How To Sharpen Pocket Knives

So I'm going to show you how to sharpen pocket knives. The equipment you'll need is sharpening stone, and some what we call a strap, and some water, and a nice flat stable surface. What I'm going to show you now is the same for every type of knife.

And this is a small pocket knife which you can sharpen on your diamond stone. Let's say, then, you need a small splash of water and basically, what you're doing is you can sharpen on the bevel. Now, as you can see on this small pocket knife, the bevel is incredibly hard to see.

So, for demonstration purposes, I'm going to do it on my bigger bush craft knife. Because you can see here, this is the bevel - this flat area here - and that's what you need to sharpen on. What you're doing when you're sharpening is that you are rubbing away and grinding away the metal right there to the cutting edge.

You get to fine the cutting edge as possible. Now, there are many different grits you can use when sharpening a knife. On the end here, it's written 300 grit, 200, 400, 600.

The lower the number, the coarser the grit so the rougher it is. I'm just going to go with 600 grit on here. Now, with your diamond stone, you just need a small splash of water like that which just helps the knife glide more easily over the grinding surface.

So, I'm drying my hands off. You need a nice stable surface to do this. Of course, your safety is always important because these knives are incredibly sharp.

Okay. So, what we need to do is you need to get the bevel flat on this surface here. The best way to do that is to first put the knife completely flat there, and then roll it forward and you'll feel it stop like that.

Now, I'll know I'm on the bevel which means that the cutting edge is running along the surface of this grinding stone. I'll then tilt the knife horizontally, and then I'll push it away from me like this. And as I push it away to the end, I will lift the back end of the handle up.

This ensures that the grinding takes place all the way up even on this curved section here. So, once I've done seven away and seven towards me, I'll then either do six away, six towards me, five away, five towards me, or I can just start them alternate each way. It's really up to the individual.

So I'll just carry on sharpening this knife now. Okay, let me get the belt when I use this for demonstration since this is what most people can get hold of. With your belt, you need a nice sturdy tree just to lash it around to do the strapping with.

As I said, you want the dull side at to work on. So I'm going to place it around here like this. I'm just lashing it on the tree.

So strapping is really the important final part to get that nice razor edge on. Now, before, we were pushing the cutting edge forward into the sharpening stone. This is different.

We need to pull the cutting edge away like this. So you need to place your knife on, tilt up so that the bevel is flat against the leather. Keep the leather belt nice and taut.

You don't want to dish them too much like that, as you can see that leather is blunting your cutting edge. So it has to be nice and taut. And you always move the cutting edge away from the leather - very common sense that if I push that into the leather, I'm going to cut my leather straight in half.

So it's always away. So I'll start there. As I draw the knife up, I pull at it as well so I get to the tip of the blade and I lift the end of the handle as well just so I can get that final curve in.

Once I've got up, I'll then come down. And then up again, and then down again. So, the knife that I've fully sharpened, and I'll demonstrate how sharp it is with the hairs on my own.

It should be sharp enough that you can shave your hairs like that. The sharper the knife, the easier your work will be. And essentially, the safer it is because you put less pressure into your knife because the carving is easier.

And that's how to sharpen a pocket knife. .