In A Sharpening Mood

I've been putting new edges on the kitchen knives today and am now on the prowl for something else that needs a new edge. I'm not having any luck...too much time spent IN the house and not enough in the woods.

I'm putting out a call to the neighbors to see if anybody wants their cutlery sharpened. I'm getting desperate here. :)

My current setup involves an old two-sided coarse/fine oil stone that rests in a bath of mineral oil until time for use. Once I'm done it gets lapped on a DMT Extra Coarse stone and then back into the oil.

The edges are coarse enough that they'll slice through whatever I put under the edges but a quick strop keeps the edges polished enough to prevent what might otherwise be daily or weekly sharpening.

The edges will pop hairs and slice a carrot paper thin. It's nice to have knives in the kitchen that can be taken to such a thin edge while still remaining some toughness. My field knives are a bit thicker to handle any abuse I may throw their way.

Anybody use a special setup for sharpening in the field? I'm thinking about cutting down this stone and dropping it into a DeCon container for field use. The container has a snap-on lid and it's watertight so it should keep the oil from getting everywhere. The JRE Industries field strop just rolls up and drops into the bottom of my pack and it's loaded with the good stuff (Black Magic) which gives me just the right amount of polish while still keeping the edge a bit toothy.

Ah well, off to find something else that might need a new edge...

Thanks for reading,


B