Knife Sharpeners. Smiths and Work Sharp tools. Camping in mount hood national forest. Photographing Mt Hood in the fall.
165 Knife Sharpening In The Mount Hood National Forest
Gear that I work with
Professional film stock I work with https://imaging.kodakalaris.com/photographers-photo-printing/film/color
I keep my camera in a Lowepro camera bag
https://www.lowepro.com/us-en/magnum-400-aw-lp36054-pww/
When I am photographing landscape images I use a Manfrotto tripod
https://www.manfrotto.com/us-en/057-carbon-fiber-4-section-geared-tripod-mt057c4-g/
A lot of my film portfolio was created with the Nikon N80 and Nikon F4
https://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/f4.htm
https://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/n80.htm
The Nikon D2H and Nikon D3 were used to create many of the digital images on this site https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond3 https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond2h
Two lenses I am using all the time are the 50mm f1.8 and the 17-40mm f4
https://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/5018daf.htm
https://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/lenses/17-40mm.htm
Some astrophotography and documentary video work was created with the Sony A7r
https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sony-alpha-a7r
I am currently taking photographs with a Canon 5D
https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canon-eos-5d-mark-iii
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I am Billy Newman, a photographer and creative director that has served clients in the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii for 10 years. I am an author, digital publisher, and Oregon travel guide. I have worked with businesses and individuals to create a portfolio of commercial photography. The images have been placed within billboard, print, and digital campaigns including Travel Oregon, Airbnb, Chevrolet, and Guaranty RV.
My photographs often incorporate outdoor landscape environments with strong elements of light, weather, and sky. Through my work, I have published several books of photographs that further explore my connection to natural places.
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165 Billy Newman Photo podcast mixdown Knife Sharpening in the Mount Hood National Forest
Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. Appreciate tuning in to check out this episode. I’m recording down in a wetland area at the wildlife refuge, south of town, listening to some geese flying in. I think they’re already wintering out here. So I see many white geese out here and then some Canadian geese coming in. You have probably heard of him. Maybe they’ll get noise gate it out, but it’s kind of cool. Being out here at this time of year again, seeing some birds coming into winter over here, is kind of fun. I like seeing them come back in the summertime they’re gone, you know. So it’s pretty empty, pretty dried out through a good part of that time of the year. I think even by now, this time in November, there will probably be some elk that are part of the elk herd that comes out here, I suppose already coming back to start wintering down in this area. So, hence, it’s cool, kind of cool, so you know, move around and pop up into different locations and stuff, seeing the year’s rhythms, so to carry on. I like that part. You know, I was out.
I was out pretty recently. I was up in the Mount Hood area. I took an overnight camping trip up there, which is pretty cool. I enjoyed myself going out there. So let’s see what they do, so I went out to Portland and then cut over, I think over to Mount Hood first or sorry, to the Hood River area and then cut to North Red River and then went up into the Mount Hood National Forest from that location which is pretty cool. And I thought that highway 26 from St. Kayla and Sandy was still well. It was said it was open. Still, I would expect delays during that time because they’re trying to process some of the damage that occurred from the wildfires that happened up there along the Clackamas river, I believe. So I still haven’t seen any of the fire damage from those wildfires that occurred in those multiple spots across Oregon. I still haven’t driven up those highway sections there to find the type of fire damage that had happened. So I’ve trying to avoid those on the trips that I cut over to Eastern Oregon or cut south or southeast from here. Still, yeah, so I’ve kind of stayed away from me even though they are pretty close to this area, you know, like down in the Eugene area or out past Springfield and Lane County or out in Marion County in Salem, or further up in Clackamas County where the highway 26 was, but I went out to Hood River. Then I cut north from there and then tried to take a bunch of photos.
