Gerber Pocket Sharpener

"A blunt knife is a dangerous knife." A knife is a tool, and when using any tool, you should allow the tool to do the work. When using a blunt knife, you have to put too much force to make up for the lack of sharpness, and that's when the knife can slip and cause damage. When using a sharp knife, you use only moderate force and the blade is controlled safely at all times.I love this. It is very easy to use and restores a good cutting edge on any type of knife very quickly. The secret to using this is not to let the knife get too blunt in the first place; as soon as the blade dulls, sharpen it.It's small and neat and stores easily. It's comfortable to hold and safe to use as your fingers are well out of the way to the side of the cutting direction even if the blade were to slip. I would say that it's equally at home in your kitchen or in your backpack.Important: If the knife is very blunt it would be very much better to use a sharpening stone to create a new edge and then use this tool to keep the edge good. This tool isn't really designed for removing the amount of metal needed to create the cutting edge from scratch.Update: I've had this tool for a few months now and use it regularly - at least three times a week. I eat a lot of salad stuff and need a good, sharp knife to cut tomatoes in particular. This tool keeps my knife razor sharp. If I detect any dullness in the blade, two or three swipes is all it takes to put a really good, sharp edge on it again. I've also used it to restore a good edge onto my Swiss Army knife which had dulled a bit over the years and to touch up one or two nicks on the blade of a pocket knife. I think I can safely say that it will work on any type of blade you can imagine. But maybe not serrated blades ... but I wouldn't know how to go about sharpening one of those anyway.It's an excellent product for an amazingly low price. Very highly recommended.Update: I've had this for some time now and everything I've written above is perfectly true ... except for the bit about restoring blunt knives. It all depends on the angle ground onto the edge. I've been working on an old knife of my granny's. The edge had been sharpened many times over the years and the angle has become changed on one side of the blade. It's not making any headway on changing the angle.So ... it's brilliant for sharpening knives with an included angle of 40 degrees (i.e. 20 degrees either side). If the angle is more acute than this, it will still do the job. If the angle is greater than this, you need to find another approach. Probably a cheaper and more aggressive sharpener would do it to restore the angle, and then use this to maintain the sharpness.I've included a photo of the sharpening angle. You can check it if you have a protractor.

This is a sharpener primarily for Gerber's pocket knives and bladed tools although it should work equally well with other brands. There are two grades of sharpening on offer, coarse and fine, the former to remove dints and knicks from the blade and the fine to provide a perfect edge. The sharpening rollers appear to be ceramic although larger versions of this type of tool use a hardened or tungsten steel instead. The packaging is ideal for a small counter-top displays but opening it requires a sharp knife or heavy-duty scissors.With a larger tool, sharpening of smaller blades is less effective as the depth of the tool limits how much of the blade can contact the sharpening rollers. This being much slimmer, it should offer a better result and was easy to use with the smallest blade on a Swiss Army knife which was previously a challenge to any other sharpener I own. Small and light enough to fit into a pocket of a work jacket, waistcoat or vest it includes a hole suited to a lanyard so could form part of an outdoor kit and always available when needed without needing storage space or adding weight.Quite inexpensive, should it be lost, it won't be too much of an issue or too expensive to replace. This appears to be made under collaboration with Fiskars, whose own-branded product looks identical.

This excellent little sharpener weighs almost nothing. It is about 3 or 4 fingers long, and fits easily in the palm of your hand.A few light strokes on the "coarse" side are enough to smooth out the burrs in a knife blade, and a few more on the "fine" side put a great edge on a knife.I've used it to sharpen my precious Buck folding knife I bought almost half a century ago, and it swiftly brought the blade back to form. You can't shave with it, for sure, but who but Chuck Norris wants to shave with a Buck? You can sure slice meat, or whittle tent pegs, or cut cord with it. And you can do it a lot quicker than on a whetstone or oilstone. I've sharpened kitchen knives and in less than a minute have them back fit for purpose.There's a really satisfying draw as you slide the blade through the ceramic jaws, and you can feel the draw diminish as the blade comes into trim.No, you're not going to sharpen chisels with this thing, but that's not what it's for.I guess that those who don't like this device are perhaps not caressing the blade through the jaws, but trying to force it.

This review is for the Gerber Pocket SharpenerI bought this as a cheap and cheerful ECD sharpener back in 2012, to stick in my pocket and use at my work putting the edge back on my Swiss army knife which I use all the time.I have used it for a while now on various knifes, so think it's time to pass on my views.To be fair, it's not a bad wee sharpener just to bring back the edge. But I would certainly use different, "more suited to the job" sharpeners to repair a damaged blade from dings and chips.At 6cm long, 4.3cm high and 1cm thick. Weighing in at only 16.5 Grams, so it is easy to fit into a pocket or rucksack and forget about. There when you need it most, but not in the way.The integrated finger grip does a good job of keeping you hands away from the blade being sharpened, and gives a decent enough hold whilst sharpening.The Course Ceramic "V" can and will strip enough of the blade material to be of use(takes a few stokes more than Carbide would do), and the Fine Ceramic will and does take the burrs off to finish up with.Good for EDC, camping or at work.All in all, for £4.00, it's well worth it.Would I recommend to friends and family... yesWould I buy again ... yesThanks for reading, and I hope some information was useful.It is was, I'd appreciate a click on "yes" against "Was this review helpful to you" below.