Sharpening - perhaps we should have a knife topic…
For everyday and maintenance I have a plain steel - good for kitchen stuff. Also a diamond file but I don’t use that much.
I used to send knives out on occasion to a professional sharpener. I may still do that for some knives.
I have a mid-level WorkSharp powered sharpener with a good assortment of belts. I think it’s the cheaper Ken Onion edition. That takes care of almost everything - once or twice a year I spend a few hours with it. The WorkSharp tool also has a ceramic area for honing.
I know there are better tools, but what I’ve got works well with minimal fuss. In the past I used a number of manual devices, but most of them were geared toward rather simple sharpening tasks. Took me a while to learn how to properly use a steel. I think that many of the cheap kitchen department store sharpeners do more harm than good and do wierd things like make concave cutting edges and inconsistent angles.
Looked at both pens and knives on Tactile. Sadly they don’t make a fountain pen. I’ve decided that I really like the 21 karat gold nib made by Sailor for pens. I have one hand made from metal fountain pen, Birmingham Pens from Pittsburgh PA made it. Since I’m in PA, I’m supporting local craftsmen. Their inks are awesome.
Thanks for the pointer to Tactile.
Yes my admin has gotten me hooked on knives. Fair enough. She’s bought her first fountain pen, and has been buying high end and collectible rollerballs since she saw my Fahrney’s pen cataog.
I have a Kershaw toggle folder, which looks very similar … and which I’ve cut myself with more than all my other pieces combined.
I just, like a week ago, picked up one of those … probably the same model; it’s the WSKTS-KO2 - so the “Ken Onion” Mk2.
I have a Wicked Edge WE-130 which is great, but it’s way slower since it is entirely manual and will likely be relegated to the finishing steps for a handful of knives/circumstances at this point.
And the usual steel for the kitchen and strops/compounds for finishing and maintenance.
Mine is a couple of years old, might be the earlier model. In any case, I ordered an assortment of additional belts, as there were plenty of old, seldom used kitchen cutlery to practice on.
Chicago Cutlery wedding gifts from 1978. I looked the set up online, and never realized my friends were so cheap. Hey none of us had much back then. The WorkSharp put a decent edge back on them.
Some were pretty bad, so spent some time with a #80 belt, then #120, 240, and 600. At least that’s what I think I recall. After the 240 it was really playing around.
A better test was the ancient Case penknife I had since I was about 12. That came back like new.
The spiderco triangle sharpmaker works pretty well, it’s really fast to touch up something.
As long as your only dealing with “standard” 15 or 20 degree bevels. It’s simple and has a low skill requirement, it you can hold the blade vertically and pick the right bevel, it just works.
I use mine to touch up kitchen knives and the knives I use to break down boxes.
I have other solutions, that are probably better, but it’s quick, I can get though the 3 or 4 kitchen knives I regularly use in a few minutes, so it’s what gets used for the most part.
I got through college (undergrad) on generic mac & cheese. It was like 1/2 the price of the Kraft.
Don’t know much about knives, but I know my military friends like their Randall Knives (local family business). More functional than collectible to my understanding, though the wait list used to be a couple years, kinda like Decware.
I just looked at the Randalls available on Arizona Custom Knives - very nice, but $$$. And not many folding. Don’t know what they cost new, but @generic has it right about the premium on secondhand ones.
I bought a Busse Combat knife around 15 years ago. Comments of that era indicated that Busse had replaced Randall as the military combat professionals tool of choice. Special Forces soldiers and whatnot were allowed to pick whatever knife they wanted, and they picked pricey custom stuff. The vendors put them at the front of the buying line, as they were supporting the military and it was great marketing.
When I bought my Busse (top item), they were aggressively going after the stupid-overpriced-collector market. Mine is named the NMSFNO, or “Nuclear Meltdown Special Forces Natural Outlaw.” They had a ton of goofy names for virtually identical “limited release” items, but I think they eventually gave up on that. I used mine, as I refuse to be the guy who keeps a bunch of safe queen stuff and as Busse brags about its ultra-tough proprietary INFI steel.
