Smith’s 3 in 1 Sharpener

 

Submitted by Eric Daniel

I have come to the conclusion that serrated pocket knives are a fact of life.  Don’t get me wrong, I think serrated blades are a definite plus, especially when it comes to cutting things like cord, rope, cardboard and the like, but sharpening them can be a pain.  A couple of the Joes in my unit are knife magnets and they carry a number of tools to sharpen their field blade collections, but I was wanting something more universal.  What I came across was a device from Smith’s. 

Technically, I believe the sharpener is called the Smith’s Carbide, Ceramic and Diamond sharpener (though REI refers to it as the Pocket Pal.)  The carbide parts are for gross sharpening and resetting the edge, while the ceramic ‘stones’ are for finishing.  Both the ceramic and carbide stones are reversible and replaceable.  What really turned me on to the Smith’s sharpener, however, was the tapered diamond rod. The tapered diamond rod allows me to sharpen the serrations on my pocket knives that feature them, and because it’s tapered, it “scales” well with the different sized serrations (Spyderco knives, for example, were ‘notorious’ for having different radii serrations in their blades).  To sharpen the serrations, you just need to run the rod up the middle of the serration and the expanding diameter of the rod will sharpen the entire curved surface.

To be sure, this is not the best or finest sharpener out there, and I probably will not be using it to sharpen my fillet knife, but it certainly does a number on my field knives, as well as the blades on my Gerber-tool, and at $10, it’s doesn’t break the bank and I won’t cry too much if I lose it.

Check out the Smith's Sharpener here.

Comments

[JAFO]

Bought one of these at Lowe's last week- VERY handy piece of kit. It's gone into my EDC

[Eric Daniel]

JAFO,

Yeah, I was really impressed by the Smith’s 3-1. It doesn’t take up a lot of space, it’s simple to use, and it’s pretty indestructible.