Freehand Sharpening Part 1-The Beginning - Mantis Outdoors

Description

in this video we are going to be discussing the basics of freehand sharping and why you should get into it.

Special thanks to www.sharpeningsupplies.com

for all there help with this video and the videos to follow in this series

Tags: survival,bushcraft,woodcraft,survival kit,outdoors,knife,camping,gear,primitive,skills,mantis outdoors,preparedmind101,william myers,family,education,preparedness,wilderness,woods

Video Transcription

hey how you guys doing this is William Myers mask outdoors in the Kris Tanner studio aka his kitchen so today we're going to be doing a video about freehand sharpening and the reason why I'm doing this video is because I see a trend in this genre that kind of leans towards you know mechanical sharpeners and you know carbide bit sharpeners little little handheld sharpeners and things like that and I don't see a lot not very long at all about like Japanese water stones you know Arkansas stones oil stones I don't see a lot done on that subject and it's one of the things that you know I have several different reasons why I prefer that that type of sharpening over say like just walking up to a Kenan Kenan onion and zip zip zip and that's it you know there's nothing wrong with that in my opinion I just go ahead and go through it you know some of those sharpeners that you get like I said there's nothing wrong with work sharps or anything like that especially in my opinion you know I've used Christmas a ton you know when it comes to like something that's really badly damaged like an axe you know stories long story short an axe of mine came up horribly damaged and my wife actually did it long story short anyway you know it was taken me a very long time to take a file to that you know and get that back to where it needed to be his leader was like a serrated edge at one point you know came here work sharp zip zip zip it was done it didn't even take maybe a minute maybe and you know the steel people class here people talk about you know those things will heat the steel up and it'll do this no you're not getting that hot you're not getting red-hot you're not getting 600 degrees or 800 agrees anyways I'm getting off subject those sharpeners are good I kind of you know when people give me questions about sharpening I do tend to try to steer beginners away from like work sharps and things like that one because it's a fast moving belt don't get me wrong it's not like they're for professionals but you know it's a fast moving belt things are going quickly and I see more often than not probably about 90% of the people that are I would call beginners that jump on like something like that they're gonna knock the tip right off of their blade you know round it over things like that and it happens super quick other things can happen you can you can repro file your edge and not even know it you can dig into your secondary edge not even you know I definitely try to steer beginners especially away from like something like the Kin onion or something like that in my opinion freehand sharpening you're going to get more of a detailed edge more of a satisfying edge in my opinion and that kind of leads me into my next point you know this is something not only do I feel that this is a better way of sharpening a blade it's more of a personal way of sharpening plate to you know this is not just something that I do just to sharpen a blade this is like almost like a hobby in my opinion for me almost like meditation in a way and you know there's a lot of people that share my my view is that I Wow for that as well I can't speak um you know first of all I'd like to just definitely get this out of the way you know with freehand sharpening with like Japanese water stones and etc etc there are people out there that are considered masters just absolute with well with anything in this craft and you know there's stuff of people out there that are absolutely just considered masters you know I am NOT Marie Carter you know I'm not so and so and so and so I'm not a master you know I don't claim to be a master at anything even bushcraft survival all that stuff I'm not an expert I'm not a master I just been a drumstick a guy that's been doing it for a while and I hope knows what he's doing but the same thing that it is with with freehand sharpening you know I've been doing it for a very long time it's one of my passions to be honest with you you like you know I'm known for wild edibles and medicinal plants things like that's a passion to me same thing with freehand sharpening it's a it's a passion it's it's a meditation it's a it's a get right for me you know stressful days things like that you know I'm

glad to see a dull knife at that point because I can go sit down get on some stones sharpen some blades up switch couple stones here and there get that mirror polish that's just very satisfying to me so that's one more reason why freehand sharpening in my opinion is something that you know I I definitely tell people that it's worth getting into you know and you know for a lot of people talk about price difference evening - you know these are not cheap in a way in my opinion let's just say like the work sharp like a workshop I keep coming back to that because I hear that a lot like it's one of the most most famous things in sharpening right now is just grab a work sharp and all your worries are taken care of which you know it is what it is there's there's several different negatives as far as that goes on my opinion but you know when you grab what you can just grab a work sharp and I mean what Chris what are they running right now there's a regular out of the box work sharp about 80 bucks you can get two stones but the stones that I'm going to show you you can get two stones so you got two different grips there but honestly I'm going to get into this here later in the videos but when you boil it down 90% of you only knew those two stones maybe say like a 1000 and a 5,000 say okay 90% of you don't maybe only need a 1,000 grit stone we'll get into that later so I mean the price difference really isn't that much and you get serious into this this is a hobby in my opinion um you know so if you get serious into it it can definitely cost you a lot a lot of money you know there are stones out there they're $650 but there's 30,000 grit and I don't even use them you know I just did I don't need them anything passed in 8,000 10,000 12,000 that's high polishing you know we're gonna get into that too you know anything passed those grits I just I don't need them you know I'm not sharpening Yaga buzz you know single single edge Japanese steak knives or steak knives Japanese chef knives and things like that so you know I don't again a lot of things that I see in and sharpening in my genre bushcraft and outdoors things like that is is fueled sharpening because you know obviously when I