It’s fantastic that that valley up there, I think it’s the Odell Valley, is lovely, a lot of, but what is its fruit? I believe there are fruit orchards out there, a lot of apple trees in that region. A few other kinds of products have grown up there. But a beautiful spot, a beautiful view of Mount Hood is excellent for photography, and then it’s nice to see the Mount Hood highway kind of does a cool wrap-around along the mountain. It’s probably one of the most excellent scenic roads that you get around one of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. I think it is like Mount Jefferson, and you get a lot of wilderness areas around it. Mount Hood also has many national forests and wilderness areas, but there are still some structured roads that take you near and to it, and you don’t get that kind of access.
When you go down to the Three Sisters, you get the Three Sisters wilderness area that takes up a bunch of that kind of impassable terrain that goes across the wide section of the Cascades. You go over into the bend area from the coast. But it’s interesting over there, yeah, significant sections where you just really can’t take a whole highway around the mountain. So it’s cool going up to Mount Hood getting pretty close to it, then having all these national forest roads that give you road access to get a lot closer up to the mountain and then out to different campsites in different creeks, and you’d have a bunch of different axes up there, and it’s fantastic. Late in the year like this. It’s not as popular as it would be in the springtime or the summer as Portland recreation enthusiasts are hip and active to get out to that section of Mount Hood. It’s not really in that deeper winter section yet where people are trying to get out to the snow parks. So hence, as it was for me, I got to go up in the mountains. You got to drive around for a while—got to explore some minor mountain roads that are cut up and meander off into some different spots or follow a creek for a time.
That was fun. And it was lovely. Yeah, just going around, camping around trying to take some pictures. Trying to find some viewpoints of Mount Hood is you circle the east side of it and catch these different angles throughout the day. And it’s cool this time of year with this sort of rolling active clouds that you get high up into the sky; you get a lot of different textures and a lot of different dynamics that sort of map along with the mountain as you’re trying to make something, something visual on the photographs. But that was cool. I liked getting out, doing some hikes, doing some traveling around that area. I thought it was pretty cool to check out that Mount Hood area and get some outdoor time. And that was kind of cool this fall. It was lovely weather out there. It didn’t get tough, and so it was pretty easy to get around up there. And then, a pleasant 40-minute drive, you’re back in Hood River. There are some pubs, some excellent coffee shops, cafés, and stuff. Now during the lockdown part, it’ll be a little more complicated. Most of my experience so far, all been kind of takeout or, you know, for pickup style of interaction with a lot of places anywhere, you know, coffee, coffee shops, cafés, and stuff, it’s a little tricky when you’re on the road.
That’s one thing I’ve noticed too is, you know, like way back in the day, when I traveled, you know, we stop at a spot, or we want to take a break or something, we pull into a more populated midsize town, go to a Starbucks really because that that corporate chain always had some of the same feature sets to it, it was consistent. Still, you go to a Starbucks; you get free internet access; you get consistent drinks at the gate like a consistent stuffer. For a bunch of different things, it is excellent. You get free parking, that sort of thing. So, yeah, we’d always grab free internet access. Then they weren’t like, I don’t know, frustrated with you trying to get out of there. We noticed with a lot of those non-pop coffee shops, which is why they’ve put some time limits or some restrictions or some caps or capacity on what you have access to use on the internet. And so it was cool to kind of jump over to Starbucks. And instead of just about anywhere in the US you drop into, you can pull in, go to Starbucks, get a consistent experience, just for what it is. It was excellent; I prefer other things to coffee as it is, but it wasn’t so much for coffee was about trying to find a well, pretty much like a work spot or an office where I could go in. And then I could upload all the photos that I had on my camera card to my laptop, I ran it on power, and then I had internet access.
