The Tools to Reprofile an Axe Edge

What is up Turtles. Crick here with Black Owl Outdoors and what I want to do today is show you the tools I use to sharpen my axes. So if you watched a recent video of ours I showed the Condor axe that I use and I talked about re-profiling the edge and sharpening it. So I thought I'd take the time to actually devote a whole video to the tools I use to accomplish that. In that video on this axe I talked about me wanting to thin the bit right where my finger is tracing because there was a really pronounced shoulder or hump in this convex grind and I wanted to take that down to make this a better slicer and I've achieved that. And I kept the convex nature of this grind. Let me show you the tools I use to get a really sharp and shaving sharp edge on this axe. So here we have two bastard files and these are Nicholson. I've had these for years and I've yet to put a handle on them and I know I should but there's a little bit of rust forming in these. So what do you guys think? What do you guys and gals think? Should I just get new ones? I'm not sure. They're inexpensive but you can see them next to each other right? So we have a coarse my fingers on this side or tracing this file and then we have a smooth one here that has more rust showing. Use these files first to remove a lot of material and let me show you how I sort of had the axe in my vice. So I clamped my axe in the vice with the edge pointing up just like this so I could stand above it and work the files like so. And like I said I started with the coarse one worked on both sides evenly try to keep it as even as I could and then I switched it. So you know so I'm holding the file like this just cutting on the push and then making sure I'm following the contour of the convex edge but not just holding the file in one angle the entire time that I'm rotating it to contour the curve. Once I finish the file work I'll show you what I moved on to. This is a Lansky knife sharpening system that I bought some years ago when I really wasn't confident sharpening all my knives and tools freehand. I never really end up liking this but there are some very useful tools still in here that we can use. So here's the whole system. This is for holding a knife. This is for the angles with the stones but what I used is this oil on the stone so that when I'm sharpening and grinding the steel away this will pick up the shavings if you will and create a slurry. That's really important. So here's the coarsest stone I have and what makes this really nice for sharpening the axe how it worked really well and this was the first time I used these for sharpening my axe is that there's enough room you can sort of pinch your fingers and there's still plenty of clearance between this edge of the stone and the cutting edge and your fingers so it's a pretty safe way to sharpen the axe. Let me grab it real quick and show you. So when I moved on to the stones I used a circular motion again working at the edge with the angle of the stone and then as I worked back on the edge on the axe you know the angle of the stone changes. Let's try to keep that consistent on both sides and I'm not an expert in any way but the results worked or my method worked and produced the results I was going for so this will probably be my go-to method considering the tools I have. I'm not sure if it's picking up the grits on there. So the blue is a 600 grit that's what they're calling a fine stone and then this 1000 ultra fine this is the yellow which is ceramic it looks like to me and I use it use a ceramic as well. Once I was finished with the stones I moved on to my leather strop so let me grab that for you real quick. This is a paddle strop I bought. I only have one piece of leather on it right now just a rubber band on one end just to make it easier or maybe I'm lazy but the the leather strop with compounds the last thing I did and to use that and I'll actually show you because I can today I put the leather down and go away from the cutting edge and what's nice with using this leather is that there's give so it's going to conform to the convex edge so I don't have to be so worried about ruining that convex as I'm stropping but you still want to kind of work the whole edge just to make it consistent for posterity's sake let me flip that over do the same thing on this side you know I'm no expert with sharpening or tools use in general but like I said what I think is important is that you use the tools that you have at your disposal there are dedicated tools like a puck lansky makes a puck to sharpen your axe and I don't have one of those but I have the stones for the knife sharpening system so they worked just as well because everything is elemental working with wood with leather sharpening a tool is understanding grind it's all elemental once you understand the core and basics that can be applied intuitively or with some ingenuity to accomplish what you want I'd really like to do a video showing stuff I do at home in my little workspace but it really just isn't filming friendly and it's kind of or actually it's very frustrating to myself and I know it is to my brother as well because we want to film the videos where I reprofile this axe it would make a great video but just our filming space isn't that great so we're excited that as the channel grows and in our lives in general we can move into a space that will allow us to film projects like reprofiling an axe as always thank you for your continued support thanks to our patrons if you're not on patreon supporting us it's ten dollars a month basically to be entered into a gear giveaway and so far we've been giving away brand new gear so if you have any questions about that or any questions about the tools I used or sharpening anything in general if you have any questions in general leave a comment till the next video this is Crick with Black Owl peace out turtles