hey guys this is kevin estella with fieldcraft survival i'm the director of training and if
you've been following along in this video series we've been doing for eastmans we at fieldcraft
survival are providing you guys with a number of different tips to help you as outdoorsmen whether
you're a hunter a fisherman a trapper and you're in the great outdoors we are looking to help you
become more capable now something that always comes up in every single course that we teach
is gear maintenance and in particular the question that comes up the most frequently is hey we know
that you like survival knives we know that you like bushcraft knives we know that you
have all these hunting knives how do you sharpen a knife now this is one of those questions that
i'm sure someone is going to reply to this video and say well he's doing it the wrong way
i'm going to simply put it to you this way there are many ways to skin this cat
and you'll find that if you speak to an old-timer someone who's been around the block
for quite some time they're going to show you one method and if you look at the most
recent blade show uh the most recent knife magazines you're going to see that there are new
sharpening devices that come out pretty much on a yearly basis so what i'm going to show you are a
couple different ways of sharpening and i'm going to explain that this is not the only way but it's
one of many ways so let's break this down into a few different layers of understanding with how
you can maintain your knives in the field because there's an old expression what you're going to do
is you're going to sharpen your knife one time and you're going to hone it for the rest of your life
knife sharpening with knife sharpening we can look at it from a few different stages there's some
equipment that you probably want to have at your disposal and i'm going to explain that
as we we go along here most people would assume that knife sharpening involves just a sharpening
stone and a knife but the reality is is that in addition to using the sharpening stone you're
probably going to want to use something that's going to do a process called honing sharpening
and stock removal is when you're removing significant amounts of steel from your knife
honing is where you are refining the edges now before anyone says anything i'll put it this way
there are multiple grind types that are out there and if you understand the type of knife that you
have whether it's a hollow grind a convex grind a chisel grind a scandi sometimes referred to as a
short flat grind a saber grind if you understand how the edge geometry is supposed to work it'll
help you sharpen that knife and make sure that it's performing to its full potential i'm going to
use two different knives these are two that i just pulled out of my pocket here and i'm not going to
fully sharpen them because they're already at a pretty good status but what i am going to do is
i'm going to walk you through the steps now i use a swiss army knife pretty much every single day
on my survival courses my bushcraft courses i use it all the time we've got an upcoming challenge
where i'm only going to have the contents of a ziploc bag and you can be sure that i'm going
to throw my swiss army knife in that ziploc bag because it has a lot of tools i can use to survive
in the great outdoors now after any course in the great outdoors i'm always going to have this the
smudge this shmeg whatever you want to call it nastiness on the blade there's the process of
cleaning when it comes to knife maintenance now if you have rust on your knife you can use something
like triple aught steel wool triple aught steel wool is found in hardware stores it's used for
sanding right it's used for finishing metals it also works really well on taking the rust
off of blades you don't need to have a giant pad of it like this you can just carry a small
piece of it in your kit and if you happen to develop rust on your knife it'll work well to
be slightly abrasive to take the rust off your blade now if you want something that's a little
bit more dedicated for the process of cleaning your knife i'd recommend getting a rust eraser
a rust eraser looks just like those erasers you probably had as a kid in middle school but it has
some polishing compound and all i have to do is i just have to run my rust eraser over my blade
and if i have any of that shmeg that nonsense that nastiness on my blade it's going to help remove it
pretty pretty easily okay now you just want to be careful that you're not cutting into the edge of
your knife as you're doing this because this does have an abrasive you don't want to make your knife
duller than it may already be now there might be those of you that are saying well i don't want to
carry this i don't want to carry this what can i use in the field if you go to a hardwood fire
and you take out some ash you can pound that ash against the rock take that ash and use the ash as
an abrasive to remove the nastiness that's on your blade it doesn't remove everything
it is wood and you are polishing metal after all but you'll be surprised at how much that
ash slurry will actually remove from your blade so once i clean my knife the blade if it's a
folding knife i might take it to the sink and run it under warm water uh warm water i don't want to
use any crazy detergents or anything like that i definitely don't want to put my knife in the
dishwasher plenty of knife experts have come out and said that the temperatures that are achieved
inside of a dishwasher will actually destroy the heat treat your knife so what i'm going to
do is i'm just going to run under warm water i'm going to towel dry it as best as possible and if
it's summertime or if i have the the heat on in the winter i might put this in front of a fan
and dry it out that way so that's cleaning my knife the next thing i'm going to do with my knife
is i'm going to do the sharpening process now i'm going to use a very very small stone here
this sharpening stone is actually from a company called fallen even on one side it's a diamond
stone on the other side it's a ceramic stone okay or a piece of ceramic the diamond stone is really
used if i have a burr on my knife that i really need to get rid of now depending on who you speak
to they'll either say that you're going to take the tip of the knife and work from tip to heel
or they're going to tell you you're going to go from the heel of the knife to the tip be very
careful when you're sharpening your knife as you get to the tip that you're not creating too much
of an input where you're lifting the knife on an angle because if you lift it on an angle what's
going to happen is you're going to slowly create a butter knife with a rounded tip instead of a point
personally the way that i do this is i will work at one side until i can see a burr the bur
is a very very fine wire that you're i'm sorry i'm going to work until i
