Bushcraft Knife Sharpening: Achieving The Correct Bevel Angle

Description

http://paulkirtley.co.uk

How do you achieve the correct bevel angle when sharpening a bushcraft knife? This is a question I hear regularly. It's also something which people find hard to get 100% right when they first start sharpening.

In this video, I show how to sharpen a typical knife which is used for bushcraft - the Mora 840, "Clipper" or "Companion" knife - on a full-sized bench oilstone.

The stone used in the video is a standard Draper Tools combination oilstone. Stock No: 50820. For those enquiring about the grit of the stone, there is no specification either on the manufacturers website or on the product packaging. This is a basic, inexpensive stone which sells for around £7-£8 in the UK.

The focus of the video is on achieving the correct angle between the knife and the stone, along the entire bevel. By understanding how to achieve the correct bevel angle and maintain it through your sharpening strokes, this video will help you achieve a effective and consistent bushcraft knife sharpening.

This video forms part of a series of 20 FREE videos I've made to help people with wilderness bushcraft, survival skills and general outdoor life.

To get the other free videos right now, please visit

http://paulkirtley.co.uk/free-tips-and-advice/

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Tags: Bushcraft,Knife Sharpening,Wood,Blade,Knives,Bevel,angle,oil stone,oilstone,Arkansas stone,Arkansas,stone,Waterstone,waterstones,water stone,Japanese Waterstone,Mora,Mora Kniv,Mora Knife,Mora Clipper,Clipper,840,Mora Companion,Companion 840,Mora Companion 840,Knife (Sports Equipment),camping,outdoors,recreation,flat grind,Scandi grind,flat bevel,bevel angle

Video Transcription

hi there I'm Paul currently founder of the award-winning frontier bushcraft and author of Paul Kurt Lee's blog the leading source of wilderness bushcraft advice and information on the net now I get a lot of people asking me about knife sharpening and in my experience of teaching people on bushcraft courses over the years the thing that they have most difficulty with is making sure that they get the bevel angle correct on the sharpening stone along the whole length of the blade and that's what I'm going to share with you in this video some tips and tricks on how to get that bevel angle correct on your typical bushcraft knife most people these days at least start with a Mora often people carry on using them for many years and this is a knife I'm going to use in this video and hopefully that will help you and serve you well

what I've got here is just a basic combination oil stone and this is the typical size of a bench stone that you're going to use at home and it's perfect for sharpening your bushcraft knife if you're using a Mauryan particularly you don't need any more than a simple oil stone and eventually if you buy more expensive maybe a handmade or a custom knife then yes you can invest in more expensive oil stones some really nice Arkansas stones or some Japanese water stones but for a basic knife you need a basic sharpening stone there's no point spending lots and lots of money you can spend you know 10 12 15 pounds on your knife spend a similar amount on your sharpening stone 8 9 pounds will get you a decent combination oil stone like this that's all you need as it name suggests you need oil so we're going to pop that on a bit of a bit of multi-purpose oil on the top there start with the coarse side and the focus of this video is really about getting the angle right now with these with these knives that a lot of people use these more as they have a flat bevel and that makes it relatively simple to achieve the right bevel on your on the sharpening stone to spread the oil out a little bit start here and basically start with the side of the knife flat and then turn it turn it so that the bevel is flat and if you go a little bit too far it's rolling up just just to the point where you feel like it's going to be lifting up you can feel it flat there flat there and put pressure on the front here by putting your fingers on the back of the bevel and then bringing the knife along and there now achieving the angle at the end you need to lift the handle a little bit so that the bevel stays flat there nice so we need a little bit more oil soaking in and to go the other way again we put the knife flat and then we're going to rock it so that again the bevel is flat there and then we draw that towards ourselves along and then as the knife curves away from the stone we're just going to lift to maintain contact with the bevel like so go back the other way their angle up angle up get the right angle lift up back this way so here you can see I'm taking metal off the whole bevel I've got coarse grind there from the coarse stone but I can see that metals come off the whole bevel and that's a good test to show that I'm I'm getting the angle correct to the whole motion same on the other side if I just remove the oil you can see I'm taking metal off the whole bevel so that's exactly what we're looking for and that's all there is to it flat bevel get it flat on the stone almost like taking a slice off the top and you'll you'll get an excellent finish so I hope that serves you well I hope you find that interesting and let me know if you find that helpful in getting your knife nice and sharp and if you like this video please go across to my blog Paul curtly co uk where you can get 20 more free videos like this one full of lots of tips and tricks that will improve your bushcraft survival skills and enhance your outdoor life and that's over at Paul Kirtley co uk go over there and I'll send you the 23 videos straight away thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video