It's been a long time...

I have so much to update and so little time to do it.

One thing I will tell you, as time is almost always at a premium these days, is how I really have come to appreciate my DMT stones and my JRE Industries Strop Strap.

I damaged the tip on my Umnumzaan recently doing something stupid and thought I was going to have to simply retire the knife.  Instead, I pulled out the DMT stones this morning and set to fixing the tip, putting on a new edge, and then bringing everything up to crazy sharp.  (Yes, I still remember that I was going to shoot a video of the process and will get to it...some day.)

Once the bevels are established and the first burr is knocked off, I take out my JRE Strop Strap loaded with black compound (Black Magic) and make several very light passes from heel to tip and then tip to heel until the edge is nice and smooth.

It'll pop hairs easily after this but the edge is still robust enough to do real work from breaking down boxes to prepping kindling for a fire.

The best part? The diamond cuts down sharpening time dramatically.  A trashed edge on a coarse stone requires maybe 20-30 total passes on the Coarse stone and about the same on the Fine stone.  That means I can take a ganked knife and make it into a super cutter in a matter of minutes--about all the time I can find with 4 kids running around.  :)

I still love the process with the Japanese Water Stones and the feel of the cutting action but when I really need to get the job done, done well, and done quickly, I won't hesitate to grab my DMT stones and my JRE strop to get the kind of edge that'll work all day long and ask for more.

Thanks for reading,


B