I picked this up over the week­end because when I was out at the fam­i­ly home / Bug Out Loca­tion, I real­ized I for­got a knife sharp­en­er.  So, when I ran out to pick a cou­ple items up for the fam­i­ly din­ner, I also picked up the Bear Grylls Knife Sharp­en­er.  Not unlike the Bear Grylls Firesteel I reviewed ‘briefly in this post.  I was pret­ty pleas­ant­ly sur­prised.  Like the firesteel, it has a sheath, a hole for a lan­yard, a rough and fine dia­mond bar, as well as a course and ceram­ic fine blade shap­ing sharp­en­er.  It is 4+ inch­es long, has rub­ber­ized grips so you can hold it secure­ly. It has a good sol­id feel to it.

All that said, one of the knives I have had the hard­est time get­ting a good edge on is my Ka-bar Beck­er BK2.  I’ve tried sev­er­al meth­ods of sharp­en­ing it, and have not been a ble to get a good edge on it, until now.  And here is my hypoth­e­sis why.   Most of the hand­held knife sharp­en­ers like a Smith’s that I have used in the past do an okay job, but the Bear Grylls Knife Sharp­en­er did an excel­lent job.  I believe in part because the ceram­ic fine sharp­en­ing por­tion has a squared off area and is not round giv­ing the knife an edge to scrape itself against to bet­ter shed shards of steel that need to come off to pro­vide for a fin­er edge.  After about two or three min­utes of shap­ing and sharp­en­ing with the knife sharp­en­er, I was thor­ough­ly impressed with the edge it put on the BK2.   

Addi­tion­al­ly, I sharp­ened a cou­ple of my oth­er knives on the dia­mond bars that have Scan­di­na­vian grinds and it did just fine as well.  I paid about $10.00 plus tax for mine, and am suf­fi­cient­ly hap­py with it for only own­ing it for two days.  It accom­plished a task that that I have been hav­ing some trou­ble with so it was a worth­while pur­chase for me.  If you are hav­ing prob­lems with a thick blad­ed knife like the BK2, you may want to pick one up…

UPDATE 4/2/2013:  After using the Bear Grylls Sharp­en­er on mul­ti­ple knives, I am find­ing it is much more ade­quate for thick­er knives that might be 3/8″ and thick­er blades due to the angle at which thi­er blades might be shaped, with the excep­tion of a Scan­di­na­vian grind, of course.  It seems thin­ner blades have a lit­tle issue with the width of the shap­ing ceram­ic bars sharp­en­ing the grind…  That said, I stil like it, and it worked well on sev­er­al of my knives and I don’t think I would have an issue in the field.

Don’t for­get about the NJ Pre­pared­ness and Alter­na­tive Ener­gy Expo on April 20th.  All the infor­ma­tion can be found here: http://goo.gl/EWGI7