Sharpening Your Knife

Do not grind your blade, grinding can over heat and damage the temper of the steel of your knife. Use honing oil with your whetstone; this will help keep your stonefree of shavings that can clog the pores of the stone and make it less effective. A quality, natural whetstone is all that is needed to sharpen your knife unless you damage the edge and are forced to take off a lot of steel. In such cases is recommended that you use a bonded abrasive to begin your sharpening process.

A common honing angle for a sheath knife is between 20 and 30 degrees. The larger the angle the tougher the edge. Maintaining a consistent angle is the critical factor in honing your edge; to small an angle makes a weak edge which will dull rapidly. An angle much less than 20 degrees will make the edge so thin as to bend the knife edge slightly under honing pressure and therefore it cannot really be made sharp.

1. Place some honing oil on the stone, never use it dry. The oil will keep the steel shavings from clogging the pores of the whetstone. For the “De Luxe” stone only use water.

2. Lay the blade across the hone as illustrated, tilting it to the desired honing angle and draw the blade across the hone in a slicing motion, sweeping the length of the hone so that the whole blade from guard to tip is passed over the hone in one motion.

3. Turn the blade over and again till to the same honing angle and repeat the same motion as in step 2.

4. Take equal numbers of strokes for each side of the blade to maintain a balanced cutting edge.

5. If you are establishing an edge on a new knife or re-establishing an edge on a damaged knife, honing may take quite a long time. Once you have achieved the edge and sharpness desired, you knife edge can be maintained with very little effort as long as you do not damage or wear it down severely. It may be necessary to use manmade bonded abrasives to hone damaged knives with nicks, broken or when establishing a new edge.

6. After you knife has been honed, clean your whetstone by applying more honing oil to it and rub with your fingers then wipe off excess oil with a clean cloth. You can wash away the remaining oil if desired with soap and water.

7. The last step is the stropping. Please clean your blade with a soft tissue before. Draw the blade edge along the leather with slight pressure. First, use the abrasive leather side with the blue packed abrasive paste. Then you can straighten and polish the blade with the fine leather side.