Realized I was sharpening my pocket knife all wrong last week

I've been using a pull-through sharpener for like 5 years and wondering why my edge never lasted more than a week. Then my buddy who does woodworking watches me do it and just goes 'you're grinding against the grain, dude.' He handed me a 1000 grit stone and showed me the angle. First time I actually shaved arm hair off a knife I sharpened myself. Has anyone else had that moment where you find out you've been doing some basic skill backwards for years?

2 comments

2 Comments

jordan33026d ago

Actually, I'm gonna push back on this whole 'been doing it wrong' narrative" Pull through sharpeners don't ruin edges if you know what you're doing. I've used the same cheap carbide pull through for ten years and my knives cut just fine. Shave arm hair? Sure, maybe not perfectly, but they split paper and slice tomatoes without squishing them. The whole 'against the grain' thing sounds like woodworker snobbery to me. A knife that cuts is a knife that cuts, doesn't matter how you got there. Not everyone needs a 1000 grit stone and perfect angles to slice open a box or whittle a stick.

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theawest25d ago

Wait, has anyone else noticed that even the cheap pull through sharpeners work way better if you hold the blade at a slight angle, like you're trying to slice a thin piece of air off the top? I only figured that out after my buddy's dad showed me his old hunting knife that he swears he's only ever touched up with the bottom of a coffee mug. That got me thinking about how my grandpa used to sharpen his pocket knife on the concrete step of his porch, just dragging it back and forth a few times, and that thing could still cut through an apple core without any trouble. So yeah, I get your point about not needing fancy gear, but I also wonder if maybe the "wrong" way just takes longer to get the same result, and some of us are okay with that trade off. Honestly, if a knife cuts what you need it to cut, the snobbery about grain direction feels like people trying to make a simple thing complicated just so they can feel smarter.