 Well, go back to the channel everybody. We've got a rainy day here in Texas finally. It's a good day to sit in the garage Tinker with stuff and today is technical Tuesday So we're gonna talk about something I think every outdoorsman needs to know how to do and that is sharpen and hone your knives I'm not talking about kitchen knives here. We're talking about the bread and butter knives that all of us use Everybody carries a pocket knife on them If you do a lot of camping Bushcraft stuff like me. You've got different style camp knives and then everybody's got to have a filet knife For fish and then a skinning knife I'm sure a lot of you have at least one of these types of knives and they all get dull. We got to sharpen them So I wanted to make a video on how to do this the simplest way. I know possible. There's thousands of Internet videos and articles on how do you sharpen a knife? But really at the end of the day what you should be doing With your knives that you use on a regular basis, and you're not destroying them is just honing them So if you really take care of your knives You should sharpen them once or if they came really good from the factory sharp And then just hone it the rest of your life that comes with getting a pretty good steel With your knife I always like to get to get a knife that has a better steel rather than the handle material and all that because It's just got to last a lot longer and you're gonna have to spend less time in here Messing around with sharpening even though I enjoy doing it. So let's start with the one that everybody's got That's pocket knife got my bench made Osborne here It's one of my favorite pocket knives and here's what you need to remember on I'm gonna say 85 90% of the knives From pocket knives on up is that most of them are going to have a flat style or saber grind style Blade and then you're gonna have around a 20 degree Bevel that's gonna be your actual cutting edge This is a these are both work sharp sharpeners They make a lot of easy to use sharpeners, especially if you're just getting into it You're not sure about these angles. This is 20 degrees right here So if you practice sharpening on these and memorize these angles, then you can take just a regular sharpening stone. I always carry at least a Like a ceramic rod with me in my truck or in my pack Just a small one that I can hone knives with on the go and just remember that angle So here's what you do if you're not sure what 20 degrees is or you have a knife. You don't know the exact Cutting edge of it. What the bevel is you just take your sharpening object, whatever it is This happens to be a ceramic rod. I'm gonna take my blade place it flat on The stone or the rod and I'm gonna start angling it until I see That that cutting edge is just starting to dig Into the rod and then just slide it forward and You will actually start to feel it bite into that Ceramic hard material and that's when you're removing just a tiny tiny bit of material off of your blade So you just go back and you do that on the other side And just continue to do that look down at see what it is Slide it down one side go to the other You just want to do that an equal number of strokes on both sides Sometimes it's only 10 or 20. Sometimes you got to do it 30-40-50 times just depending on the blade hardness, but you will start to feel where it gets smooth Keep it consistent. I could do it on this. I could do it on this little rod right here same program I Could do it on this this bench stone right here, which I really enjoy using It's probably my favorite Way of honing the knives it's on the bench stone And I could feel that tackiness of the knife. It's really starting to stick It's gonna cut pretty darn smooth and start to make those little edge curls If you can make those little curls like that then your knife is really sharp So this is the thing I'm gonna recommend everybody get if you're an outdoorsman you want to keep your knives Really sharp especially with skinning knives, which we'll get into in just a second You need a strop, which is just a piece of leather that's got some compound material in it, which is basically like a grit and it helps to really refine Your knife and you do the opposite way with the strop. So you're not going into the leather You're gonna just pull against it at a shallow angle similar to that 20 degrees I just do it a little less than that So you're not rolling over that edge and this takes off any little extra burrs And the same thing with this on listening to it feel it if you're feeling like it's Scraping against like you've got resistance. That's good. That means you're actually honing if it feels just really smooth like there's nothing there that means you probably got a Dagum near razor edge on it So that knife is going to be very sharp It's going to cut cleanly That one is good to go same honing concept is going to apply to Most everyone's camping knives. This is a knife. I carry on me on the boat all the time It's my plier and knife combo, you know, it's a Basically a flat grind and then it's got that a