Tools · Blades and edge care
Fourteen seasons on a wildland fire crew in the Southwest, then a saw and sharpening shop he still runs in northern New Mexico. Abel handles everything on this site with an edge on it.
Background
What does a sharpening shop teach you?
What tools look like after they have been used badly. Abel sees the failures, not the reviews, and they arrive in a box with the receipt still in it.
Fourteen fire seasons put him behind a chainsaw for weeks at a time in dust, heat and grit, which is the fastest way to learn which steels and which handle materials survive real work. The shop afterwards gave him the other half of the picture: hundreds of household knives, brought in by people who had tried to fix them and made it worse.
That combination is why his guides read differently from most gear writing. He is not comparing specifications. He is describing what came across the bench.
What does he write here?
Steel, grind geometry, handle material, sharpening, and the maintenance of anything with a cutting edge, including saws and axes.
He is also the reason this site takes blades seriously as a preparedness subject at all. His argument, which the rest of us came around to, is that the knife is the one line on a readiness list that is bought once rather than consumed, so it deserves the same care as choosing a pump or a stove rather than the care you give a pack of batteries.
From Abel, on what ruins good blades
Three things, in order. A grinder in the hands of somebody in a hurry. Putting it away wet. And buying a steel so hard that you quietly stop sharpening it, which is the same as owning a dull knife with better paperwork.
- Based inEspanola, New Mexico
- Fire seasons14 on a wildland crew
- ShopSaw and sharpening, still open
- Writes aboutKnife steel, edge geometry, handle material, sharpening, saw and axe care
- Reachable at[email protected]
A knife tells you how a household lives. It is the most honest thing in the drawer.
Abel Cortines
Where to find this work
Everything filed under Blades & Edge Care on this site is written or edited by Abel Cortines. The rest of the team, and how the three of us split the work, is on the page about who we are and how we test things.