New Cold Steel Bowie Machete: First look and how to Sharpen it

Knife Sharpening

Bones said...
One thing I can never seem to do properly is sharpen blades. Care to share any tips/techniques? I understand there are knife sharpening kits available but would be interested in using commonly available tools.

Hi Bones,

Check "sharpening" on teh topics on the lower left column. I've written some about it. 

Knife sharpening is one of the hardest skills to master. A lot of people think they can do it, but take a blunt piece of steel and turn it into a blade you could easily shave with? Few people can do it. It takes years of practice, but a few good tips and having the right tools will help reduce the learning curve significantly.

Probably the easiest way to sharpen knives if you don’t yet master that skill is to get a knife sharpening system like the one you probably have in mind. Good sharpeners sometimes use it if they want to sharpen a knife quickly. I don’t own one myself but the Lansky kit has had a good reputation for as long as I can remember.

There are a million different ways to sharpen a knife and everyone has his method they swear by. The first thing I do with a new used knife is take a good look at the edge, checking for dents or rounded edges. If the blade has been abused and there are dents and chipped metal I use a belt grinder to remove them. This of course eats up a lot of metal so its not something you want to do often.

If the knife needs a lot of sharpening (it wont even cut through paper properly) I use the more coarse side of the wet stone so as to get a half way decent edge. Here I use elliptical movements, keeping the edge against the stone at a 20-30 degree angle depending on the edge of the blade. The trick and one of the hardest things to do is keeping the blade at the right angle as you move it, and do so again when you change to the other side.

A few tips here:

1)       Go slowly. Visibly check that the angle is correct. This is specially important because its almost impossible to achieve the exact angle on both sides.

2)       Use a red marker on the edge of the knife. This will tell you if you are making contact where you should, and if the angle is right.

3)       Place the knife in the angle you believe to be right and while keeping it that way, look around from other directions to verifiy.

4)       Do 5-10 eliptic movements on one side, then change to the other. If you don’t do this often enough you’ll end up with a wire edge. That is a very thin layer of metal that rolls over the edge. While this can be pretty sharp, its not the real edge. You can feel it with your fingernail by dragging it through the edge. If your finger nail catches on the edge, you’ve got a wire edge and you have to keep sharpening until you remove it.

5)       When using a water stone, you want to eventually achieve a very thin paste on its surface, this paste sharpens nicely.

6)       Use all of the surface of the stone to is full extent so as to not ruin it.

7)       Good stones aren’t cheap. This is one of the" you get what you pay for" things. The $1 chunck of grinder junk will ruin your knife. I did that as a kid, then I learned better and bought a nice two surface Japanese stone. It wasn’t cheap but I’ve had it for decades and its still my favorite stone.

  

Woodstock D1130 1000 Grit and 6000 Grit Japanese Waterstone 

Once I have an ok edge I turn to the other side of the stone, the one with the finer grit, and start dragging the edge at its right angle towards the direction of the spine, opposite from the direction of the blade. This I do so it doesn’t catch some larger pieces of grit against the edge. The stone is usually much smaller that the knife, even more so when the knife is at 90 degrees in relation to the rectangular stone. What I do is start from one edge of the stone, making contact with the edge sector that is closest to the hilt, and as I drag it to the other side (remember, towards the direction of the blade spine) I move it downwards until I reach the tip of the knife, and the other edge of the stone. 5-10 times on each side. You start at one end of the stone when you do one side, you then start at the opposite end of the stone when you do the other. Side you are also moving downwards to cover the full extent of the blade its more of a diagonal movement, and as you reach the tip you are forced to curve your grip some so as to keep the same angle when the edge curves towards the tip.

Using a bit of water with the fine grit side, you soon have a bit of very nice soft clay on the surface of the stone. When you look at the edge of your knife, this clay should be evenly spread along the edge, a sign that you’ve been keeping a correct angle, like the red marker trick.

After a few minutes of this you have a knife that will shave the hair off your arm, but you can still do better by stropping. For this you can use a leather strop, even a simple leather belt of some thick fabric with polishing paste. You draw it as we did before with the fine grit side of the stone, spine-first along the strop.

What you are basically doing here is polishing the two edges. This makes for a razor cutting edge, the finest edge you can ever achieve.

I often use finger nail polishing pad for this, you get excellent results using it diagonally spine first like you do with the stone.

You can sometimes replace the stomping or fine grit stone with sand paper and a mouse pad or some other foam pad. This makes a very nice convex edge which is both sharp and thick enough for hard work.

