Walmart Kit Revisited: Sharpen a Dull Knife

hey everybody this is Josh here the great bearded green beret wanted to revisit the Walmart gear loadout and tell you a little story so the reason I haven't done the overnight with that gear yet is because just taking it out of the package and kind of setting things up to pack it away to get ready to go you know what I noticed was a lot of it was not quite field worthy not the least of which was this you know my number one tool my Ontario Knife Company Air Force or aircrew survival knife out of the package was basically garbage it was terrible in keeping with the spirit of the Walmart video series mosquitoes are out already and the rains coming and keeping with the the spirit of that I wanted to make sure that there was some sort of option at Walmart that you could actually use to bring this up to speed to where it would be worthy of taken to the field with you because as it came from the package absolutely not a dull knife is a dangerous knife sharp knives or safer knife so it was not ready to take the field it needed to be sharpened I didn't get any sort of sharpening solution at Walmart and the little you know little whetstone is actually a synthetic stone that goes in here basically broke immediately so that wasn't an option so I had to go back to Walmart so I have other sharpening systems I could use but had to go back to Walmart to stay with the theme of the video the video series to make sure that I could you know get this thing filled worthy with a sharpening system that you could also get from Walmart so having said that Ontario Knife Company $4.99 I think it's the $4.99 air for survival knife is how they listed at Walmart garbage out of the package and really to me there's no excuse to sell a knife from the factory that comes dull unless it's a butter knife but to call it a survival knife and the amount of work that I'm probably gonna have to put into this to make it worthy of taking to the field is ridiculous so keep that in mind and it still it's not exactly a cheap die if I think it was still about 40 bucks since I needed to sharpen this to get this field ready so I can kind of go further into that series I finally did break down especially I didn't want to go back to Walmart and buy gear that I don't particularly need but the good of this series I went back to Walmart and picked up a sharpener that was as close to what I would normally use as possible to see if we can bring this back to life I shouldn't say bring it back to life I should say bring this to life for the first time probably the second most common question I get is what do you have in your sharpening kit and how do you actually sharpen your knives so I figured that I would do a couple of videos addressing that because to me there's a difference between what I do as far as sharpening back here at home before I go to the field and honing or polishing or stropping than I do when I'm actually out in the field so I think it's important to understand the difference between those two so when I'm talking about sharpening I'm talking about setting an angle or you know removing a large amount of material to reset an angle using a stone once that's done from that point forward I don't necessarily need to take a stone back to any blade that I have unless I for some reason damage that or I don't maintain it well enough to where it goes so doll that I need to reset those bevels so sharpening and sharpening stones aside from any damage I might do in the field they're not something I typically need to do when I'm out in the field I can get away with just you know honing or polishing it normally with just a leather strop and some paste which I'll get into in another video so this one was so dull from the factory that it actually needs the stones I typically like to use a Japanese whetstone for that I don't have that and it wasn't available at Walmart so I went to see what I could find that's as close to that as possible what I saw was a bunch of pocket pull sharpeners and I despise those I just think it's very difficult to maintain a consistent angle with that as you're pulling it through I just don't think they work for the level of sharpness that I need a knife to be so what I found that's as close to that is this Smith's 6-inch tri hone sharpening system and I like how they use hone in sharpening in the same title there because to me they're very different things again sharpening is removing large amounts of material with the stone to set a bevel or reset a bevel once it's gone dull or if it came from the factory dull and honing is what you do to maintain that edge and that's typically what I'm doing in the field is honing I'm polishing it to keep it at a sharpest point so this was pretty close to what I use it's basically a three whetstone system so we'll take a look show you what's inside you get some instructions I don't know what those are really for then you got this cool little edge guide thing that is set to a 23 degree angle so that goes with the instructions and Smith's honing solution so they recommend whenever you use stone that you use some sort of honing solution light oil or water so what I will tell you is I don't use any oil whatsoever on my stones because once you go oil you can't go back to water waters typically what you'll find in the field even though I'm not planning on using this in the field it's just not a habit I want to get into because waters free and once I run out of this I gotta buy more from Smith's and I don't even know the guy so that goes with the instructions all right so the actual system itself is pretty pretty decent actually and it was interesting that you know this thing was behind lock and key and I'd almost given up hope and bought a a pole sharpener but this moves behind lock and key in this glass case and I was like man that must be expensive but yeah I was I was like $26 so must be a pretty hot item you know if you're losing so much money you got to put it behind glass case yeah that's pretty big I mean it's hard to even shoplift if you think about it anyway made in the USA with us and imported parts anyway pretty simple system but it's got a non-skid