see the stuff as people bring them to my classes and they're filled sharpening and a lot of those in my opinion sad to say are like carbide sharpeners you know these little sharpeners I have carbide V and you just those in my opinion one their crutch okay so that is telling you what the grind of your knife is gonna be that's telling you alright you're gonna have a 17 or 25 degree grind that's it you know to those things take a heck of a lot of material and if you don't know what you're doing and you go too far you can actually see the material just coming right off of those if you get too hard of a knife that's rock weld in the in the 65 and up those carbide tips connect you'll actually chip the edge of those knives you know that's another thing we'll be talking about later on and in this video you know this is this is just me sitting down here talking to you we're gonna be doing some sharpening tutorials in the very next video we're gonna be showing you in this video we're gonna be showing you guys some stones and talking about those stones and telling you what you need what you don't need things like that and then we're gonna move on to some tutorials and things like that okay so is freehand sharpening for you you know there like I said you could just go and buy a work sharp can onion work sharp or you can go by this or that this or that you know or you can get into Japanese water stones which for my investment what am I getting first of all you buy something like let's say let's just go back to a work sharp you have to replace blue belts for that you know you've got to replace those a lot if you're doing a lot of sharpening you have to you know those those key chains sharpeners that don't really work in my opinion anyway and God help you if you have a standing ground you're not gonna get him on those anyways if you are you're gonna put a secondary bevel on like that and that's just blasphemy in my opinion anyway so in my for my investment a Japanese water stone

like I have inverted mirror when we shown you here in a second you're gonna get years of sharpening if you know what you're doing you're gonna get years of sharpening out of one stone if you know obviously if you don't drop and break it that there's there's different stones and that kind of leads me into the next subject is stones themselves so you know when you're looking for stones you're gonna find different types of stones you're gonna find ceramic stones you're gonna find natural stones which if you're a beginner are just getting into this you probably want to stay away from unless you're insanely rich just don't care about spending money does some of the natural Japanese water stones can be outrageously priced and that kind of turns people off immediately on freehand sharpening you know there's there's there's oil stones there's water stones there's the they're stones that are made out of rock resin you know and the grits impacted in the resin you know there's there's a lot of different options you know so it kind of bombards people and they don't really register what's going on they don't know what to buy so I have a set of stones here right now that I'm going to show you so before I move on I definitely want to mention that this video series is made possible by good people at Sharpie and supplies calm you know I read out to them and told them that my plans for this video series and they were very receptive of that and they went ahead and set me out what I asked for for a beginner to get into Japanese water stones and ain't just water stones in general and freehand Sherpa in general but you know for somebody that's just now starting out in this or even you know professionals or people that have been doing it for quite a while I suggest the two begin with the the Shapton series the reason why and it's not like there's not better out there it's not like there's worse out there like that this is a good medium range to professional-grade stone it is a ceramic stone you know we're going to go into the the feel of the stone the reactivity of the stone is like that but these are just really good stones especially for beginners in my opinion especially for our genre you know a lot of carbon steel knives stainless steel stuff this will work for those ranges of rockwell hardness 'as you know like a oh one so speeds we're talking about 56 to 58 on the Rockwell most of your CPM 3v is anywhere from 58 to 60 pretty sure you know so so 60 you're getting into kind of the more harder steels this will sharpen those very well as well you know some stones that are this is the nitpicky side of it you know but some stones aren't very good for harder steals some of them aren't very good for lighter Steel's for more softer Steel's and more forgiving Steel's though it's all about the load up and you know kind of getting ahead of myself but so when I rushed out to sharpen new supplies calm I told them that I wanted four or five stones in the Shapton Pro Series and they sent me out the ones that I asked for so that's what I'm bringing you guys here today and this is actually an 8,000 grit Shapton I'll go ahead and open this up show you guys stone kind of a first on Manas outdoors a box opening and I are you really close to these now some people like to see them some people don't so this is the the American version of the shaft ins you can get a Japanese version they're the same exact stone same exact chemical makeup grind or you know component brace of makeup the only thing is that the Japanese series has all Japanese right does well the only thing that doesn't make sense to me that this is the English version not American but English version of the stone and this has no English on it so I mean that doesn't make too much sense to me but you know once you open this up this will give you some basic kind of care and stuff like that you know everything's in Japanese so unless anybody knows how to read Japanese yeah so basic care you know you don't want to dry them out too fast you don't want to soak them too long some stuff like that you gotta get I got we'll get into all that stuff here in a little bit but there we go comes with this I'm not sure what it is either because it again isn't all Japanese but here's the stone this is the 8,000 grit I mean you could really feel that texture so this is a really nice stone and one of the reasons why I suggest the shaft in Pro Series is because it comes with this case not a lot of stones do there are some Norton's that do you know but you can see it does have little rubber feet on them and you know if you don't have a sharpening system or a setup which we're going to be doing a video on here really soon you can get away with like putting a towel down and putting this base down and then putting the bit of the stone on the base that's what it's meant for and then you can you can sharpen that way so I really am interested in seeing the polish that I'm gonna get with this 8,000 grit stone alright guys so this is in my opinion the perfect setup for a beginner you know this stuff isn't very expensive you know you talk about maybe $50

