker and just color in the edge of your knife on both sides.
As you sharpen or at least draw the edge against your stone (or whatever it is you’re using) the marker will be quickly rubbed away wherever the edge is actually making contact. In this example, my attempted edge is shallower than the edge that’s already on the knife, which you can tell by the only mark being removed being visible at the very top of the edge portion:
In this case it’s intentional, because I’m deliberately regrinding the Penguin here into a 15° per side edge. If you wanted to keep your existing edge angle, in the above example you’d want to angle it up, i.e. try a slightly more obtuse angle. Here I’m getting closer, the removed mark is about halfway down the edge itself:
And by this point I’ve contacted the entire edge:
If you didn’t want to change the edge angle, you’d want to get your edge situated so that one pass on the stone rubs off the entire width of the mark, all the way from the root of the edge to its apex.
Having the edge inked up is just a handy shortcut to see where you’re actually removing material. If you’re not hitting the very apex of the edge, you’re not actually accomplishing any sharpening. Personally, I always check with magnification, using an illuminated loupe to make sure I’ve properly and consistently taken material off all the way to the apex.
… Manhood?
Girls weren’t allowed to own pocket knives until recently when pink ones were invented
I hear rainbow titanium nitride coated ones are also acceptable.
There’s really no denying this one, for instance.
Women also shouldn’t worry about having the competence to be effective in the world. Apparently.
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Because some dweebs feel theirs is incessantly threatened, I imagine. It’s all very silly.
The only thing more manly is explaining your spouse how to do it.
What do people here use for knife sharpening? I have a Spyderco Tri-Angle Sharpmaker, which I use on my kitchen knives (haven’t had to sharpen a pocket knife yet). It holds the stones at an angle for you, so you can just hold the knife vertically. I like the idea of freehand sharpening, though, and kind of want to buy some traditional whetstones.
I’m positive I’ll wax all poetic about all of the ones I’ve got at some point, but as you would expect I have quite a wide variety of sharpening gizmoes and whatsits from various eras. One of them is indeed a Spyderco Sharpmaker.
At the moment I’m rather enamored of my Ruixin RX-009, which is one of those stone-on-a-stick guided sharpening jigs like unto the EdgePro Apex and its myriad derivatives. In fact, the OG Ruixin sharpner (which I used to have one of, and finally managed to give away) was pretty much a 1:1 clone of the EdgePro, and seems to be what kicked off the exploding popularity of similar devices. I like how this version has a clamp which grabs your knife and keeps it in place, and there’s a mechanism built in wherein you can flip the blade over to work both sides alternately while keeping it in the same position every time. This is absolutely bomber for bullying wonky edges back into trueness and/or your preferred edge angle, although it does have some inherent physical limitations in both what size blades you can fit into it — small ones are tricky — and also what angles it can achieve before you hit your own clamps with the stone, also depending on the size of the blade.
Hardcore internet knife bro types will insist that there’s absolutely no other way to sharpen a knife properly except freehand on a (optionally very expensive) set of bench stones, because any other sharpening jig is inherently limited in flexibility and “only” a bench stone can sharpen “all” knives. This is self-evidently high octane horseshit, because just to name two examples it’s very difficult to sharpen recurved blades (karambits, essentially) and serrated knives with a large flat bench stone. But being able to freehand it is still not a bad skill to have.
I’m of the opinion it really doesn’t matter much how you arrive at the conclusion of a sharp knife only provided you can do so in the first place, and preferably without dealing wanton damage your knife’s steel in the process.
Good points in your rambling about free hand. The loud online diehards put me in choice paralysis on what stones I want to get. I have a few cheap kitchen and pocket knives I can learn from.
I’d ask for recommendations but I’m assuming me and you have the Pacific ocean separating us.
My Ruixin is from Alibaba. I imagine they’ll ship worldwide for not much money.