create a wire it's a very fine piece of steel that's going to be formed along the edge and if
i have a flashlight handy what i can actually do is i can look down the edge of my knife with my
flashlight and i'll see if there's any shiny spots and those will be the spots that i want to give
a little extra attention to as i was mentioning i'll work one side until i can create that wire
after i work that one side i'll do the other side i mentioned there are ways of going from tip to
heel you can go heel to tip personally i'm someone who works in small circles
you'll know when you are at the appropriate stage to flip the blade over when there's less sound
and how much pressure you want to use is the equivalent of what you would use shaving your face
it's really not a lot of pressure if you apply too much pressure you're going to remove too
much steel more than you actually have to so what i do is i work in small circles light pressure
and by going in small circles i'm actually creating a small convex edge on the on the blade
now once i do this on my ceramic and i get my edge to where i need it to be i'm sorry once i do
it on my diamond i'll flip it over and i'll go to ceramic and i'll do the same thing on the ceramic
again listening to the sound and i'll try to give you an idea of what it may sound like
and what i'm doing in this process again is i'm trying to create the wire equal on both sides
some guys will insist on doing 12 slices one way 12 the other as long as it's consistent you're
going to get the results you need now if you're not comfortable holding the stone in my in your
hand like this you'll notice when i hold it i'm only using the center pieces i'm never running
my knife in the direction of my thumb perfectly or my index fingers if you're not comfortable doing
that i'm seated at a table here and what i can do is i can just lay the stone flat
and actually have my hand drop below the level of the table and by doing that i can
achieve the sharpening that i need to achieve now after i'm done sharpening the blade with
a stone and by the way the same process applies to an axe except when you're using when you're
sharpening an axe you're probably using some type of sharpening puck much like this one that's in my
my hands here it has a couple different features once i'm done sharpening right we've got cleaning
sharpening the next thing that i'm going to do is i'm going to hone the blade this is simply a strop
pad if you've ever seen barbers in movies where they're stropping their straight razors before
they go to a client it's essentially going to do the same thing i'm not a fan of flexible strops
where when you roll the knife over the strop it actually is going to dull the edge i like using
my strop on a table like this or in the palm of my hand where i can control the amount of flexibility
that the strop has same process applies i'm just going to go back and forth in this case i'm going
leading with the spine okay but if you are doing a scandinavian ground knife you may want to sharpen
or you should sharpen going into the edge and then you can strop like this because the black compound
is actually a cutting compound when i turn it over and i eventually use the green this is a
polishing compound so we've gone from cleaning to sharpening to stropping now and after i'm done
stropping i can use something as simple as this uh ceramic rod and i can continue my honing process
now with honing with a ceramic rod i'm going to literally use the weight of my swiss army knife
on this rod and i'm just going to run it from one side to the other being careful not to run
it into my fingertips because then i would have to call my buddy austin to do a medical video
that would probably be a bad thing make for a great viral video just not one that i want online
if you don't have a ceramic rod you can use a coffee cup for this you can use the edge of a
window glass is very very hard it is brittle and it does a great job of honing your knife
so let's assume that this knife is is fully sharpened it's been
polished honed how do i test it i can take something like a pen and instead of you know
popping hair on my arm which by the way it is doing instead of popping hair on my arm
what i can or you've seen some old timers take the tip of their fingernail right and they'll run
it on the tip of their fingernail or they'll run over the edge we're dealing with a sharp knife and
it's not a good idea to point it at part of your body i can simply take a knife a pen hold it on an
angle and my edge should cut into the pen and i'll exaggerate it by using the back side of the blade
what should not happen is as i run the edge over the pen it shouldn't slip down so when
i turn this over and i do it the correct way you'll notice that as i run this edge over the
pen there's not one spot that is slipping off the pen because it's a properly maintained edge
the final thing that you're going to do is lubricate and store your knife
there are some products out there like this bear fat that comes from scout knives and you can put
it on your knives you can use olive oil you can use different oils from the kitchen if you're
using a knife for game processing but just be aware that certain oils may turn rancid you don't
want to use like certain oils that uh you know you're not going to want to eat on your knives
so i wouldn't want to use like wd-40 which isn't an oil but i don't want to use that on
my knife if i plan on doing a lot of food prep don't leave a coating of that but again you
can find all different knife oils kitchen knife oils that you can put on your knife you can store
it and and put them away for a folding knife you can use those unsafe kitchen oils or i should
say non-kitchen oils on the joints but please be careful not to let those oils drip onto the blade
there you have it folks uh when it comes to working with your knives maintaining your knives
you've got to clean them you've got to sharpen them you've got to hone them then you've got to
lubricate and store them the more you do this the better you're going to get the more refined your
process is going to get you're going to find the tools that are out there that are going to
you know definitely make you a better knife sharpener and you're going to find some that
you might believe are gimmicks the important thing is is that you maintain a very sharp
edge don't let your knives get dull a dull knife is a dangerous knife and make sure if you do let
your knife get dull that you bring it back up to a safe level of sharpness because again if
you bring it up to that safe level of sharpness you can simply skip to step three and four and
never have to worry about sharpening again as long as you do that for your lifetime guys i'm kevin
estella with craft survival this is a little knife sharpening tutorial thank you so much for watching
be safe out there go practice these skills and pass along this knowledge to other viewers