you know $50 $50 you might be getting a little higher in here and I think this is a hundred dollars so hundred dollars first stone you know people will hear that and they're automatically turned off of this but that being said you know this is a 320 grit this is a 1,000 grit this is a 5000 grit and this is an 8000 grit somebody just starting out you know it's really rough for me to kind of do this but this in my opinion is a pretty complete kit it's very modular you can determine exactly what you want so right away be honest with you this you don't need and you know you really honestly don't need this one either the 320 so if you are just now getting started into this you can go get away with say a 1000 and a 5,000 yeah that's gonna be pretty perfect for you you know as long as you're not letting your knives go just extremely bad and saying that you're not gonna be able to be profile an edge so bringing buying just these two getting you started and getting you into water stones and freehand sharpening and then saving up buying this stone this is gonna allow you to do some reprofiling it's going to allow you to fix some may be chips things like that can maybe allow you to fix around it over tip on a blade this 320 right here you know you're really not going to be able to do too much reprofiling you know you're not going to be able to get into like maybe a secondary edge or something like that you can but you're gonna be sitting there for a very long time so you go even further from that into like maybe the 120s

and

automa plates many other aluminum plates that are diamond plates stuff like that and then you get into lapping and all that stuff but we're gonna be going into that later stone flattening and things like that I just want to bring this stuff to you just just a basic overview of what these stones are and what they can do so you know my knife is extremely extremely dull I'll start on off 320 it has to be really dull for me to go on here though most of the time if it's not something that I can just hone strop out or something like that start on 1,000 you know but really dull blades or maybe a tiny chip or something like that or maybe I'd need to do a little tiny reprofiling change the grain grind angle a little bit I'll go through a start out with a 320 this is gonna take a pretty fair amount of steel out but it's not gonna fix like really deep chips and you know things like that that you'd have to go for maybe a 120 or 140 or a diamond plate so I'm gonna get we're gonna be doing those in the future as well show you guys how to read profile knives how to fix chips things like that this 320 will do it you're just gonna be there for a while a long while okay so a thousand grit this is my bread and butter right here a thousand crit you know in the in you know the non awaaz the you know the Sahara's that the sous heroes all of those brands and things like that and you if you don't know what i'm talking about i just spoke literally japanese do you but those are different companies of stones and different types of stones and we're gonna be we're gonna be showing you guys doing side-by-side comparison and yet showing you guys that the companies that are out there and what their stones do compared to these the reason why i got these for you guys to show you guys is this is going to be the control this is what i'm gonna stack up every other stone to you know if it is a 1,000 grit 9 awha I'm going to stack it up to the 1000 grit Shapton how does it perform versus this because these stones the the Shapton ProLiant is in my opinion right there