little 20 degree and some some knives are 25 If you get like a bigger camping knife, but same concept applies This one's actually Needs a little bit of sharpening, but it's the same concept with those type knives Let's move on to filet nice. I feel like everyone's got a filet knife Maybe you got it at Walmart 20 years ago. You still got it in the garage. It's not sharp Like this one right here. This one is sharp But I mean filet knives are super useful. I still use them when I have less than five fish to clean I just want to do a really good sharp job on it. I don't want to break out the the electric So filet nice are really thin and it's going to be a shallower angle. You're usually less than 20 degrees You know anywhere from 15 on up to 20 is probably going to be where you're at with the filet knife And you're you're usually kind of tough on a filet knife because you're you're cutting through and around bones You get these little nicks and and burrs in the knife more often I would say than just like your regular pocket knife So that's where I actually do like to use the sharpening steel So this is a steel rod that has little grooves in it and this is going to take more material off The knife edge then say a ceramic rod and I'm sure everyone is seeing like in a butcher shop Or maybe in a movie or something, you know the guy in the in the back. That's That's sharpening up the knife like this. That's a very effective way Just sharpen up a knife very quickly and I would say that's a lot of feel it takes a lot of getting used to But you can do the same thing with memorizing the angles like this or Looking for that feel so Just vertical 90 degrees put the knife on it and then slide it down At what you believe is that angle or until you feel that bite You don't have to get crazy and go fast with this We just take your time and go slow Just do it until you are not hearing Those real grainy scratches on your strokes After you do it for a while, you'll you'll learn to feel that That's acceptable. We keep working on it Until we get it as sharp as we want to and that's Honestly, that's up to you. The only thing I would say is super imperative to have a Hair splitting sharpness to is your skinning knives So your skinning knives are usually pretty thin so you can get that maximum slicing effect and This is one I used to clean a raccoon the other day. I hadn't sharpened it Since it's got a good steel on it, but we'll just see where it is That's a pretty darn clean cut caught a little bit at the end there So all this really needs is a honing, but this blade is a convex blade So what that means is or what that shape is it's like an axe and There's not a whole lot of knives that are like this your mainstream knives Just have that bevel like we talked about with the bench made and In the other camp knives so many of you probably won't even use a convex blade ever But if you do want to get one and learn how to sharpen it It is a natural sharpening method Where you'll basically take whatever it is it can be stone. It can be Sandpaper You know whatever you whatever kind of sharpening surface and you're just going to rock that blade Back and forth on your stone Or your sandpaper Whatever it is and that natural rocking motion back and forth instead of just going one straight forward Motion when you're going back and forth like that your hands are slightly Changing every time you move and it creates that rounded axe blade effect and the reason the convex blades are Really good is because they're a good mix between splitting and slicing so you have a lot of meat Behind that cutting edge. All right, let's get a couple of strokes with the strap It already feels smooth If you wanted to get really crazy You could take a strap like this with a convex and just do that back and forth for an hour until you get it Really sharpened if you wanted to do it that way some people like to There's so many ways to sharpen a knife y'all, but at the end of the day It is about putting it on another surface and keeping a consistent Hand motion and just repeating that until it feels smooth That's that's all it is. So let's see how Sharp this thing is now should be very sharp So when you're cutting through that paper, what you want to see is a very clean edge. I Talked about those curls, but when you can just effortlessly Put that thing up there and it slides through and it literally feels like a hot knife through butter That's when you know and on a skinning knife. This is what I want to look for For a for a final test I want to make sure to focus here so you guys can see it you want to be able to Just cleanly take a patch of hair off like that where it just pops It's popping off of my arm So that that's what you want very clean hair popping sharp Don't think you have to have some really expensive, you know $200 plus knife with a really high-end steel to get that hair popping sharpness. You definitely don't This is a little kit that I keep in my truck during hunting season and this is just some rubber gloves I keep one of those little work sharp Ceramic sharpeners