Rabbit Stew: Knife Sharpener: Sterling Work

Monday 11 May 2009

Knife Sharpener: Sterling Work

After reading a post about my inability to successfully sharpen a hunting knife, Tom (the author of Boomers and Bullshit - which is a monument to softly-spoken & genteel blogging) very kindly popped a Sterling Knife Sharpening Tool into the post to me.

I got it this morning. In my excitement I snatched it from the postman's hands, tore open the envelope - more or less with my teeth - and hurled myself into an orgy of fevered knife sharpening.

And yes, the bottom line is this: it works; it works very well indeed.

I'd done a good deal of beavering away with stones and strops and Dremmels and suchlike in the past but I'd never managed to get anything like a really sharp edge on the little CRKT Mirage knife that I carry when I'm out hunting. A few swift swipes of the blade through this little Tungsten-Carbide jobbie, though, and it's now sharper than a very sharp thing indeed; honed - in fact - to a perfection that's well-nigh terrifying.

After I'd confirmed this - silently shredding a sheet of paper by merely wafting the knife across it - I dug out every dusty penknife I possessed and used the cunning little tool to zip each of them into a similarly unnerving state of perfection. Then I surveyed my new-found arsenal with a deep, deep satisfaction.

I've been in the habit of using an utterly blunt little blue penknife purely to move small piles of snuff around en route to my nose - using the blade to shift the finely powdered tobacco between my snuffbox and the back of my hand. So of course I sharpened the hell out of this little knife as well and - once done - tested it on the back of my arm. Yes, it was monsterously sharp and produced an instant bald patch on my forearm. Tremendous!

But once I'd done this I thought, Well yes, but you use this on buses and trains quite a lot - don't you? - to keep yourself hopped up on nicotine. What's going to happen now when you've a dab of snuff on the blade and the bus goes over a pothole? You're going to slice your damn thumb off, aren't you, you daft bugger?

So, yes; I'm probably going to have to use a Bluntening Tool on that particular knife if I don't want to risk opening an artery or losing a limb. But that aside - it's a totally cool little gizmo. Thank you very much indeed, Tom!
__________________________________________________________

4 comments:

  1. I can never sharpen a knife and keep an edge to save my soul so maybe this would be a great item to invest in.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hubert,

    It's a nifty little item isn't it? I did a review on some time ago, and I loved it!

    Regards,
    Albert
    The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles.
    The Range Reviews: Tactical.
    Proud Member of Outdoor Bloggers Summit.

    ReplyDelete
  3. HH,

    One more thing...

    If your axe isn't to convex, try it on that. If it works, and in most cases it does, it is SCARY what you can do!

    Hey, that's another post idea!

    Regards,
    Albert
    The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles.
    The Range Reviews: Tactical.
    Proud Member of Outdoor Bloggers Summit.

    ReplyDelete
  4. softly-spoken & genteelHahahahahaha. I shall have to remember that and tell all my friends I've turned over a new leaf!

    Glad it helped. Figured it'd be more useful to you than the PCP.

    ReplyDelete