How to Sharpen a Recurve

This is a tutorial on how to sharpen a recurve knife or also known as a bird's beak knife. They are curved towards the cutting edge and this makes them very difficult to sharpen on a flat whetstones. You need to consider other sharpening methods and a different set of tools. You can buy expensive sharpening tools, but if you get creative, you can make a very effective sharpening tool custom tailored to your needs.

To make your own recurve sharpening tools you only need a few items. You need some sand paper, a 1 to 2 inch rod, pole, or dowel. Smaller knives will require a smaller diameter rod. You will need a way to adhere the sand paper to the rod and you will need to cut up the sand paper to size.

You can choose whatever grits you like, but I would do one coarse, say 400 grit, and one about 1000 grit. These two grit ranges will give you enough range to work with to get any knives fairly sharp. Lastly, you may want to consider a polishing tool to really help clean up the cutting edge. I chose a piece of suede which I was able to up and attached to the bottom half of my rod.

This video will show you the entire process of how I made the perfect tool to sharpen a recurve blade.

Exclusive updates, news, & content https://burrfection.com/