So if I wanted to send an email or if I had to upload any photos or any videos, I could do that from that location. And then it wouldn’t cost me anything, or it wouldn’t be like a long trip. And I was doing this back in like 2011 12 when there was internet access around through the phone, but it wasn’t as ubiquitous, ubiquitous as it is now, to sort of sending out a bunch of videos when you’re deep out in the woods like I was. I remember I remember setting up in a coffee shop and trying to render frames. You know, stupid won’t do that, again, render when I get back home, I think and read it on a real editing computer, whatever it was. Still, yeah, a little dinky laptop;
I was trying to render some standard-definition video. It took hours. What waste should be out in the woods and stuff? I’m out on a camping trip, but trying to be a photographer, you know. So it is kind of like the old days of doing it, but the old days of quickly sending things out while I sit on a coffee in the shop. Feel the dark days of doing it. So now, with the COVID-19 stuff, that’s not even an option anymore; you can’t like to go and drop into your office hours type stuff at a coffee shop, sort of like I had become accustomed to doing in the past. And now, as I’m interoperating outside my more local spot, there it’s just a lot back to my home office. And then I do stuff there and wrap up my work. But I used to kind of take that up out in the morning and then head over to a coffee shop, do my things there, and kind of have a little push behind it. And then you want to go kind of go out, get some stuff done. You have some energy behind the day. And I was like, that is a bit of momentum. But now it’s difficult, especially when you’re out traveling for multiple days, and you’ve just been out camping; you can do a lot of camping now.
It’s cool. But if you want to stop and swing into town and then sort of swing in for a little more of a civilized experience, it’s harder to come by now. When you don’t live there, you know, there’s no you have to get takeout. There’s no restaurant to go into. Now it is wintertime, and it’s wetter, rainier, or cold, for sure. So sitting and eating in a parking lot isn’t as amusing as when this is all new in the summertime. You know. Before that, you know, there’ kinds of ups and downs of traveling this time of year. And now with the lockdown too. It’s kind of strange. It’s like in certain countries, and it seems like I don’t know how to explain that some gas stations are almost not open at all. As I think in Oregon, you know you’re aware that you don’t pump your gas here if you’re from Oregon.
I think there’s like an attendant at every gas station that kind of tried to go back and forth in the last couple of years. It’s probably near on its way out. But during COVID-19, many counties, or at least some counties, up toward the north. They won’t let you pump your gas now they have like or sorry, what am I saying? They won’t allow someone else to pump your gas because that’s a risk to them. So now there’s a sign set up that says, hey, you got to get out, you got to run your car, you got to pump your gas, okay, that’s fine. But then a county over, you know, just like another 20 minutes on the freeways, you drive to that next gas station you pull off to. They require that someone else pump your gas. And they’re stunned and surprised by your rude honesty that you’d even think about trying to pump your gas while you’re in the state of Oregon. So, a little back and forth about the fun of trying to gas up while I’m on a road trip across Oregon and kind of through the lockdown stuff. No one will talk to you though, you sort of set trying to read a sign outside the door, confused. Then they’ll look at you weird if you didn’t figure it out fast enough for whatever it is. So it seems like a lot of that has been fun. But it’s been excellent. So, last time I was on the podcast, I was talking about knives; I was talking about pocket knives. It’s talking about steel; it’s talking about different types of steel that you can use in your pocket knife or that pocket knife makers use in the pocket knives that they sell you; I suppose that is what I meant. And I kind of wanted to continue with some of that stuff today. And then I don’t know maybe the other everyday kinds of stuff that comes around that I’ve been thinking about a little too, but I am thinking about the couple of nights that I have. So it’s kind of going deep into like, well, there’s this damage to you. And there’s this type of steel that doesn’t rust, and it is hard and whatever that is, but I was going to jump in and just kind of go to the knife that I had.