base and you've got your choice of three different stones which are very clearly marked coarse medium and fine and from the looks of it the course in the medium or both synthetic stones and a fine is actually probably an Arkansas natural stone so not bad I mean the size of it's pretty good it can sit on top of a desk or a bench top which is how I'm going to use it to show you guys how I do my garage sharpening we'll call it my actual sharpening before I go to the field so let's give this a run see how it works out I'm gonna start with the coarse side because you know the angle on this knife is somewhat set but it's also somewhat irregular and you know I can kind of see if we can get that in focus I can kind of see where the angle is a little bit off on the factory grind but you know I should be able to work with that but I'm trying to maintain that same angle so I'll just put a little bit of water on there and then starting from here using the entire length of this stone and making sure that I use the entire blade and keep that angle indexed and flat across there and maintaining that angle consistently as I go across the stone and then following that curve in order to follow the curve I'll have to maintain the angle here but also rotate the backside so that's what I'm doing here and do about I don't know probably ten good strokes that direction and I'm trying to actually you know as I'm going down this stone kind of think of it as if you're trying to slice a very thin slice off the very top of that stone so that's one and usually you can tell if you're coming off or you're not keeping a good angle because you'll start looking at how it's actually abrading away the service here so I'll do about ten on one side then I'll flip it to the other side I'm trying to do the same thing I want to maintain that consistent angle then I want to use the entire length of the stone and as it starts curving towards the tip I start coming off right here I'm just going to watch that and I'm going to begin angling this back this direction while maintaining the same angle here to keep that in contact and I'll do an equal number of strokes on this side [Applause] whenever you need to just keep it wet you can go back the other direction switch sides the first run I did 10 per side that time I did 9 per side then I'll go every time I switch I'm gonna go one down so this time we'll be eight starting the other direction and I'll start speeding this up a little bit and using both hands just to kind of speed it along after I've gone through and gone 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 I usually go back and forth for about 10 strokes so then from there I'm pretty well set as far as setting my actual angle and doing all the coursework that I really need to do so I'm gonna switch stones from that point once I've got the medium on there I'll get some more water on and I'll repeat that process 10 all the way down to 1 alternating sides and then when I get down to 1 I'll go back and forth 10 times [Applause] so that's the medium work and you can also tell you know aside from counting you can also kind of feel that it starts to get smooth while you're going through this and that's a good indication that you're starting to get it down to the level that that particular abrasion level like this being medium is going to get it to go to the fine stone and continue the process it's very important to keep this one wet because the course and the medium are both synthetic stones this is actually Arkansas pretty sure it's Arkansas whetstone so this is natural stone really important to keep that when wet [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right so for stropping it's pretty similar process once i've got you know the angle set to the way I want it and I really want to polish the edge of that and kind of a line everything I'm going to do a honing or a strapping or a polishing at that point so what I'll do is a leather strop letting the paddle strap and I can put on the table a little bit of Tour max honing compound a little bit of honing paste get that all over my strop [Music] and now I'm going to start at the top and I'm always going to be dragging away from the edge so I'll do 10 this way turn the blade as it gets towards the back [Music] then I'll start from here turn as I go towards the top so again I'm pushing it this way I'm pushing the knife away from that but I'm constantly dragging it away from the edge an alternative way to do it is to set the knife at the correct angle and use the paddle just have to as you're going up you have to follow that curve on the blade flip the knife over set it and drag [Music] and you'll hear spots that are sticky that need polished it should be perfectly smooth [Music] [Music] [Music] whoo little inconsistent right there to watch that light spirits miss me it's not too bad that's your shabby not the sharpest knife in the drawer but that'll do a lot better all right guys I appreciate you guys watching just to kind of reiterate you know sharpening with stones is for what I do back here before I ever go out and actually honing and polishing with a strop typically is what I do when I'm actually out in the field just to maintain the edge that this put on it before I ever went out there so Walmart gear backed revisiting that series if you happen to get this Ontario Knife Company $4.99 err for survival life makes me buy a sharpener - because it's inadequate out of the package we'll see how it does now that I've got a good edge on it as always appreciate your likes appreciate your views your comments questions put them below if you haven't already done so make sure you subscribe to my email list and keep up to date on everything that's going on on the great beard a green beret Channel until next time polka see you in the woods

Channel: The Gray Bearded Green Beret

Views: 98,295

Rating: 4.9250002 out of 5

Keywords: Ranger, Green Beret, The Pathfinder School LLC, Survival, Bushcraft, Preparedness, Fire, Shelter, Camping, Hunting, Knives, Sharpening, Ontraio Air Force Survival Knife

Id: CEezzvY1bVI

Length: 17min 51sec (1071 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 30 2019