Hands On With The Work Sharp Folding Field Sharpener

My hands on experience with the Work Sharp Folding Field Sharpener — a much more portable version of the larger field sharpener that can easily fit in a backpack or jeans pocket.

Video transcript:

Intro

The Work Sharp Field Folding Sharpener has been a super convenient tool for me that I’ve been playing around with for the last couple of weeks. I love that, like you saw in the beginning, you can shove it in a backpack, and it clips onto admin-type compartments really easily.

It takes up very little room and adds virtually no weight to the pack—there’s almost nothing to it. With a pocket clip, you can also put it in a pocket next to your knife or multi-tool if you want to carry it that way, and it would still add very little bulk to your bag.

It opens up easily, and you have a 400-grit coarse diamond file and a ceramic fine-tuning stone right there that you can use. I think this combo works for most of your needs.

Obviously, you have to temper your expectations a bit—this isn’t going to replace a water stone or a serious sharpener you might have at home. But the idea here is the convenience of knowing that, wherever you go, you’ll have something to maintain your knives with, and it does a pretty good job.

Sharpening With The Folding Field Sharpener

They’ve set it up so you can hold it like this, and for a smaller blade, like the one I’ve got in my Leatherman here, they have an edge guide on either side. You can just line your blade up on that—I believe it’s at 20 and 25 degrees—and use it. I prefer a more shallow grind on this knife, but you can skip the edge guide and still go the length of it fairly easily.

Then, do the same on the other side. If you do want to use the edge guide, you just lay the blade against it like that, and it puts your knife at the right angle. Then, just try to be consistent as you pull across.

I’ve only used the diamond stone a couple of times, mostly because I like to keep my knives functionally sharp. So, if you’re on top of it, you’ll probably be using the ceramic stone most of the time, if not a strop. I’ve been pretty impressed that even on a larger blade, like this fixed blade here, you might look at a small sharpener like this and wonder, ‘Am I going to be able to sharpen this?’

You definitely have to be a little deliberate, and obviously, on a Scandi grind, I’m not going to use the 25-degree guide. You lose a little surface area by lining up the Scandi edge here, but I still think that if you’re deliberate, there’s enough sharpener to hit all of it before you run out of stone — especially if you’re using a pull design like this.

The Compromise Of Such A Pocket-Friendly Design

Obviously, it’s not ideal; it would be nicer to have a longer stone, but it can definitely be done. You’re trading versatility for sheer sharpening size here. But for most of the knives that I carry with me regularly and would want to use, I think this is sufficient. It does a good job, and I can definitely tell the difference after touching up one of my blades with the ceramic stone.

On the slightly larger regular field sharpener (the one that doesn’t fold), you also get a leather strop, which is probably the only thing I feel is missing from this. It would be nice to have a strop, especially since I could probably use it with a lot of these knives without even needing to use the ceramic stone.

But if you use light pressure on the ceramic stone, you’re getting a similar treatment to stropping without really removing any metal.

As I said, that’s the tradeoff for something this small — I’ve never had a sharpener this small with this much versatility. I’ve had a couple of Spyderco plates, but they were both so fine that, in situations where I had a really dull knife at someone else’s house, it took a lot of effort to touch it up with that.

The coarser stones I’ve had were much larger and not convenient to take with me while traveling. So, being able to throw this in a backpack and know that I can maintain my stuff wherever I go is super useful.

Who is this ideal for?

I think this is for the backpacker or the EDC (everyday carry) fan—the type of person who likes to bring a variety of things with them every day, likes to feel prepared, and doesn’t want a really loaded-down pack or a bulky tool. You’re okay leaving your big water stones at home, and you just want something that, if you’re out for a hike, camping, or whatever, you know you can take care of your gear.

As an alternative to the regular field sharpener that Work Sharp offers (the bigger one), this folds up and kind of becomes its own case, which is really nice. You don’t have to worry about putting it in a pack and having something bump or scuff the stones.

I find that a big plus and a fair tradeoff for the slightly larger field sharpener to get this kind of functionality, and to be able to put it in a pocket. That’s not something you see on many sharpeners, and the price point is good.

Anything in the $20 to $35 range for a good sharpener that does a good job touching up knives is great.

You can’t go much lower than that without getting into the little pull-through sharpeners, which make a lot of people cringe at what they do to your blade. So, this provides good value for the money, in my opinion.

A couple of minor gripes:

One thing I’ve noticed in the couple of weeks I’ve used it (and I don’t know how well it shows on camera) is that this little logo tag here scratches really easily. I think I just used my fingernail to try to get off a little blemish, and that small motion put a bunch of permanent marks on it that won’t rub off. It struck me that, if I continue to put this in my backpack—or especially if you were carrying it in a pocket—it would probably scratch up pretty obviously and fairly quickly.

Now, how much do you really care about that, since all it is is the Work Sharp logo? It doesn’t interfere with functionality at all, but it stood out to me that, on day one of using it, I was like, ‘Well, darn, I’ve already got all these marks on it. It looks like I’ve been carrying it for a long time.’ But your mileage may vary—maybe you don’t care. I just thought I’d mention it.

As a final thought, just in terms of keeping it clean—this is metallic, so try not to get it wet, as it could rust. They say you can clean it with soapy water. I used one of those bristle brushes for dishes, scrubbed it with some Dawn, and most of the black buildup from use came right off.

So, if you’ve never cleaned a ceramic stone that way, it’s that simple, and you can maintain this sharpener easily.

I’m pretty sure you can only get this right now through Work Sharp’s website. I don’t see it on Amazon, at least at the time of recording this video. I’ll leave a link in the description—it’s not an affiliate link, but you can use it to order if you’re interested.

I think that’s about it for what I wanted to say about it. If you have any questions or if I didn’t address something here, put them in the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer.

Get yours here:

https://www.worksharptools.com/products/folding-field-sharpener