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Periodically I give sharpening instructions to small groups
Unfortunately knife sharpening skills are not thaught any more to us by our grandfathers. Knife sharpening is a skill you have to learn. For the life of me I don't understand when I go and teach how many people know absolutely nothing about how to keep a knife sharp in the field. Clueless does not even begin to describe the lack of knowledge of people.
I tried to give an outline of the all the knives used by the participants in the lecture. Considering that the knife is the most important tool used by survival, bushcraft and outdoors enthusiasts, there is a huge gap of the understanding why a knife is the primary tool and how to maintain it so it does work for you as fast as possible.
General description of knife parts
General description of blade geometry (grinds)
Can your knife cut 0.5 mm slivers from a hempe rope? This is a good way of checking if your edge geometry is alligned and if you maintained your blade edge to razor.
Most knives of the group could not do this simple task. A knife has to be kept razor sharp in the field at all times!
Explanation of using a stone and stropping and again the hempe rope test: the difference is amazing!
There is always two or three people in the group who think they know more about sharpening than me. But when you look at their knives and the way they are maintained it is quite clear they are clueless. The reason for this is the very bad information available on sharpening a knife. This leads the people that are interested into a world of misinformation about knife sharpening.
