All I can tell you is that it is about 18% gray in color, it is small (about 3" long by 1" wide) and I work both knife and stone (yeah, I know, not a good technique, but I've always been one of those people who can put an edge on anything - learned in the boyscouts and found it easy).

Greenhat, I wouldn't dream of tampering with what is working. I may have to see the video someday...Sounds like you have a fairly common, good, small stone. That said, you may not easily find the quality of stone you have on the store shelf, don't lose it. Bill

LOL
Mr. Harsey,
Greenhat is what is known in the trade as a FOG. He probably has the stone tied to some part of his anatomy with a piece of green 550 cord.

I have always used a diamond rod about 4 inches long. Hasen't failed me yet. I was even able to put an edge on a splitting maul, not razor sharp but sharp enough to shave the hair on your arm. It took me about 3 hours but I was board as hell. I can't remember the name of the manufactor but I will post some pictures in a few.

Not Reaper quality but you get the idea

Smokin Joe, Those work good. I use the small flat plastic handled diamond sharpeners all the time around here on the bench and in the field. For bench work I can chamfer edges of hardened steel, touch up carbide milling cutters, drill bits and other small jobs by hand. More on that to follow.

On the ceramics, soak them in Clorox or scrub them with a Scotchbrite Pad or toothbrush and Chlorine Scouring Powder (Comet) to clean the metal from the pores. I also found that a plastic bag of clorox suspended in an ultrasonic cleaner really expedited the process.

How I Field Sharpen a knife, PART ONE
 

My field experience comes from logging, hunting and fishing. All involve activities far from a dry comfortable shop and usually an edged tool is involved.
You guys get a lot farther from the shop than I do so here is PART ONE:- As a knifemaker I have long worked at testing various steels, heat treats and sharpening methods to arrive at what works best for my knife owners. I am not alone in this, much of this testing was with my peers and done in public in front of many in the knife industry. For several years I helped put on the OKCA Knife Steel Seminars each April in conjunction with the Oregon Knife Show and was a featured speaker. Knives get dull, that's a fact of life.
The best steels on this planet can be dulled by something. There is no such thing as a dull proof steel. We use the best steel we can get our hands on but edge work will still be needed at some point.

To understand how to sharpen in the field, let me try to explain how I sharpen under ideal conditions first.
At the bench in the shop I use a Norton two sided stone about 10 inches long. The fine side is Norton Fine India, about 320 mesh aluminum oxide and that's what I use the most. For game work this stone will put an edge on a knife that will both cut the best and last the longest. Under magnification this edge looks like a row of very fine saw teeth coming from each side.
There are many different kinds of sharp and not all of them are good for us. An example of "sharp but not good" is a fine polished true razor edge like on a scalpel. This edge has very high intial sharpness but gets dull very fast because there is no "tooth" to the edge like we get with the 320 mesh stone. This is diminished edge endurance due to structure from finish.
The first thing I do prior to sharpening is anchor the stone to the bench so it doesn't slide while sharpening. Next I find the WD-40 or even better, some kerosene. This is to keep the shavings of steel abraded from the knife from sticking to the stone.
If I have a dull knife, the edge, under the microscope may look smooth, worn, chipped, rolled over and just plain rounded off, depending on how the steel failed. All steel will fail under the right conditions.
As The Reaper said, we have to remove steel to re-establish two clean planes coming together from each side to form the sharpened bevels.
I use both my hands on the knife, one on the back of the blade for pressure. For double edge knives, this means pay extra careful attention or at least keep a stack of real good bandaids nearby.
I set up my angle and push as if I'm trying to take a shaving off the surface of the stone. I do not change angle for the backstroke and return the knife on the stone.
This is an abrasive process and unless we are sharpening straight razors on soft (fast sharpening) stones and strops, cutting on both the push and pull is ok. The key is keeping the same angle without having to relocate the edge for every stroke. When we have taken enough steel off the edge to bring the sharpening bevels back together from each side, this can be perceived by feeling for the "wire edge".
The "wire edge' is steel that is tough enough to not break free of the end of the blade but is no longer part of the solid edge. re-read this last sentence several times
You can feel this by rubbing your finger tip from the master bevel outward off the edge. Do this from each side and you may feel the burr from one side only.

