-Walmart Kit Revisited_ Sharpen a Dull Knife.

Hey everybody, this is Josh here, the Great Bearded Green Beret. Wanted to revisit the Walmart gear loadout and tell you a little story. So the reason I haven't done the overnight with that gear yet is because just taking it out of the package and kind of setting things up to pack it away to get ready to go, you know, what I noticed was a lot of it was not quite field worthy. Not the least of which was this. You know, my number one tool, my Ontario knife company, Air Force or Air Crew survival knife out of the package was basically garbage. It was terrible. In keeping with the spirit of the Walmart video series, the skaters are out already and the rain's coming. In keeping with the spirit of that, I wanted to make sure that there was some sort of option at Walmart that you could actually use to bring this up to speed to where it would be worthy of taking to the field with you because as it came from the package, a dull knife is a dangerous knife. Sharp knives are safer knives. So it was not ready to take to the field. It needed to be sharpened. I didn't get any sort of sharpening solution at Walmart and the little, you know, little wet stone is actually a synthetic stone that goes in here basically broke immediately. So that wasn't an option. So I had to go back to Walmart. So I have other sharpening systems I could use, but I had to go back to Walmart to stay with the theme of the video, the video series, to make sure that I could, you know, get this thing field worthy with a sharpening system that you could also get from Walmart. So having said that, Ontario Knife Company, 499, I think it's the 499 Air Force Survival Knife is how they listed at Walmart, garbage out of the package. And really to me, there's no excuse to sell a knife from the factory that comes dull, unless it's a butter knife but to call it a survival knife and the amount of work that I'm probably gonna have to put into this to make it worthy of taking to the field is ridiculous. So keep that in mind. And it's still, it's not exactly a cheap knife. I think it was still about 40 bucks. And since I needed to sharpen this to get this field ready so that I can kind of go further into that series, I finally did break down as much as I didn't want to go back to Walmart and buy gear that I don't particularly need. For the good of this series, I went back to Walmart and picked up a sharpener that was as close to what I would normally use as possible to see if we can bring this back to life. I shouldn't say bring it back to life. I should say bring this to life for the first time. Probably the second most common question I get is what do you have in your sharpening kit and how do you actually sharpen your knives? So I figured that I would do a couple of videos addressing that because to me, there's a difference between what I do as far as sharpening back here at home before I go to the field and honing or polishing or stropping that I do when I'm actually out in the field. So I think it's important to understand the difference between those two. So when I'm talking about sharpening, I'm talking about setting an angle or removing a large amount of material to reset an angle using a stone. Once that's done, from that point forward, I don't necessarily need to take a stone back to any blade that I have unless I, for some reason, damage that or I don't maintain it well enough to where it goes so dull that I need to reset those bevels. So sharpening and sharpening stones, aside from any damage I might do in the field, they're not something I typically need to do when I'm out in the field. I can get away with just honing or polishing it normally with just a leather strop and some paste, which I'll get into in another video. This one is so dull from the factory that it actually needs the stones. I typically like to use a Japanese whetstone for that. I don't have that, and it wasn't available at Walmart, so I went to see what I could find that's as close to that as possible. What I saw was a bunch of pocket pull sharpeners, and I despise those. I just think it's very difficult to maintain a consistent angle with that as you're pulling it through. I just don't think they work for the level of sharpness that I need a knife to be. So what I found that's as close to that as this Smith's 6-inch Tri-Hone Sharpening System, and I like how they use honing and sharpening in the same title there because to me they're very different things. Again, sharpening is removing large amounts of material with the stone to set a bevel or reset a bevel once it's gone dull or if it came from the factory dull, and honing is what you do to maintain that edge, and that's typically what I'm doing in the field is honing. I'm polishing it to keep it at its sharpest point. So this was pretty close to what I use. It's basically a three-wet stone system, so we'll take a look, show you what's inside. I got some instructions. I don't know what those are really for. Then you got this cool little edge guide thing that is set to a 23-degree angle, so that goes with the instructions, and Smith's Honing Solution. So they recommend whenever you use stone that you use some sort of honing solution, light oil or water. So what I will tell you is I don't use any oil whatsoever on my stones because once you go oil, you can't go back to water. Water's typically what you'll find in the field, even though I'm not planning on using this in the field. It's just not a habit I wanna get into because water's free, and once I run out of this, I gotta buy more from Smith's, and I don't even know the guy, so that goes with the instructions. All right, so the actual system itself is pretty decent, actually, and it was interesting that this thing was behind lock and key, and I'd almost given up hope and bought a pole sharpener, but this one was behind lock and key in this glass case, and I was like, man, that must be expensive, but yeah, that was like $26, so it must be a pretty hot item. If you're losing so much money, you gotta put it behind glass case. That's