Sharpening knife on piece of wood and sand.

[*stefan*]

Knife-board with sandbox, see page 22 in "Grinding and honing. Part 1", by Henk Bos and Ge Bos-Thoma.

Grinding and honing. Part 1, by Henk Bos & Ge Bos-Thoma.

Anyone tested this?
Does it work ok?

 

[Legion]

Knife-board with sandbox, see page 22 in "Grinding and honing. Part 1", by Henk Bos and Ge Bos-Thoma.

Grinding and honing. Part 1, by Henk Bos & Ge Bos-Thoma.

Anyone tested this?
Does it work ok?

Ha. The shot of the CrOx bench hone is one of mine. My strop, my picture. Would have been nice for a little shout out credit, but what evs…. Haha. The internet is a melting pot.

*There is no leather on that strop.

 

[RayClem]

They key to using sand for sharpening is getting grains that are fine enough. Many of the sharpening stones we use for razors are comprised of fine grains of silica. Larger grains might be suitable for sharpening an axe, garden hoe, scythe, sickle, or machete, but would not be ideal for a knife, sword or razor.

Because of its soft grain structure, balsa is often used as a substrate for pasted strops. The abrasive particles become embedded in the grain of the wood. However, balsa is too soft for edge leading strokes.

 

[*stefan*]

They key to using sand for sharpening is getting grains that are fine enough. Many of the sharpening stones we use for razors are comprised of fine grains of silica. Larger grains might be suitable for sharpening an axe, garden hoe, scythe, sickle, or machete, but would not be ideal for a knife, sword or razor.

Because of its soft grain structure, balsa is often used as a substrate for pasted strops. The abrasive particles become embedded in the grain of the wood. However, balsa is too soft for edge leading strokes.

Have you tested yourself, sharpening knife on wood with sand particles?

I figured as many flattening stones and hones regularly and some also bought silica for flattening ( perhaps not fitting into sand definition) some members would be curious about testing.

I have a glass jar myself with a mix of particles( thinking sand) after pre-flattening and flattening vintage low grit synthetic, sandstones, higher grit synthetic, thuri & slates......
But I live in an apartment so it is not that suitable for this.

 

[Slash McCoy]

To get really good results you would first need a way to grade your sand. A mix of say 50µ down to say 1µ and everything in between will truly suck for honing a razor. Then you need to figure out the optimum progression of grits for what you want to do and what results you expect. You would also need to select wood of the correct hardness and grain structure so that the abrasive gets buried to the correct depth and particle exposure.

It might do okay for an axe or maybe a butcher knife, I don't know. And no, I have not tried it and fortunately I have no need to try it, and I am quite positive it would not even remotely touch the results given by lapped balsa properly prepared with a progression of properly graded diamond pastes. Feel free to give the board and sand method a go, but as for finding someone here who uses that method for razors, I don't think it is really a thing.

 

[captaincaed]

There's no reason it won't work. Just a make-do solution in absence of better tools.

I imagine most knife edges sought enough tooth for butchery, especially given historic context. Finely tuned regularly formed edges are more for __star fine dining and plating presentation. You can get a lot of work done with a coarse (and irregular) edge. Jnats seek to make a fine but irregular edge in the kitchen world. Teeth of different heights mean the wear irregularly and the edge continues to cut for longer. Most dulling is from board contact (or acid). For board contact, if you spread contact over several depths of teeth, you have more options. Imagine sand might be similar.

All armchair theory. Might have to try it someday.

 

[cotedupy]

I've tried stuff like this for knives before. It's not desperately easy, and it doesn't work particularly well in comparison to stones tbh. I could sharpen a knife better on pretty much any stone I picked up at random off the ground, than I could using this method. (Most stones have silica in them).

The problems are: You need very fine sand, the stuff you'd get on a normal beach would be too coarse. And you need a piece of wood, or something else, that will hold it in place as much as possible - you don't want it rolling around too much. The principle/theory is the same as putting paste on balsa.

 

[Bowmaker]

Wood ashes seem to work also. I don't know why.

Mud used here....