Sharpening tip

[kennym]

Excellent tips!!        

I also made a cardboard sheath with some tape and cardboard to protect it in my bow box.

[NoCams]

Glad I could contribute fellas..... I sure have learned tons from all the fine folks here on the Gang......    

One final thing that we sometimes forget too about files and hacksaws..... they ONLY cut on the forward stroke !!! I know lots of folks do not pick the file up off the work on the backstroke and even though they may not be applying any pressure you are still dulling the file prematurely if you do this.

Just something about using fine tools and your hands to bring a piece of steel to a fine shaving sharp edge isn't there Gents.....  

One of the hardest things to do must be to throw a worn out file away.  A friend mine years ago could not get his Zwickeys sharp.  His file was quite possibly a third or fourth generation heirloom.  I could almost see the reflections of numerous long passed ancestors reflecting from it.  I demonstrated by sharpening one, I told him to go buy a new file and when you get them sharp like this one you can hunt with them.  A couple of weeks later, they wanted help finding a deer. I looked at his arrows, the sharp one was still in there, along with some butter knife dull ones and those looked like they had been shot into a bale.  In his pick-up was that old file. Some people just don't get it, he now hunts with cps and presharpened heads and still thinks those four blade Zwickey Escimos don't work.  I get a new file every year, it just makes life easier.

[kennym]

LOL Pavan, I have a drawer with a dozen in it! They are junk, but still in there!!