Are you the type of hunter who puts that hunting knife to good use during the season? If so, you want to make sure that you take good care of it and sharpen it at the end of each hunting season. As you may already know, this is something that you can do one your own at home. However, you have to take care and do it the right way or you might end up making your knife edge brittle so that it gets chipped or cracked easily in later use.
You can sharpen the blade yourself freehand style with a good bench stone. There’s even a good chance that you’ve seen someone do this before. However, what you might not know is that there is a fine line when it comes to doing this right and damaging the knife. In fact, if you have an old crappy knife, then I suggest giving it a try first. If not, buy a couple of cheap ones from the local store to do a trial run with before you even attempt sharpening your main knife.
Probably the most important thing that you need to know about DIY hunting knife sharping is that you need to stick with the same angle. You definitely do not want to be rolling your knife across the stone cause you’ll just end up causing damage to it. Instead, you need to keep a constant angle between the sharpening stone and the blade of your knife to end up with a blade so sharp that you could shave with it!
Some hunters like to use ceramic sticks to maintain the sharpness once they have used a stone to get it to the desired level. But here’s the thing – you still need to use that same angle when using one of those. I really cannot stress enough how important it is that you maintain consistency with your sharpening angle.
I think a lot of hunters out there underestimate how important it is to keep a well kept hunting knife in your pack.
If you prefer to see someone else actually doing it, take a look at the video below. I found it on YouTube and you can actually see a guy sharpening his hunting knife the proper way. Pay close attention to the consistency in the angles.
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