American Bushman

"If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing." —Benjamin Franklin

Friday, February 24, 2012

Sharpening--Intro

Yes, I've been away for a VERY long time.

For that I apologize.

I cannot say with any degree of certainty that I'll be around regularly going forward for a bit either but I'll give it a try.

What I want to talk about, at length, is how simple it is to hand-sharpen your knives and tools with a few simple abrasives and some basic technique.

I want to debunk the myths that sharpening is some sort of art form and can only be done by specialists.

Some folks will have you believe that it's worth sending your knives out once or twice a year for service but for the cost of the sharpening, you can own a set of stones that should last you years and years and learn to maintain your own edges.

I'm going to write about, and show you via video series, how to sharpen using Japanese Waterstones, DMT diamond plates, and even heavy equipment like a belt sander and buffer. Each has distinct strengths and weaknesses and I will go into those.

We'll talk about various types of edges and how you can go about converting one into another.

Above and beyond all the details, I want most of all to show you that YOU can sharpen your own knives and tools and it doesn't take a ton of practice and experience to get good at it. It will take patience, practice, and experience to get GREAT at it but for most of you being good is good enough.

I'm going to focus most on kitchen knives as that is what I use on a daily basis and those are the edges I'm maintaining and sharpening on a regular basis but there will be other types of sharp edges from axes to chisels that we'll cover also.

So, now that I've laid out where I'm going from here, I hope you'll join me as I can get these lessons written and posted.

Thanks for reading,


B