So I mentioned the Gerber Gator. I was going to say three knives. I think that’d be good. These are kind of the three that I’m into right now. But I would mention the Gerber Gator that’s like a three-and-a-half-inch blade; you can get it inexpensive. It’s probably like 40 bucks tops at most places. I picked mine up at a bi-mart a couple of years ago; it’s held up well. The coating on it is a rubberized coating that holds up well with the ozone stuff. And they probably were out over several years. That’s fine with me. And it’s a sharp knife, and it’s D two steel; it works well for most of the stuff I do. But in a lot of ways, it’s kind of like my cutting-around knife. So I have it in my side pocket. So when I’m doing some outdoor stuff, I can kind of carve on a tree; I can chop on some stuff, I can put, you know, like put an ax and a tree when I’m marking my campsite or something like that. It’s fun; I can kind of chop up, whatever if I need to, I can open a box, I can do all those kinds of things. And I feel pretty good about its length and its use for durability in the outdoors. So, that one I sort of carrying on when I’m doing a little more outdoorsy stuff and kind of going out for a bit.
But that’s sort of the end of the pocket knife. And, when that extends, it’s about eight inches. And it’s got a pretty solid bit of grip to it. So it feels like there’s something in your hand, and it feels like there’s a big thing in your pocket too. So that’s kind of why I like to carry it around when I’m kind of stepping out into doing some real camping stuff. But the thing that I have with me every day now is this little like a two and a half-inch or two and a quarter inch Spyderco knife. I like this one; there are some smaller ones. There are some bigger ones. They’re all kind of like a basic design; they’ve got sort of a, I guess, got a broad-shaped blade. This is the kind that is not a Scandi blade; I think it’s a flat grind. And then Spyderco is known for these big finger holes, or you know, like on edge, there’s like this big circular hole you can put your thumb into and use that to kind of whip out the blade as you’re unfolding, and this has got that locking back design as soon as that Gerber Gator too.
I like that locking back folding design. And then, in addition to that, I’ve got an inexpensive full tang knife that he used for some of that baton and whacking around stuff and data to keep over in an ammo can that I have in my truck here when I’m out camping stuff. Maybe I’ll throw that onto a backpack clip on the side so that I have it there, but that’s like an entire thing. I think it’s a four-inch blade with about a four-inch handle, for it is usually a little more than that, but so it ends up being about nine inches or so. And it’s kind of based on the SA five p knife. I think that is what it would be. You can look that one up with excellent blades. I like what I want to get in the future. This is sort of like a Chinese knockoff version of that. So I kind of break out the prices a little bit, but uh, yeah, if you look up those nights, they’re like the rat three. I think it’s kind of pretty similar in style to that. But this one’s made by SEMA. Sema is a Chinese company.
I don’t know they even really exist as anything more than that, but I found them online. I found them on Amazon. They have a few different cheap knife options as it’s printed on the blade; they use higher-end steel, at least in comparison to its price point. So I think this blade that I have is a seven-car blade, which is okay. But it was like $20 for this full tang knife, and that’s a lot with my car handle like a Kydex sheath. So it’s a great knife to kind of keep on the side over here. I’ve been using it like when I was saying I go out on the shop shelf picking days, you know, I liked having a camera bag on my side. I’ve emptied the camera of it. And then I’ve got like a, just like a bit of a shopping bag like a bit of plastic sack in there. And then as I’m walking around in the forest and stuff, I’ve got that full knife, I’ll pop it out. If I find a shot, shall I cut its base, throw it in my bag, pop the blade back in, and then kind of carry on.
So I’m using it for a lot of kinds of basic harvesting stuff like that. It’s just kind of been easy, easy side access and stuff for me while I’ve been kind of hanging around doing forging stuff, but a lot of the time, it stays in the car. And it works well. And for that kind of knife and kind of for as often as I’ve been using it for some stuff. It’s sort of like an excellent camp knife to kind of like whittle on things, you know, that is you know, kind of like dig and whittle and stuff whack on stuff. That’s the bushcraft knife-like last time I was talking about bushcraft and, you know, like Bhutan through one inch or a two-inch stick or something like that. Trying to make a what is like a tent, or a tarp hanger, or like an A-frame for a tarp or a frame for like boiling water and getting stuff ready for your fire or whatever is mostly I just kind of use it to like to whack up smaller kindling sticks for firewood or feather sticks, feather sticks are cool.
