Home Forums Gear Knives and Blades Keeping knives sharp

First and foremost, I never let the wife use my knives. She tries to saw porcelain plates in half when dicing up a steak.

This is what I do.

Always figured strop was dead last.

When I get a new knife with a factory edge they seem to stay sharp a whole bunch longer than when I sharpen them afterward. I use a Spider Co Sharpsmaker and I can get them where they shave hair, but the edge just doesn't last as long. S30v mostly.

Touchups on a truck window seem to last better.

WTF am I missing?

I hear guys talk about breaking down 3-4 animals in the season without touchups and I'm skinning a pig thinking "pass the Havalon!"

I remember EHG would send Gene Ingram knives at the end of the season, might just do that if he'd still service them.

I had another thought and wanted to come back to the quoted comment.

Last season, I used the same knife to break down 3 whitetails. I did not have to sharpen between animals but I did touch the blade up before putting it away at the end of the season. I am sure I could have done another animal if needed. This was with a boner pattern in S30V from Tim Olt.

One thing I definitely learned last season while helping a couple guys is that not everyone handles their knife the same way while dressing animals. Cutting across hair, dirty hide and riding the edge hard against bone as cuts are made were a few things I noticed these guys doing. None of that is good for any knife.

I usually start into the hide going with the hair until I can just get the hide pulled away from the muscle. From there, all my cuts are between the inside of the hide and muscle, primarily separating the fascia and connective membranes....this is not taxing on a knife's edge. When separating quarters or muscle groups around bone, I usually cut just deep enough to find the bone I am working around and then work around it, pulling the muscle and just cutting any connections as needed as the muscle pulls away. I swear, some guys in the group would hit the bone and ride it hard like they were trying to saw through it...I cringed every time.

There are a few joints that need to be popped but you can do that pretty easily without much edge dulling if you know where the ligaments are and can work some of the cartilage with the blade.

When I started paying more attention to how I was using my knife, and I learned more about the anatomy of the animals I was processing, I noticed that my knives magically started staying sharp much longer.