Well, having shared the learning from all this stuff around, I got asked for a new varuiation the other day by a Hunter - a credit card sized variety that would slip in a trouser pocket. Now building on Hoodoos hone, if lightness is the key - clearly this needs to be one hone and several grades of paper and leather etc. Heres what resulted
Start with a sheet of 2mm Foamex (just what I had to hand….this A3 sheet is enough to make two pocket hones and two 1/3 sheet full sized hones). Anything stiff with a slight flex would work here – plywood, bits of plastic cut from a lunch tray.
So I marked up the sizes and decided to use a panel saw to cut them up.
It’s a quick job, and we have 4 large boards (enough for 2 large hones) and 4 small boards (2 small hones). The edges are a bit rough, but nothing that sandpaper cant cure.
Now, we just need two of the small pieces. I plan to glue two pieces one on top of the other. I want to only glue the middle, so I can lift the ends apart and trap the wet and dry paper between the two sheets of foamex. So I measure 30mm in from each of the ends of one board and mark a line. I plan to use epoxy resin (two part) glue for this as its strong.
So I mix equal parts of each tube (resin and hardener) on an old paper plate and spread it thinly between the lines like this. Make sure you don’t spread too thickly or it will ooze sideways when the boards are pressed together
I then carefully align another board on top. You may notice one board is slightly larger than the other. This makes it easier to put the wet and dry paper in later as you can catch the protruding edge with your thumb and pry the boards apart. Once I’m happy with the alignment, I bung a big weight on top and let the glue harden.
So we now have two board glued together in the middle. Next step is to cut some pieces of the right grades of wet and dry paper 40mm longer than the boards but the same width.
The paper can be fitted by levering the boards apart and curling the ends in like this. Do the same at both ends and in effect that’s the basic pocket hone. The paper will form to fit the hone after first usage. Create half a dozen grades of paper the same size (write the grade of sandpaper on the back of each as you go) and you have a credit card sized hone that weighs less than an ounce.
I know a lot of you like to convex grind. No problem. I made up the second set of boards to include a piece of mousemat glued to the top. This hone can be used to convex one way up of flat sharpen scandys the other way up.
A picture of the finished hones with a credit card and SAK for scale.
There we go – one Hunter Pocket hone
Red