I don’t think that this bushcraft knife has been sharp enough for it; I kind of like the Spyderco knife a little bit more for some of the more minor, smaller feathering stuff, but when you have a sharp blade, it makes it so much easier to sharpen something I want to get into too. But for these feather sticks, it’s cool; you get like a piece of kindling, like just a long foot long piece of dry wood, that’s sort of an inch or half-inch thick, around maybe a little wider than that. And then what you do is, it takes a lot of skill to kind of get used to. But, still, you do this, this long and thin car, like if you were like grading if you’re going to like excellent, just like a bit of fillet off of that one inch round stick and then you got all the way down to the end of the steak like the last like an inch or centimeter. And then he pulled up on your cut and then left that little last bit there. And what you get if you get it thin enough, is that wood will naturally curl up like a little piece of ribbon or something, but it’ll sort of curl up, and it’s going to be this dry, thin wisp of wood that’s curled up at the end of your branch there. And that holds them, and then you repeat that kind of another nice thin, thin little paper-thin carve of wood down to the bottom down the last centimeter, leave it there. And then you sort of work your way around the whole stick there. And then you kind of workaround again, a layer up. And as you do that, if you put enough time into it, it does take a good bit of processing. But if you do that, you can make out in the woods and make these feather sticks, which are kind of cool.
Often, you have the tools on you to build a fire or a heat source without going into this much labor to try and produce some sort of tool to facilitate this for you. But it is fantastic to know that if you’re working in some conditions that are a little bit more difficult to get a fire gun, but you get these feather sticks set up, you probably have to get a handful of them. And then once you get your kindling set up, you can lay that you can get your kindling, or you can just get your starter going. So if you’re able to use one of those fire rods as Ferro rods, you’re able to strike that with a knife, throw the sparks down onto whatever you have as your fire starter; if you can get that to the Kindle into a flame, then you put these feather sticks over it. And then you’re able to because you kind of cut those fillets down into the air can get in between the cuts of the wood that are so thin there. And as it’s dry wood or catches fire quickly, the SAP a slight burn. And then it’ll take off almost like it’s a piece of paper, but it has that sustaining quality of being a real piece of wood.
So you get a flame, and you get some embers to start burning off of it. And that’s an excellent way to get a flame to build up quickly, and then you’re also able to have a kind of thicker piece of wood attached to it there. So you’re able to get kind of a stronger build of the kindling a little earlier on. So it’s kind of a cool way to do it. But I think, in a lot of ways, man, it’s a lot of preparatory work to get those, those pieces ready if you’re trying to build a fire in a sort of mobile situation, you know if you’re setting up a base camp or setting up some type of, you know, the location where you’re going to be, you’re going to be, and that’s what your stuff is. And for whatever reason, you didn’t bring any technical gear with you, that might be something that you run into trying and do or if you’re trying to set up a fire in wet conditions, or like a little bit damp, or in some way, you know, more challenging to get a fire going. So I think these are kind of good ways to do that. If you’re stuck, the trick is not to get stuck.
I think that’s kind of the big thing about a lot of the wilderness stuff that I’ve learned is that was so to me, it was a couple of channels of it. There’s a whole bunch of things that you’d have to worry about. As you know, I need to start a fire. And then there’s a whole complicated series of things you can do to create a fire naturally. So, if you want to go down that route, good skills to have good things to learn about, there’s also sort of another route where you know about the modern world, you know about some of the tools you can get ahold of. And you can kind of cut down the time and the route and the expense, or the expense on yourself that it takes the resources you have to give up to get a fire going to get a thing going when you’re out in the woods. And suppose you’re traveling slowly and trying to travel fast and not staying in the exact locations. A lot. In that case, it’s almost a more significant expense of your energy and time to try and build a camp with wood and a knife every time you get somewhere than it is to have a couple of pieces that you can bring in and then utilize quickly. And then, in a clean way, you can kind of pull out. You don’t risk injury or risk any loss of time. And you get a lot of benefits out of it. A one I guess is some sort of notably dropping into that would be like a jet boil, or specifically for fire starting stuff, I think it’s we’re kind of staying there. A jet boil is one of the fancier ends of that, and really, the most straightforward way is to get cotton swabs and scoop up a bunch of petroleum jelly, you know, like Vaseline, that kind of stuff.