Another thing you often hear people say is that they will sharpen a knife for a trip and then have it sharpened again by some expert once they return. To me this couldn’t be further away from the self reliant mentality, or survival mindset.

Its like saying that you don’t know how to reload your gun, so you take a 20 round magazine with you when you go hunting and then have a gunsmith reload it for you. It’s the exact same thing, yet these folks don’t realize it.

What you should do is learn how to sharpen your knife, and at least touch it with a ceramic rod like you do when stropping. The fingernail foam pad I mentioned is ideal for this. Sandpaper can be used but I find the foam pad to be just perfect since you already have a somewhat rigid and flat surface to work with. 

Strop (polish) your blade a at the end of the day or after a certain amount of use and it will always be razor sharp when you need it.

FerFAL

Reply: Pocket Dump

Anonymous said...

I have looked and looked and I've not been able to find any knives with the curves and angles that the knives you showcase have, in any store locally. I wonder why.

Have you ever done a post about what you use to sharpen your knives or how?

Hi, The Cold Steel Vaquero/El Hombre "s" shape isn't of much use other than fighting. Maybe cutting rope and such, but a straight edge is better for general works.
My "El Hombre" remians with teh original edge, razor sharp since I dont use it for anything else and I always make sure I have another blade for general use for this same reason, keep the fighting knife razor sharp.

As a matter of fact there is a post aobut how to shapren knives nicely using a mouse pad and sandpaper. Give me a minute and I'll look it up.

ok, here it is.
http://ferfal.blogspot.com/2009/05/sharpening-12-cold-steel-bowie-machete.html

Also look on the left sidebar where the Topics are, look up for "sharpening" and you'll find a couple more tricks I use to keep my knives sharp.


FerFAL

Sharpening the 12” Cold Steel Bowie Machete

The 12” Bowie Machete by Cold Steel is without a doubt one of the best deals out there, one of the best I’ve seen in a long time.
I told everyone to get one while they can. As of now, I think it’s no longer being produced, at least it doesn't show anymore in Cold Steel's website. You can still find them though in Amazon and Ebay, and if you are on a tight budget but need a do it all knife ( wilderness + defense+ work around the garden) seriously consider this terribly affordable knife.
Before I even knew this knife ever existed, I did something very similar myself, grinding a clip point and shortening a Tramontina machete trying to end up with something very similar to what Cold Steel offered, so that’s why I like it so much.
This is mine as it came out of the bag, it doesn’t even have a box, so it’s a pretty spartan presentation.



The grip is much better than I expected.
It's made in China, and the blade is machete thick. Some people seem to believe the machete thickness blade will just shatter like glass. Guys, machetes are the most used and abused knives world wide. Used for chopping wood, cleaning up for camp and killing animals. A machete thickness is preferred than some stupid brick of a knife that weights a ton and costs 300 bucks. If you don’t think it can take a lot of abuse, at least check Cold Steel’s torture test and flex tests.
The trick is that machetes compensate for that narrowness with a rather broad blade.
Back to the knife, it can do a lifetime of work, and unlike the most common machetes, it has a bowie shape blade, with a clip point that works much better for more delicate work as well as stabbing and fighting. My favorite blade, the 1898 Artillería machete, that’s a great little beast, but weights a ton, not to mention the price is much higher because it’s a bit of a collector’s item, going for 300 USD last time I checked.
This Cold Steel knife would be my go-to knife if I had to go on foot and carry a lot of weight.
As it comes the Cold Steel Bowie machete has a crappy edge, it needs some work.
I used some fine grain water sandpaper, mouse pad, paper tape and invested 15 minutes of my time.
The mouse pad goes under the sandpaper, so that it curves a bit under pressure and you end up with that slightly rolled, razor sharp yet durable edge.
With the sand paper secured to the table and a few drops of water, I dragged the blade in the opposite direction of the edge, doing both sides. Some people do it some other way and push forward in the direction of the edge. I frankly don’t like it. In my experience the little grains create small dents and its about impossible to get that polished, razor sharp edge with most stones and sandpaper. I always move the blade towards the opposite direction of the edge.
Angle? Carefully press the edge with your fingers until the edge’s grind angle is flat against the paper, it’s roughly 20-25 degrees or so. With a bit of pressure the mouse pad flexes and does the rest.

Very simple sharpening setup.
If your not good at sharpening, go slowly at first until you get the angle right. No better blade to practice than a 15 dollar knife.
After a bit of stropping with a leather belt ( I used the side of the bayonet holster pictured) the bowie machete will easily shave hair off my arm.


