We take the knife out of a pocket and...nothing. How is that possible ? Simply it is not sharp. Some even say, that knife with dull blade is worse than no knife. We can use service of professional cutler, but why use such service, when we can do it conveniently at home ! ? All we need is bit of a skill and the right sharpener.
At home sharpeners or pocket ones
We can divide sharpeners for those we are going to have at home and those we can carry with ourselves. For both of these there are two groups of sharpeners - standard or pull through knife sharpeners. With the second variant, the principle is quite simple. The knife is pulled through the sharpener with few movements. There are either two sharpening stones or rods in the V shape. It creates an ideal angle for sharpening. What is an ideal angle ? it is quite difficult to determine, some knives, primarily the kitchen or filleting knives are sharpened to 10-25 degree angle. With knives for harder work we would use 25-30 degree angle. 30 degree angle is used for survival knives and for knives for really hard work. This angle is more difficult to dull and can withstand some jamming. For sharpening of specific angles, the standard sharpeners (mostly sharpening stones) are more appropriate. The sharpening, however, is quite difficult. We need to maintain consistent angle for the best results.
Natural over synthetic
We have two basic materials for sharpeners - natural or synthetic. It is difficult to say which one is better, both of them can offer some great properties. Natural materials are better for environment. It is for example slate, diamond or arkansas stone. They have been used for centuries so we can count on quality. On the other hand, synthetic sharpeners provide permanent grit, which also guarantees high-quality. It is more about personal preference and we should choose mainly according to knife itself.
Knife as well as sharpener
Highly important is quality of the steel. For softer ones we can use both, synthetic as well as natural materials. These kind of steels are nice to work with and result in clean and sharp edge. Problem might be when we have high-quality knife from hard steel. Hard steel is also fragile and for such steel we need diamond sharpener. Without it we couldn´t achieve desired results. Either way, we will need at least two surfaces with different grits. Coarser side for recondition (re-define) the edge and finer side for polishing. Remember, it is always better to maintain your edge than to renew it.
Let´s choose
The selection of the right sharpener depends on its use. If we want to carry it every day in our pockets, it should be small and easy to store – which are either sharpening rods or pull through knife sharpeners. If we are looking for sharpener for at home sharpening, we should perhaps look for some sharpening kits, which offer more stones to maintain perfect edge. This will save us some work and we can then only maintain it by using pocket sharpeners.