pretty big. I mean, that's hard to even shoplift if you think about it. But anyway, made in the USA with US and imported parts. But anyway, pretty simple system. It's got a non-skid base, and you've got your choice of three different stones, which are very clearly marked, coarse, medium, and fine, and from the looks of it, the coarse and the medium are both synthetic stones, and the fine is actually probably an Arkansas natural stone, so not bad. I mean, the size of it's pretty good. It can sit on top of a desk or a bench top, which is how I'm gonna use it to show you guys how I do my garage sharpening, we'll call it, my actual sharpening before I go to the field, so let's give this a run, see how it works out. I'm gonna start with the coarse side because the angle on this knife is somewhat set, but it's also somewhat irregular, and I can kind of see, see if I can get that in focus, I can kind of see where the angle is a little bit off on the factory grind, but it should be able to work with that, but I'm trying to maintain that same angle, so I'll just put a little bit of water on there, and then starting from here, using the entire length of this stone and making sure that I use the entire blade and keep that angle indexed and flat across there, and maintaining that angle consistently as I go across the stone, and then following that curve. In order to follow the curve, I'll have to maintain the angle here, but also rotate the back side, so that's what I'm doing here. I'll do about, I don't know, probably 10 good strokes that direction, and I'm trying to actually, you know, as I'm going down this stone, kind of think of it as if you're trying to slice a very thin slice off the very top of that stone, so that's one, and usually you can tell if you're coming off or you're not keeping a good angle because you'll start looking at how it's actually abrading away the surface here, so I'll do about 10 on one side, then I'll flip it to the other side, and I'm trying to do the same thing. I wanna maintain that consistent angle, and I wanna use the entire length of the stone, and as it starts curving towards the tip, I start coming off right here. I'm just gonna watch that, and I'm gonna begin angling this back this direction while maintaining the same angle here to keep that in contact, and I'll do an equal number of strokes on this side. Whenever you need it, just keep it wet, and go back the other direction. Switch sides. Now, the first run I did 10 per side. That time I did nine per side. Then I'll go, every time I switch, I'm gonna go one down, so this time will be eight, starting the other direction, and I'll start speeding this up a little bit and using both hands just to kind of speed it along. That's eight. After I've gone through and gone 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, I usually go back and forth for about 10 strokes, so one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and from there, I'm pretty well set as far as setting my actual angle and doing all the coursework that I really need to do, so I'm gonna switch stones from that point. Once I've got the medium on there, I'll get some more water on, and I'll repeat that process, 10 all the way down to one, alternating sides, and then when I get down to one, I'll go back and forth 10 times. So that's the medium work, and you can also tell, aside from counting, you can also kind of feel that it starts to get smooth while you're going through this, and that's a good indication that you're starting to get it down to the level that that particular abrasion level, like this being medium, is gonna get it to. Go to the fine stone and continue the process. It's very important to keep this one wet because the coarse and the medium are both synthetic stones. This is actually Arkansas, pretty sure it's Arkansas wet stone, so this is natural stone, really important to keep that one wet. All right, so for stropping, it's a pretty similar process. Once I've got the angle set to the way I want it, and I really wanna polish the edge of that and kind of align everything, I'm gonna do a honing or a stropping or a polishing at that point. So what I'll do is a leather strap, leather paddle strap that I can put on the table, a little bit of Tormex honing compound, a little bit of honing paste, get that all over my strop. And now I'm gonna start at the top, and I'm always gonna be dragging away from the edge. So I'll do 10 this way, turn the blade as it gets towards the back, then I'll start from here and turn as I go towards the top. So again, I'm pushing it this way. I'm pushing the knife away from that, but I'm constantly dragging it away from the edge. An alternative way to do it is to set the knife at the correct angle and use the paddle. You just have to, as you're going up, you have to follow that curve of the blade, flip the knife over, set it, and drag. And you'll hear spots that are sticky that need polished, it should be perfectly smooth. Little inconsistent right there. If you watch that light, smooth, smooth, smooth. Eh, it's not too bad. Not too shabby. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but that'll do a lot better. All right, guys, I appreciate you guys watching. Just to kind of reiterate, you know, sharpening with stones is what I do back here before I ever go out, and actually honing and polishing with a strop, typically, is what I do when I'm actually out in the field just to maintain the edge that this put on it before I ever went out there. So Walmart gear, back revisiting that series. If you happen to get this Ontario Knife Company 499 Air Force Survival Knife, make sure you buy a sharpener, too, because it's inadequate out of the package. We'll see how it does now that I've got a good edge on it. As always, appreciate your likes, appreciate your views, your comments, questions, put them below. If you haven't already done so, make sure you subscribe to my email list and keep up to date on everything that's going on on the Gray Beard and Green Beard channel. Till next time, hope to see you in the woods.