close to professional close to as good as you can get and not too expensive and they're not really bad either you know this we're really right in the middle maybe even above the middle grade a little bit more than that so okay so we've discussed the 320 grit the 1000 grit this is my bread and buddy this is what I go to most of all this is where I'm gonna be starting out most of all that being said I have the the back side facing you for the text let's look at always sharpen on the non text side after I you know get a bevel on one side get a bevel on another strop that bevel out if I I could just let it go there strop it out on a piece of leather with maybe some compound or I can step up to a 5000 grit and I can now start to polish so these are working stones like reprofiling stones this is a sharpening stone in my opinion you sharpening here sharpening here and then 5000 grit is more of a polishing now you're starting to polish this is going to give you a pretty good not like mirror finish not mirror it's more of a satiny finish but it is a polish so if I want to go even further than that you know my my so speeds or something like that I'll move up to an 8000 grit you know and this is for stones maybe 350 bucks something like that and you're good to go you're in dough you're into freehand sharpening you can do pretty much everything you want to do from working on damaged blades to sharpening blades to polishing blades to put in a mirror polish on a blade and I'm gonna go and I'm gonna grab a knife real quick and I'm going to show you what an 8000 grit polish looks like alright guys so these are I got a couple plates here and these are just some one that I did for demonstration purposes and it's kind of hard to tell in the camera angle but you can't pick up a double edge and double there we go and you see that paper reflecting in the edge don't know exactly how long you will see that but it is a mere edge you can see the camera in the background of it and it is a razor just a razor you know a lot of people complain about paper tests but you know it is very very very very sharp and it will it'll shave you but I don't do that this is another blade that I did because this is a different type of Steel again I went all the way to 8,000 grit pretty extreme you don't have to do that you know but it does put a mere edge on you see me in the background there you know I am NOT versed enough in like under like the kid on your work sharps and things like that to know if you can get a mere Polish if they do sell belts that can't achieve that I'm not sure I've not used one I'm gonna use those for you know like I said extreme purposes where I don't want to sit for three hours and fix an axe that can just come over Krista's got a Kenyan work sharp zip-zip two seconds I'm done all right guys like I said you know I don't want to make this video 45 minutes or an hour long you know I just wanted to give you guys a basic overview of what freehand scharping is why it's beneficial for you you know people went in the field infield sharpening they bring these little devices and things like that has carbide tips in it some ceramic tip see the ceramic rods you know pretty long strand rods which you okay no no in my opinion no big deal you know and I'll even the work sharp I can't remember what that thing is called it it's it's like a square it's got a strop on it maybe I think it's kind of diamond abrasive on one side and all these little little things that's okay you know it is what it is I mean that thing's like this you know pretty big little square chunk you can do that but you know freehand sharpening on these wet stones translates very easily to pocket stones that are like this maybe you have three or four inches long and very very thin you put three or four of those and I may be a leather pouch or make something a duct-tape container say and that weighs less it takes up less room and you have a variety of sharpening grits you know that you could sharp it different up to different buffs basically a different polishes and different sharpen uses and things like that in the field these little tiny stones are just like that and like I said getting the feel for freehand sharpening on big stones translates very easily to that so you know you could throw all these little sharp gadgets that you have away there's little Smith system gadgets and all that stuff and just get some pocket stones that are very lightweight very packable even in a stack of three or four you know Arkansas stones for one some of those are you know soft which is coarse doesn't you know it doesn't make very much sense but the soft the softer Arkansas stones are the coarser the grit they are so you know they have soft hard and then like really hard which is the black hard or the the translucent hard and things like that and those are so many different levels of greatness that you know you can start off out on a knife that's pretty dull that's dollar than what you need for like maybe stropping any things like that and then work your way up to those harder grits that are you know I think thousand or something like that fifteen hundred maybe even so you know that's really gonna put a decent polish on your knife at that point anything you're good to go you know so you know that like I said this translates very well into that you know then you don't have to have all these little gadgets and all that stuff around but okay so this has just been a basic introduction showing you guys the tools that you need to get into sharpening ring and sharpening like I said all four of these stones are they necessary not really this is a good rounded out kit from 320 to 8,000 grit very nice and also definitely again would like to thank the people at sharpening supplies comm for providing these stones for me and providing the things that they're going to provide in the future for future educational videos as well but you know I definitely want to bring these to the attention of people that I think are either scared to get into it or nervous against or just don't know the information you know what to buy there's so much of this stuff out there so many different stones and grit levels and stuff like that you know I really just want to sit down and do step by step this is what this is this is what that is this grip level is for this this Donuts for that and it's not that hard it's not like you know it's not rocket science

it really isn't guys and it's fun it's meditative it's relaxing and you're going to have more of a personal connection with your knife it sounds a little Bush hippie I know you're gonna have a little bit more of a personal connection with your knife sitting there doing the edge yourself and it's dropping that edge out and knowing exactly every single detail of your knife and you're gonna be more proud of that edge in my opinion it's my opinion but you know all right guys well next video we're gonna show you guys how to set up a sharpening station let me show you what you need and what is best in my opinion again just my opinion so that's the next video that's going to be coming out really soon hope you guys enjoyed this video again it's a basic tutorial into sharpening knives we're going to be doing some sharpening tour toriel's we're going to be doing some side-by-side comparisons with stones different grit stones different companies and things like that this is going to be a huge series that I'm very excited to get into hope you guys are - if you would please go ahead and click Subscribe or like the video down below that helps me in the channel a lot visit manis outdoors LLC com4 slash shop shop an amazon store and visit sharpening supplies comm providers of all these stones in a heck of a lot of other sharpening supplies