I have a sandstone (figured naturally) water catcher to put my cups on - shop and house.
I sharpen and clean the bottoms of the cups that way for the medium work and then to the
ceramic rods. Those are only in the shop.

Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH, NRA Life
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder



Gunner Asch wrote:
On Fri, 25 Nov 2005 16:07:44 GMT, "Norm Dresner"
wrote:


Recently while I was traveling in a foreign country (Italy if it matters), I
had occasion to need to make the 1-1/2" knife blade on my pocket knife as
sharp as possible -- ideally "scalpel sharp". It's night-time (about 10 pm
local time) in an urban area and we're heading back to our lodging. There
are no nearby open stores. [Note: there was an open pharmacy but it's just
that -- they don't carry razor blades there].

I finally decided to use a stone, brick, concrete, or similar surface as a
sharpening stone -- and I didn't have any facility for either flattening
whatever I choose or even measuring flatness except by eye or feel. I
finally found a small area on the corner of a stone building that felt
smooth and flat enough and I used some available moisture to perform a
honing operation until the blade felt smooth and sharp enough -- measured
totally qualitatively by running it across the surface of my thumb-nail.

We went back to the lodging, boiled water which we used to "sterilize" the
blade and performed our makeshift surgery fairly successfully -- the blade
was, in fact, sharp enough that there was no pain when used to create a 1/2"
long, ~1/8" deep incision into a section of calloused skin and the
underlying healthy tissue.

Enough of the medical saga and onto the real question: Are there any
suggestions for sharpening a blade under these conditions that would have
been either easier or better than what I did?

TIA
Norm


The unglazed bottom ring of a porceline coffee cup is one of my old
standbys

Gunner

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire.
Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us)
off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give
them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you
for torturing the cat." Gunner

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