How to Sharpen a Knife: Beginners Tutorial

[Music] you [Applause] [Music] hey guys today I'm going to give you a couple tips on how to sharpen your knife I know a lot of people avoid doing it they're worried they're going to mess up the blade but it's actually pretty hard to do if you're paying attention so the things you'll need to start a stone obviously I prefer a fine stone but I'm generally pretty easy on my knives and it doesn't take much to sharpen if your knife has a lot of burrs and flat spots or you have a really hard knife steel say like a 1095 of an Ontario or a ke baare you're going to want something a little coarser to start and then besides the stone just a piece of leather I actually prefer just a thick piece of leather set on the table and you can use that like a strop or you can go out and get an actual straw but I use it the same way first setting it down so I have more control over it and hopefully this will give you the skills you need to avoid something like this this is just a drag through carbide sharpener but I'm constantly telling people not to run their knives duties I mean it can it can ruin a really nice knife pretty quickly it takes off way more material than it needs to and I've honestly never been impressed with an edge that's been run through this so from the factory I know this benchmade grip Tilian has about a 15 to a 22 degree angle and that's common that's going to cover basically all your folders and most your fixed blades unless the company puts a different angle on it for a special purpose now my recommendation is stick to about 22.5 that's standard enough where it's going to sharpen your knife and it won't change the angle too bad if at all so to find a twenty-two point five degree angle you just need a piece of paper this is standard computer paper so you're going to take your piece of paper lay it down and fold it in this direction now that gives you 45 degrees so you're going to take it fold it again in the same direction and that gives you twenty two point five degrees and this makes a great reference for most folders and most fixed blades so you're going to take your stone set it down take your piece of paper and put that on like there and then take your knife and slide it down and remove the paper now that's going to give you the angle you should be running over the stone if you find yourself wavering and forgetting how you should be holding your knife bring it back in and remind yourself of the angle you'll find after a few times that you can put the knife down by memory from there you want to run the blade up the stone at that angle an even number of times per side now you want to check your progress after a couple sets make sure you're keeping the angle of the knife and that you're actually sharpening it this blade is a 1 5 4 cm steel so it's a lot harder than say a 440 stainless or an AUSA and it's going to take a lot more passes to get it sharp if your blade is in aus-8 or a 440 stainless you're going to notice you can remove a lot of material with just a single pass but it's a lot easier to make mistakes so you want to be careful of that if you notice when you check your blade that it kind of feels rough and has a bit of micro serrated don't worry about that that's what the leather is for now after a few passes if you notice that you have problem areas flat spots that aren't coming out you're going to want to take it with a rougher stone and just work that area until it's fixed and then go back to a fine stone now once you're satisfied with the edge there's no burrs or flat spots and it's reasonably sharp you can move on to leather if you have a strop I recommend you put it on the table so it doesn't move if you hang it by the hook on the end I find that it sometimes flexes and can round off the edge of your knife if you have a piece of leather like this it's going to be the same thing you're going to put it on the table and then use it like a stone now to find the angle you need you're going to rest your knife like this look closely and rock it just until the edge touches and that's the angle you're going to use for each pass one common mistake I find was dropping is that they'll go through and at the end of the stroke they'll round up like this that's generally a sign that you're moving too fast and you should slow down and remember to stay consistent throughout the whole past it may not feel like it but this leather is pretty abrasive and it can ruin the edge of your knife and you'll have to start all over so you're going to find the angle and then treat it like the stone doing an even number of passes per side this is only polishing so it is going to take a little bit longer than the stone but using leather like this this is how you achieve shave sharpness so once you're done with a strop your knife should be quite sharp as sharp as factory was or maybe even sharper you can cut paper with it pretty easy although there's no real reason to do that first except for showing off how sharp your knife is and it kind of just dulls it for no reason now if you want to see other tutorials like how to sharpen a serrated knife or a tanto maybe even a machete put it in the comments like and subscribe for updates go on to army barracks comm check out our locations go onto our Facebook or stop in to one of the seven stores we have check out our knife selection we have a ton you know autos fixed blades switch blades we got these new raven crests in OTF and these are definitely worth checking out thanks for watching you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Army Barracks

Views: 2,640,212

Keywords: Beginners, knife, sharpening, tutorial, dustin, farnum, army, barracks, armybarracks, benchmade, ontario, spyderco, buck, kabar, auto, fixed, blade, switchblade, how, learn, dan, bell, quick, butterfly, stone, smith, carbide, edge, super, shave, stab, funny, grind, angle, paper, cut, slash, sog, mtech, wesson, case, chocolate, chip, cookie, maim, level, open, puppy, dog, kitten, sloth, Orange Soda, Valken, Combat, Kill Count, K/D

Id: GtSMCsWk2gw

Length: 6min 18sec (378 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 10 2016