in there as well I keep a small Leather strap and I've got some paring knives in here. These are literally four dollar Victoria Knox paring knives that this is a really cheap steel that dulls really fast But I literally keep like four or five of them in there So I can just go to the next one after one gets dull and I can sharpen them all at one time at the end Of the day, but you can look at this same sharpness You can hear it a little bit But that is a super clean I mean look at these tiny little edge curls. I can get off That very thin knife. That's we're having that very thin edge is gonna help you In your your cleaning and I think this I got this down to like a 15 degree angle So it's very shallow Very spicy So if you guys want one of the cheapest and most effective deer cleaning knives out there I'll leave an Amazon affiliate link down below Pick you up some of these get you a little sharpening tool like this You're gonna have to sharpen them. They go dull Probably about halfway through an animal you'll have to switch up to another one But just get you a couple of them and if you want to learn how to sharpen You know, it's four bucks. So if you completely screw up the knife, you can learn with that one start on another one It's a really cheap an easy way to learn how to sharpen knives And it's a dang good cleaning knife So there's one more type of sharpening honing that we'll talk about and that is on Your Scandinavian grind knives or scandies for short for me when I started learning learning how to sharpen a camp knife It was very easy for me to To to learn and it's very easy to sharpen in the field That's another reason I like it because you literally just look down it and you have such a long bevel to look at It's just easy to see. So if you take a flat stone or you can even take One of these little round ceramics right here Don't even look at what's on the edge here. It could be 20 degrees. I don't know But the way you do it on scanties, you're gonna lay that thing flat down until you see that bevel hit You go just over it And then you'll run run your stroke and you're not gonna get it exact It's it's impossible to really get a scanty grind to lay flat on that stone and and maintain that really flat Chisel, but you're you'll end up with what is called a Scandi vex. So your natural hand motion is Going to put that little Convex into it. And so you end up with a scanty vex, which is arguably one of the best Hybrid grinds out there that just happens naturally by sharpening these scanties after over time So they're excellent at splitting and they're really easy to sharpen in the field That's why I like them But if you have a bench stone at home, you could just set it flat on the stone You just push it to the edge where that grind is going to hit and then you just start pushing Back and forth and you flip it over do the same thing on the other side Then don't forget that strop Lay it flat angle it Just till you see that that edge just to start to hit that leather and then slide it back That is a hair splitter and a wood splitter It's a wood splitter that'll cut hairs. That's a dangerous knife right there You know, I was actually going to make this video a long time ago and then a knife Point ended up in my leg and then I ended up not making the video So I finally got around to so that is how I sharpen my different kinds of knives here at home and out in the field as well Obviously if you want to Get it done really quick There's a number of belt sharpening systems and precision Vice systems that that will give you an exact factory edge that will just Be unbelievably hair splitting and that is totally cool to do why you're here in the garage Why you're at home, whatever But I like to practice how I'm gonna have to be able to do it out in the field because that's when you really need to sharpen A knife you've doled it when you're skinning an animal cutting too much hair or you nicked a bone or You know, you just need your your camping axe or knife to be honed so you can effectively use it That's what it really counts So I like to be able to learn that and be able to sharpen it Just as effectively out in the field as well and I suggest you guys do the same, but sometimes when I get a knife from the factory I'm not happy with that edge. I'll absolutely whip out the belts and get that thing exactly how I want it Or if I just know this thing is so damaged It's just gonna take me a long long time to do it by hand I'll go ahead and whip out the belts, but most of the time like I said, you're really not sharpening your honing So if you guys want to pick up some of these sharpening tools that I use links are down below and Thank you guys for tuning in to another technical Tuesday where I'm trying to Deploy all the knowledge that I have gathered over the years in the fishing space Outdoor hunting camping space. We'll see we'll see where it goes but Leave a comment down below on something you would like to see and I will do another technical Tuesday on it Thank you guys for being here and we'll see you on the next one You