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Just...[bleep]...Wow...

Lansky???

Really???

Yep, Lansky.

Cool.

If accurate bevels aren't your thing...carry on...

I used one for a long time and got good results but haven't in nearly a decade since I learned how to sharpen by hand from watching the guy in the video and maybe a couple of others. Bought an India stone, a bottle of mineral oil, and a pack of knives from the dollar store and went to town.

IF someone gave me a jig now I'd re-gift it, but many if not most prefer to go that route. Regardless of what you use, you have to sharpen all the way to the edge which I think the poster I replied to was probably not doing. Gotta make that flat disappear, raise a burr, whatever. You can't just guess and get anywhere.

Accurate bevels? Nice cosmetically, but irrelevant to cutting stuff. Consider a chisel or a plane blade which is beveled on one side and flat on the other. Serious woodworkers make them razor sharp.

Obsession with angles keep people from learning how to free hand sharpen. They know no one can hold a perfect angle and believe that to be a requirement. It isn't. Bringing two planes together to an apex and getting rid of what burrs you created in the process is.

Anyone, a leather strop is often mentioned, can a leather belt be used for this??

A belt can be used, but it should have a solid backing and typically you should use stropping compound, so it would probably become dedicated. It can be used in a pinch without compound, but I'd just as soon recommend newspaper with a solid backing for the one off situations. Probably easier to just get your hands on a 2 to 3 in wide strip of leather and attach it to a backing permanently.

Teal ,

A small tip on the Lansky , they have a little ''slop'' when the control rod passes through the hole letting the rod move slightly up&down . I put a paper towel over or under the rod to keep it on a more consistent stroke . The slop likely doesn't matter much but I figure 'why not' .

For the search engines....

I sharpen quite a lot of knives because i forge and make my own. I invested in a set of diamond stones. These are completely worth the investment. It sure takes a lot of work out of the job.

I lay the knife down with the spine facing away from me and raise the spine til i find the angle i want. then bring the blade edge towards me. I go till i can feel a burr on one side, then flip and place the other face on the stone, blade towards me.

When im sure that i have the angle along the complete edge, i will switch to a finer grit.

And make sure that the blade is very tight in the clamp so it does not move.
I bought my Lansky at a gun show in the early 80s, and have sharpened many knives and 100s of broadheads with it.

Also for stropping a cardboard box works especially if you have some kind of compound.

+1


I use an Edge Pro Apex as well.......best money spent in a long time!

I’m totally with you

I won a contract on the Hibernia project in Newfoundland in 1992...
On the Terra Nova in 1997...
The White Rose in 2000...
ETC ETC
All to say:
Cliff was a good friend of mine.
We agreed to disagree on less things than most.
You are simply wrong...

I bought a Wicked Edge Go, very well made and probably more than I needed but very easy to use!

He is correct so it would be hard not to.

I’ve used everything from whetstones to lansky type sharpeners to the Ken onion worksharp belt system. I can get a good edge on all of them but I do have my favorites.

For kitchen knives the worksharp is fast and easy. I don’t like it for nice knives or field knives, although it does work well. It will scratch your blade sides, take a bit more material off than you want, and creates a convex bevel that may be a bit harder to touch up with a stone.

For pocket and hunting knives I really like the Spyderco Sharpmaker, although it is kind of expensive for what you get. Add the diamond or CBN stones and use light pressure. It is one of the only systems that will sharpen serrations (if that’s your thing). It is probably the easiest manual system to learn. I use it for all my folders and outdoor knives.

Plain flat stone also works, within the limit of the users skill. I usually have a small dmt diafold or similarly handy for field sharpening.

I have achieved good results with the lansky type systems, but I don’t like them, as they are pretty labor intensive on the setup. I have never used the kme, wicked sharp, edge pro, etc. they all have their fans.

If all my sharpeners were gone and I had to start from scratch I would buy the Sharpmaker with diamond rods plus two diamond stones. A large double sided bench stone (C/F) for chisels, plane blades, general use, and a small double sided diafold (C/F) for field touchups.