You can test this before you go out, but because some things are a little different, the petroleum jelly, I think, is supposed to light up pretty well. So if you have a cotton ball and a little petroleum jelly one, it’s a cosmetic that you can use as a lip balm if you go out, which is something that I’ve been wracked with before when I went out and kind of quickly changed dryer or higher elevation or colder climates than the one my skin and pores we’re kind of used to before man, I get burns and stuff in the cold. So it’s weird how that can be. Or chaps, you know, like chapped lips, but lips, that sort of stuff. But Vaseline can help a lot with that. Still, if you have like a little Ziploc bag and some Vaseline, cotton swabs, and then, just like a regular pocket lady, you can light those up as your fire starter, really quickly without having to hunt down dry moss and bark on the south side of a tree out in the woods somewhere. At the same time, you’re cold and trying to get a fire going.
So you kind of pop one of these out. You hit it with your lighter, or you hit it with your Ferro rod if you don’t have a ladder, but I say bring the lighter. You have the Yeah, the Flint with you if you need it. You got the butane, you can have a Ferro rod as a backup if you like it, but for a lot of kinds of lighters, just a few day’s sorts of things. It’s tricky, man. If you get a more lightweight, that goes bad, but I haven’t heard of hunters who are kind of longer-term 14 plus de outdoorsman going out with things that are way different than even just like a regular big lighter. The Ferro rods are excellent, though, and they seem to help a lot. Still, I think there’s some cool stuff that you can do, or there’s the reliability of a lighter that I’ve had for a long time is always helped me out or been fine for a lot of stuff that I’ve done for the shorter periods that I’ve been out. Still, yeah, you can hit that fire starter and then put it under some kindling, and so you can get a fire gun pretty quickly.
I haven’t jumped into doing a lot of cold weather camping this year or cold weather kind of remote camping in many ways. Having a fire is great, but also sometimes not having a fire is the way to go to like what I’ve been talking about. I’ve been using a portable propane heater with me a lot of the time, and that’s a lot of lighter and a lot cleaner for some of the more straightforward stuff that you want, like a bit of fire. A minor heat source like if I’m going fishing down at the bank of a lake, and this kind of came up just like a week or so ago when I went out to a spot. Efficiently down on the side of the lake. You want some heat, something that is kind of nice like if you’re going to catch a fish, throw a casting skill down and like, you know, make it up there on the side of the bank, but if you’re out and yeah, just kind of carrying that real light kind of two-pound or three or four pounds little box down with you hooking the propane up to it, and then you got heater right there, you’re throwing your cast, and you can kind of manage temperatures that go down a lot more, so it makes just kind of simple things a lot more comfortable than sort of for the car camping based stuff I wouldn’t ever pack that out with me. But even when I pack it out, I notice that if I go with a lighter bit of stuff, it ends up being okay, a lot of the time, so sometimes it’s cool, especially at night, to have a big fire and property, but even for like a lot of the cooking stuff that I do or a lot of the midday stuff that I do from taking a break. I want to pull out the Jetboil from my backpack through the fuel canister on it filled out, catch up with water, make a tea and make a coffee or something like that or make a soup or whatever kind of backpacking meal might be in there.