How we remove this burr, or wire edge determines how sharp the knife starts out. Do it again
If you bend the burr back and forth until it breaks off this will make a series of little flat spots on the most outward part of the cutting edge and this is not as sharp as this knife can be!.
I remove the burr by barely increasing the sharpening angle ever so slightly (picking the spine of the blade a bit higher off the stone) and taking a light wispy stroke on the stone, alternating sides. Depending on the alloy of steel and the heat treat this may leave little strands of steel on the stone when the wire edge comes off. This edge should just shave hair and cut difficult materials aggressively.
Greenhat is doing the same thing when he uses the small ceramic stick to finish his knife. ON TO THE FIELD!

Re: How I Field Sharpen a knife, PART ONE
 

You see, I learn something new every day.

Thank you Mr. Harsey! Great input to a great thread.

TR

I was biting my lip, thanks Reaper. Just so I have it very clear, you push, then pull without turning the blade over (on the same edge)? Seems that would certainly help maintain the angle. It will also make the Emerson a snap, since the edge is one-sided sort of.

If Mr Harsey made a knife sharpening video I would buy it, I havent got a clue what Im doing and it would probably help me a lot to actually see it being done properly.

I'm in the same boat as Ktek.

Are the lansky sharpeners necessarily bad? It's the only thing I can sharpen a knife with.

My first knife was a Camillus Mk2 KBAR that I got from a SEAL that used it in Vietnam. I did more to ruin that knife with my attempts at sharpening it then anything else. :rolleyes: It's crazy how much metal I took off that thing, and all I did was make it as dull as a butterknife.

FIELD SHARPENING-IN THE FIELD
 

I just remembered, some of you guys pride yourself on being kinda resourceful.
This is a good thing however when I mentioned kerosene for the sharpening stone, I meant plain old lamp oil kerosene. This doesn't mean that I recommend you use the stuff from both the fixed and rotor winged fuel oil dispensers you may be in proximity of.
This stuff has more volatile organic compounds added and is probably not good to breath if you don't have to.


FOR FIELD SHARPENING I change gears pretty fast. I to use a different approach than in the shop to get the same result, much as many of you already do. I use the now common diamond sharpeners that are small and lightweight.
Here is how I sharpen when away from the shop.

Hold the knife stationary and move the sharpening stone. Seated is best so I can brace my knife holding arm on a leg. Do not stick knife in leg.

I work the edge of the knife with the diamond stone like I am using a file. The important step here is to look and see what the stone is doing on the edge.

Your sharpening stone usually makes a slightly brighter fresh mark on the edge when you start. This is when you make the adjustments by feel to set up the angle you want to sharpen at.

You can see where your sharpening while your working. At the bench we have to stop, take the knife off the stone and turn it over to see what was done. Advantage, Field Sharpening.

When sharpening you have to keep the same angle to get a knife sharp. This means doing the same thing until it's done, not changing the angle of stone until it sharpens the edge.

This is why thicker knives are harder to sharpen than thin knives- there is more steel to remove.

NousDefionsDoc,
You got it, I push and pull the blade a number of times on one side only, then turn the knife over and do the other side. This gets a lot of work done fast. I have to be smart enough to watch and feel what I'm doing so I don't do too much.
WOOBIE MASTER-
Lansky's are great, some of the sharpest edges I've ever seen customers do are with these. you could do surgical instruments with them if you could get the jig clamped on. I have one around here somewhere but it's too slow for me to set up and use and seems hard to do big blades with.
The reason I'm talking about hand held diamond stones for "field" use is they are very small and light, and don't care how hard the steel is.

If possible, carry at least Medium and Fine Diamond "stick". Using the Medium will save time by getting more done faster, then finish with the Fine. For hard work, you have a using edge using just the Medium.

Take for example the steel CPM S-30V, it has enough vanadium to form vanadium carbides. These vanadium carbides are harder than the aluminum oxide used to make sharpening stones but are valuable in that they add measurably to the edge holding when cutting tough materials.

Chris Reeve and I focused the heat treat on the Yarborough knife for maximum toughness with good edge holding. This knife is produced from the CPM S-30V.
This way we can sharpen the Yarborough knife on a normal stone and still have the edge holding abrasive resistance gained with the vanadium carbides.

I just tried your field technique on my Leatherman blade with the DMT pocket butterfly thing. I actually sharpened my knife! I will continue to practice (I have an old Gerber Mark II that has never been sharpened) before I start thinking I have it down, but you might have just achieved a miracle!

Thanks so much.

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LOL