Knife Sharpener: Sterling Work

After reading a post about my inability to successfully sharpen a hunting knife, Tom (the author of Boomers and Bullshit - which is a monument to softly-spoken & genteel blogging) very kindly popped a Sterling Knife Sharpening Tool into the post to me.

I got it this morning. In my excitement I snatched it from the postman's hands, tore open the envelope - more or less with my teeth - and hurled myself into an orgy of fevered knife sharpening.

And yes, the bottom line is this: it works; it works very well indeed.

I'd done a good deal of beavering away with stones and strops and Dremmels and suchlike in the past but I'd never managed to get anything like a really sharp edge on the little CRKT Mirage knife that I carry when I'm out hunting. A few swift swipes of the blade through this little Tungsten-Carbide jobbie, though, and it's now sharper than a very sharp thing indeed; honed - in fact - to a perfection that's well-nigh terrifying.

After I'd confirmed this - silently shredding a sheet of paper by merely wafting the knife across it - I dug out every dusty penknife I possessed and used the cunning little tool to zip each of them into a similarly unnerving state of perfection. Then I surveyed my new-found arsenal with a deep, deep satisfaction.

I've been in the habit of using an utterly blunt little blue penknife purely to move small piles of snuff around en route to my nose - using the blade to shift the finely powdered tobacco between my snuffbox and the back of my hand. So of course I sharpened the hell out of this little knife as well and - once done - tested it on the back of my arm. Yes, it was monsterously sharp and produced an instant bald patch on my forearm. Tremendous!

But once I'd done this I thought, Well yes, but you use this on buses and trains quite a lot - don't you? - to keep yourself hopped up on nicotine. What's going to happen now when you've a dab of snuff on the blade and the bus goes over a pothole? You're going to slice your damn thumb off, aren't you, you daft bugger?

So, yes; I'm probably going to have to use a Bluntening Tool on that particular knife if I don't want to risk opening an artery or losing a limb. But that aside - it's a totally cool little gizmo. Thank you very much indeed, Tom!
__________________________________________________________

Tags: Columbia river knife and tool, CRKT, sharpener, knives