That kind of thing is, and even the Jetboil is like a heat source, is pretty cool. Then, if you had the dry wood and kindling sources around, you could use that as a Firestarter tool too. Still, which has happened a couple of times, it’s kind of an off—label to use it out. I don’t really recommend stuff, but even just having a quick little Jetboil punch that gets some water hot, heats your hands, and stuff, and then rely on your jackets and your waterproof gear to keep you warm through at least most of the daylight hours and stuff, but that’s kind of how I’ve tried to avoid some of that stuff. Yeah, excellent stuff. It’s been pretty cool. I like, yeah, working with that Gator. The spiders and dragonflies are kinds of smaller pocket knives every day. And then yeah, that giant Sema knife has been pretty cool, and I have been digging that for some of the more prominent kinds of bushcraft and stuff that I have got to do. Sharpeners are pretty important. I think sharpening also doesn’t sharpen very much. And so that’s kind of one of the things I’m sort of probably, most notably an irresponsible knife. Owner, at least in the sense of trying to keep them sharp, so I’m usually more likely just to buy a new $15 knife, you know, go from one night to the next night to the next knife to the next blade.
As I noticed that the blade on it goes dull, you know, as I buy, that’s how it was for the longest time, especially kind of early on, is I could afford a cheaper knife that was cool. I thought at the time I didn’t know much about it. But you know, hey, this is great. It’s a step-up from the Victorinox that I used to carry around. So this is a cool, you know, easy folding blade knife, or whatever it is, I’ll use this, and then by the time it gets dull, or it gets kind of shaking the handle or whatever is, I end up just kind of tossing the knife. And I don’t even really worry about tooling the knife or sharpening the blade and the knife. And, a lot of time, it’s not been the quality of the edge to bother to invest that much into in some parts. That’s my fault from the very beginning. But the thing I’m trying to do now more responsibly is even if it is like a less expensive knife, train tool, that knife to keep it in good shape, but also kind of select a knife, that’s going to be a fine knife for a more extended period. I don’t think they all have to be brilliant, you know, state-of-the-art blades, you know, there’s like 30 or 40-year-old buck knives that are made out of 316 steel that people have had around their hunting knives forever. So
I think that’s cool. And that’s the thing I was talking about a bit last time on the podcast, and I’ll bring it up again. This time, a knife is a cutting tool. You know, it’s supposed to be just like a sharp blade. So, it’s cool to use that as just that tool and kind of work that brings that blade down to be a sharp piece for you when you’re out in the woods and stuff. But a lot of the time. It’s not like a specialized knife that I’m using for something a little more specific that I’m trying to bring it in for. And it’s just kind of like cutting around the knife, it ends up putting on all that stuff, which could be sticks or wood, or it’s just sort of like a tool knife that I use to you know, like cut fishing line or, or wrap up a rope or get something ready on the truck or get something rigged up on my backpacker, or whatever it is, you know. So it’s kind of like a lot of occupancies. And that causes a lot of damage to the blade. And for as little as I’m saying, I sharpen it. The knife is often pretty dull. Like, I don’t know if it’s really like practice to just do an easy slice through of a lot of stuff, right? We’re like to take advantage of that cutting – edge. So, so yeah, shopping service.
Cool. There are a couple of brands that are shopping out there. You can get them in a lot of places. I think the one that I see often is Smith’s as a sharpener. They do a lot of kitchen stuff. They do a lot of pocket knife stuff, and you can get them at Walmart. You can get them from Mart. I’m pretty sure the one I prefer, though, is the brand workshop you can find in many places, too. They’re available online also. And if you’re an Oregonian, I think it’s a company based in Ashland, Oregon. I had no idea until I looked at the pamphlet and tried to figure out which pieces I should get. But in workshops, they have several different sharpening tools. And I guess the reason I elevate them above the Smith stuff, at least for some of the things that I’m interested in, is that their tools are similarly priced but a little bit more robust on the workshop side. So, specifically, is this the electric belt sharpener that I’m looking at? That sharpener has way more flexibility, way more robust, and way higher horsepower, just kind of machining to it. The other Smith type of knockoff version is much more limited, much thinner component pieces, sort of plastic component pieces. Nowhere near the same kind of quality or longevity would be expected in that tool.