Sharpened Bowie Machete
So that’s it guys, if you have another knife around that needs good sharpening, try this method. If the edge is dented or need reprofiling or paint removing like the machete did, put more of your weight on the blade as you drag it, so as to take more steel away.
Take care folks.

(edited to add: This knife is listed on the right in the Amazon affiliated program, and like the adsense adds, I do make a small % out of it. Having said that, I only ad products with well earned reputation, many of which I own myself. If I go as far as writing about it, its because I truly believe it’s a heck of a deal and I like the product enough to fervently recommend it. Something similar to the Victorinox Midnight Minichamp which I simply love and use every day, or my Cold Steel serrated folder)

Check out the 180º flex test


FerFAL

Reply to: Foam emery nail file

SheepDog said...
I have done much the same thing with fine grades of wet/dry sandpaper like what the auto body guys use down at the paint shop!!

Some like to glue the sandpaper to a piece of glass so as to have a nice flat work surface, but I usually just use the back of one of my diamond stones as a flat surface to work on!!

Kind of amazing what a 1200 grit or so piece of W/D sandpaper will do to the edge of a good blade!!!

SD

Hi Sheepdog! Good to see you here;)

Fine grade sandpaper sharpens nicely.
I have some around, keep a small piece of it in my Altoids kit, you can slip some in your wallet.

I used to use a nice flat surface too, generally wood. Glue some sandpaper in a small wood tablet, that was the bladesmith trick I read somewhere, think it was Abel Domenech's website ( knife author, great guy, met him a couple times).
Said a little tabled with sandpaper in one side and a piece of leather in the other side (with buffing paste) was the best sharpening/stropping tool anyone ever gave him.

After experimenting with the hard surface+sandpaper combination, I tried the foam+very fine sandpaper combination.

At least for me, the soft pad provided by the foam works much better.

I know knife makers and knife specialist around the world are suffering a small convulsion as I write this words, but that’s been my experience.:)

I tried them both and the softer foam gave me much better results every time.

The hard surface is much less forgiving, the angle has to be just perfect every time, which of course always happens when using sharpening stones, reason why its so hard to learn how to sharpen a knife well.
When you use the foam (try it with a piece of mouse pad) the contact surface where the edge touches the paper bends just a bit, creating a small curve.
Work both sides and you have two convex surfaces that cross each other.
This my friend, is a small sale version of what all knife makers world wide accept as THE best kind of geometry for a knife: The convex surface. Also known as appleseed edge, baptized that way by Bill Moran.
Perfect.

That’s the same principle you find in the old fashion leather and canvas strops. You apply tension, but when the blade touches the strap of material, you have a small curvature.

Again, this has been my humble experience. I’m very pleased with the results, so that’s why I encourage every knife user to give it a try.

Take care, and have fun!


Edited to add:
I’ll be damn... this is exactly what I was talking about. Thanks Dan ;)


FerFAL

Foam emery nail file

Called emery boards too.

Since we are talking about knives, thought I’d share this.

This is my well kept little secret but I’m having such good results with them, I had to tell.

Knives are basic everyday tools. Don’t think a day goes by that I don’t use a knife (besides eating, of course)
If you use knives you should know how to sharpen it. No big mystery there.
It’s not easy to use a stone, takes time, but eventually, with lots of practice you get there.
Sharpening gadgets? Some work better than others, but it’s still not everything a knife can be unless you use a strop.

Do you get that brand new, Victorinox type razor sharp edge? Heck, you can bring it to scalpel sharpness with the nail file.

The foam nail file pad comes in various types.
I like the one that has 3 or 4 types of grit.
The coarse one works almost like a sharpening stone (dont get one too coarse, though) , the fine one that almost feels like there’s no abrasion at all, is used to polish nails, you can use it as a strop to get that final razor sharp edge.

The pad is light, you can carry it all day in a pack or case and not notice it at all.
The foam material bends a bit which is great because you get the right curvature for that pumpkin seed shape right in the edge. Just wonderful.

And best of all, IT WORKS. Better than anything I tired.

I thought the use would be too much, but most foam files I use work well. As a matter of fact my favorite one is the first one I started using. Sharpened dozen of knives, even used it for the final touches on my machete.

And of course, they are dirt cheap, which adds a special bonus touch. :)

The Victorinox I use most often, I’ll just use the fine grit side as a strop and the razor edge is back in seconds.

Buy a few, try it, works just great.

If you are the kind of guy that usually pulls his folder for daily use, but misses that original razor edge and no ceramic rod brought it back, you’ll thank me in a couple days. ;)

FerFAL