Learning how to sharpen a knife freehand is one of those things you just kind of learn if you spend much time in the woods. There are all sorts of jigs available today that help you keep the precise bevel on a blade throughout the entire stroke but who carries that stuff out in the field? Certainly not me. To freehand sharpen a blade, the main thing you need to keep in mind is the bevel, or angle of the blade to the grind stone. That’s what folks tend to have trouble with, but it’s not something that can’t be learned.
For heavy duty sharpening, I’ll use a coarse honing stone, but that kind of work rarely needs to be done unless you’ve tried to cut a piece or rebar in half with your hunting knife. Most sharpening you’ll need to do in the field is relatively light work. For this, a light ceramic will work just fine. Conveniently, you can use the top edge of a truck window for this – so long as your blade isn’t terribly dull that is. Take a look at this Backcountry College quick tip to see how it’s done.
Another cool trick is to use your leather belt as a strop for really fine tuning the edge. Have you ever seen one of those leather straps hanging in the barber shop? They use that to strop their straight razor to get the finest edge possible and you can use the same principle to get a super fine edge on a knife or broad head. You might be asking how that’s possible so I’ll try’n explain. The cutting edge of a metal blade is very finely serrated when viewed under magnification. There are tinny little burrs all along the cutting edge. Stropping just aligns those burrs along the same plane and the result is taking a sharp blade and making it scary sharp.
Learn how to sharpen a knife using these simple tricks, and you’ll be able to touch up that blade no matter where you’re at. Plus, you can impress the ladies at the next Christmas party when you whip off your belt, sharpen your blade, and carve that pig butt…