There are other pieces sort of like oh, that’s like, yeah, that’s like a power tool is a kind of what you’re looking at there. Also, in addition to that, the workshop stuff has, I guess it’s like a sharpening bench. You would call it. I think it’s like a field sharpener. I’m pretty interested in this, but I think it’s a field-sharpening piece. It’s sort of like a little flat piece that you bring with you in your backpack or your truck when you’re going out on a trip. You’d have in your camper, you’d have it with you and to sharpen up a knife, and it takes more time than I thought it did, you know, you kind of look at a quick video or something, and you look at a guy doing a quick wax on a sharpener and then there you go, cutting the hair off my arm in no time.
But, for a lot of this stuff after I’ve kind of been on a knife for a bit, it takes like a half an hour to sort of work the two sides of a blade on a whetstone and grind it down with an electric sharpener. It’s like, you know, a pass, two passes or whatever it is kind of re Reang goes like that route immediately. But if you sort of rub that blade against the stone, it takes a long time to some sort of work its sharpness. You know, I’m level up that knife to a higher level, but yeah, this workshop sharpening bench is pretty cool. It’s a bit of a platform, and it’s got these angle guides on as you can put the knife at that angle and then cut across that flat surface. And then kind of put the right angle grind in on your cutting knife. Then on the side of it, I think it has like a ceramic alignment rod; you guys have seen those in your kitchen or something to you know, you run your kitchen knife, or you have seen a chef or something before they get going on a piece of meat or their vegetables or whatever you see little chef video and like kind of run the chef knife across this, this sort of solid rod they put down to the table, Oh, shrink, shrink, shrink. Then they align the blade by coming in on the right cut and then the left amount of the edge from, I guess from the hilt is by the top of your hand there when you grab it, but sort of from the hilt end to the point.
Yeah. And then it kind of, I guess it pushes the atoms to make the blade. You know, whatever minor types of microscopic warbles you’d have, those slight meanders you’d have, and what you’d want to be an actual straight fine aligned blade. I guess that kind of quick slices on that piece of steel they align that and then bring that into a sharp piece there’s also like a leather strap I’ve never gotten into letting his brother strap I should probably that’s sort of a part of it I don’t understand yet. I like working the leather strap. I’ve seen people use their belts. That sort of makes the most sense to me if you have that around, but I like it as the thing I’m going to bring back with me. I haven’t brought that back out, but yeah, you’re in the knife backside across the leather, and that’s supposed to, I guess even more to sharpen it, but at a point, it’s like man, I must be some sharp knife Have you seen the test I like that you know where they put it up to their arm hair.
Or, you know, like guys do that a lot. I’ve seen chefs do that, but they put it up to the hair, and then they kind of do just a natural light little, just hardly whispering across the hair the stand on the wrist. And there’s a knife blade that is easily able to just kind of cut right through that without a natural hesitation or kind of bending it over or knocking it down and then dragging it out. That’s supposed to be a sharp knife. That’s like your litmus test, for it is almost razor-sharp. That’s what it seems like, you know, sharp enough to shave with it looks, so I’ve seen people like work their axes down to that sharpness, right? You see people with an accent and grind that down to such a short net that they can take that ax and cut the hairs off their wrist or, I guess, shave off their face with a hatchet. You know, that’s a little more. That’s a little more lumberjack than I’m willing to do. I’m just hanging out, trying to take some pictures, stay warm, and keep the heat going. Try to keep my knife sharp.
Thanks for talking about knives and sharpening and some other outdoor stuff smell it stuffs. It’s all been good. So I hope you guys are having a good November, a good Thanksgiving, dropping into a good December now, and yeah, I would appreciate it if you guys want to see more of my stuff. You can go to Billy Newman photo comm forward-slash support to find out some more information on how to support some of the efforts that I’m doing with this podcast. Oh, with the photographs that I’m taking, you can do that too. But yeah, thanks a lot for listening to this episode. Hope to talk to you again next time.