Skill of the Week: Sharpen a Pocket Knife | The Art of Manliness
Skill of the Week: Sharpen a Pocket Knife | The Art of Manliness

Skill of the Week: Sharpen a Pocket Knife

An important part of manhood has always been about having the competence to be effective in the world — having the breadth of skills, the savoir-faire, to handle any situation you find yourself in. With that in mind, each Sunday we’ll be republishing one of the illustrated guides from our archives, so you can hone your […]
That's the general shape of it, and I'm sure others will have plenty to kibitz about regarding these rather skeletal instructions.
My, er, fifty cents is that using a quarter or whatever to set the angle of your knife is a really hokey way to do it, and claiming that placing two quarters under the spine of any random knife is likely to result in an edge angle of 15° per side is highly suspect. The breadth of your blade will impact the ultimate edge angle quite noticeably if you try to use that as your technique.
It's also not a given that the existing edge angle will actually be 15° per side before you start, and that's actually a pretty shallow edge angle for many steels. A garden variety cheap or low quality pocketknife is bound to exhibit rather suboptimal edge retention at that angle.
Here's some different advice instead: Take a Sharpie or similar marker and draw a stripe down the edge of both sides of your knife. Start with the fine side of your stone, not the coarse one, and do very light passes slowly increasing the angle until you find that one swipe rubs off all of the marker ink across the entire sharpened portion of the edge. That angle right there will be what your knife's edge angle already is, and honing that will be a damn sight easier than beating the thing into a new and entirely different edge angle, especially if you're using a cheap stone. Hold the spine of the knife firmly against your thumb with the side of your thumb resting on the stone and keep it there. That will keep your edge angle consistent as you work.
Can you take a picture of what you mean with your sharpie suggestion? I’m very intrigued.
It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Take any old permanent marker and just color in the edge of your knife on both sides.
As you sharpen or at least draw the edge against your stone (or whatever it is you're using) the marker will be quickly rubbed away wherever the edge is actually making contact. In this example, my attempted edge is shallower than the edge that's already on the knife, which you can tell by the only mark being removed being visible at the very top of the edge portion:
In this case it's intentional, because I'm deliberately regrinding the Penguin here into a 15° per side edge. If you wanted to keep your existing edge angle, in the above example you'd want to angle it up, i.e. try a slightly more obtuse angle. Here I'm getting closer, the removed mark is about halfway down the edge itself:
And by this point I've contacted the entire edge:
If you didn't want to change the edge angle, you'd want to get your edge situated so that one pass on the stone rubs off the entire width of the mark, all the way from the root of the edge to its apex.
Having the edge inked up is just a handy shortcut to see where you're actually removing material. If you're not hitting the very apex of the edge, you're not actually accomplishing any sharpening. Personally, I always check with magnification, using an illuminated loupe to make sure I've properly and consistently taken material off all the way to the apex.