No Nonsense Non Technical Axe Sharpening!

hot summer day just relaxing here in the shade so what better to do than sharpen up our tools today we're going to look at how to sharpen up this beauty and it's a beauty norland any ax i mean you can sharpen you get my point we're going to sharpen axis today now recently i did a video around different grinds and most axes okay when they are sharpened have a convex grind so what that means is it's not pointed up this way as my hand is right now it's more like this okay so it's going to give a lot more strength to that cutting edge it has a little bit of what we call a cheek on each side so it's more rounded up to the top so does that really affect the way we sharpen and my answer that is yes and no now the reason that i say yes and no for that is because i guess on a microscopic technical level you can't take a flat stone and sharpen something that has a curve to it but the reality is that normally in our haversack what we're carrying along with us is just some type of small pocket sharpening stone so this is what we're going to use and this is how we're going to get our axe back to sharp so if you're really really crazy nuts about like particular instances when it comes to sharpening this just might not be the technique for you but here's the thing i use an axe all the time all the time i've used this axe for years i've used my trappers hatchet for years and i've been sharpening the axes with this stone for years and it works just fine okay so let's erase all that internet craziness of you're doing stuff wrong um and just focus on what works and this works trust me okay so a small sharpening stone we're going to use water on our stone always to work as a medium there to catch whatever we shave off or file off or grind off whatever way you want to look at it because the reality is when we sharpen something we're removing metal we don't want that metal to get trapped inside the pores of our stone so putting a little bit of water on here because it's everywhere in the field works really really well it'll it'll become a slurry and then you just wipe it off at the end and your stone stays good okay so enough of the stones how do we actually sharpen this thing so it's going to be the same process that i teach when we utilize a knife and we sharpen that in the field and that is to start with just this blade edge pointed straight up we want to be able to look down at it and really focus on sharpening the proper area of this okay we don't want to destroy it or change the grind all that much we just want to get in there and touch this thing up and make it sharp again so with the blade facing up and a nice wet sharpening stone what we're going to do is replace that sharpening stone against our axe now there is a gap as you can see here between the axe blade edge and my stone so what we're going to do now is we're going to just start to lean our stone into that edge as soon as that line the black line between our stone and the edge or the gap between the stone and the edge disappears i like to say black line because you can see that black line black line it's gone once we get to that point we're going to just keep that there now we can either angle our axe in or we can just angle our stone in okay one or the other is gonna work really really well for this so what i'm gonna do is angle in my stone and what i'm gonna start to do now at this point is just make circles all right i'm going to make sure i'm keeping along the edge and we're going to continue making passes down with small circles the edge of that ax blade and then we're going to work our way back up keeping track of how many passes we actually make while we do this now what is important to remember while we do this is to continuously make sure that our stone is just closing in that little black line which you can see right in between the stone and the cutting edge so as i close that in and as soon as it disappears i'm where i need to be and as i go along i need to evaluate each section of this blade what happens if we start to go too far over is we start to grind away that sharp edge we're creating and if we go too far back okay we're not getting any material removal on that edge and it's not going to sharpen it up okay so we want to make sure that we evaluate as we make our passes that we're keeping that black line or that gap closed down and back down and back and then you would of course rotate the ax around and do the same on the other side remember to be consistent that if i go down back down back then on the other side down back down back and with just a simple stone like that and a little bit of work your axe blade is back to nice and sharp so literally don't over complicate it when it comes to sharpening yes there is very complicated systems out there and there are complicated ways and very advanced ways that you can get very very precise but at the end of the day we're woodsman we're out here having a good time and we just need this thing to be sharp to cut and slice and get the job done and this little stone will do that i mean it's so simple it's just easy just remember keep that angle proper to the cutting edge and then just assess it the entire time you're removing material but use this because i guarantee you're going to love it and it just takes it well the simplicity level is uh it's great takes all the nonsense out of it and you'll have a good sharp axe and you'll get back to doing the things we love while everybody's over there arguing if it's the proper angle and they don't even know what they're looking at anyway so hey um definitely add this to the toolbox and check out everything over coldcrackerbushcraft.com and until next video keep your axe sharp and stay in the woods

Channel: Coalcracker Bushcraft

Views: 185,493

Keywords: Coalcracker Bushcraft, Dan Wowak, Appalachian Bushman School, Camping, Hiking, Survival, Bushcraft, Survival Skills, Bushcraft Skills, outdoorlifestyle, survivalinstructor

Id: xYAauT_H7Go

Length: 6min 12sec (372 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 17 2020