It doesn’t matter how well-designed and solidly-built your knife is. Ultimately, its performance will always hinge on the sharpness of the blade edge. This holds just as true for pocket knives as it does for your chef’s knives, your survival knives, and any other bladed tool you own.
Fortunately, there’s no shortage of knife sharpeners in the market, allowing you to give your knives the proper maintenance they deserve. Problem is, many knife sharpeners are designed for home use. As such, they’re big and bulky, making them difficult to bring along to the kind of places where you rely on a trusty pocket folder for all your cutting needs.
Of course, not all knife sharpeners are like that. In fact, there’s a growing category of pocket knife sharpeners designed with portability in mind, allowing you to bring a proper blade-honing tool during camping, hunting, and other outdoor adventures where you trusty knife is likely to be put to good use. These pocket knife sharpeners are compact enough to fit in bag pouches, EDC cases, and, in some instances, even your pants pocket, allowing you to hit the road ready to give your knife’s edge some fine-tuning anytime it’s needed.
There are a few different types of pocket knife sharpeners available today. Some of the best pocket knife sharpeners use a chunk of stone with some embedded gritty materials to remove metal and reshape your blade, while others use a sharpening steel with honing bits embedded on its surface to achieve the same results. There’s also the knife hone, which differs from the previous two by reshaping the metal on the very edge of the blade instead of shaving off parts of it, as well as electric sharpeners that use powered grinds or belts to remove metal at a fast pace.
Whichever option you prefer, there should be one that will suit your particular needs and, in this list, we compile the best pocket knife sharpeners around.
Smith’s PP1 Pocket Pal
Measuring just 2.5 inches long, this pocket knife sharpener is designed to sit comfortably right in your pocket, taking up very little room, so you can keep it in the same pocket as your daily folder. Heck, it’s compact enough to be used as a key fob, making it very convenient to carry everywhere. It comes with two V-shaped 90-degree slots, one carbide for setting the edge and one ceramic for sharpening the blade, as well as a diamond-coated tapered steel rod that can be used for both straight and serrated edges. Both the carbide and ceramic stones can be reversed when they wear out and even replaced eventually when both sides are done, so this is a tool you can keep around for much longer.
AccuSharp Knife & Tool Sharpener
Instead of pulling the knife through a sharpening slot, this portable knife sharpener reverses the process by requiring you to hold the blade steady while moving the sharpener along its length in one sweeping motion. We actually find that process a lot easier to do, so long as you can steady the blade in place (setting it down on a flat surface works best). We guess that’s why AccuSharp made an entire line of sharpeners in this form factor, allowing you to get similar sharpeners for different tools (they have models specifically for scissors, gardening blades, augers, serrated knives, and more). It uses a diamond-honed tungsten carbide slot, which is reversible and replaceable, as well as an ergonomic designed for ambidextrous use and a full-length strap guard to shield your fingers from the blade.
Redi-Edge Dog Tag Knife Sharpener
Don’t want to carry a compact knife sharpener in your pocket? Okay, how about wearing it around your neck? That’s exactly what you can do with this pull-through knife sharpener, which comes in a form factor resembling a dog tag. It uses Duromite cutting elements preset at a 60-degree angle for a consistent 30-degree double edge on your blades, with a design that, the outfit claims, can be used for both plain and serrated edges. Is it as good as some of the other pocket knife sharpeners in this list? Probably not, but if you want the smallest sharpener you can hang on a lanyard or chain, this definitely makes for arguably the best option in the lot.
Victorinox Pocket Knife Sharpener
We love the design of this pocket knife sharpener, which comes in a form factor resembling a pen, even coming with a clip on the cap, so you can secure it to the edge of a shirt pocket. It actually has two caps, each of which you can pull out from either end. On the first end, you get angled ceramic discs you can pull across the blade edge for sharpening. On the other end, you get a honing stone rod for polishing and maintaining the knife’s edge. That’s right, you get both sharpening and honing options, which makes it quite the flexible tool to have in the field.
Lansky C-Sharp
We love how this pocket knife sharpener is able to fit four pull through slots in its compact body, giving you a decent selection of options for honing your knife on the go. It has four 600-grit ceramic sharpening slots at different angles, namely 17 degrees, 20 degrees, 25 degrees, and 30 degrees, so you can use it with most pocket knives in your collection. We particularly like the ceramic it uses, as it hones effectively without being too rough on the blades. For polishing straight and serrated blades, it even includes a strip of 800-grit ceramic bench stone towards the lower end. It comes with a D-ring for using as a key fob or hanging on a lanyard.
Smith’s Adjustable Angle Knife Sharpener
This portable knife sharpener is a little bigger, so expect it to stick out if you put in your pants’ back pocket. At least, it can still fit, which is a plus, although it will probably be best to keep it somewhere in your pack. It takes on a form factor resembling many home sharpening tools, with a large handle on one side and three separate slots on the other. One slot, which is set at fixed angle, is dedicated to serrated knives, although the other two, coarse and fine, can be adjusted to one of six angles from 14 to 24 degrees. A knob on the body allows you to choose which angle to set both the adjustable slots, allowing you to quickly match the grind angle on whatever knife you’re trying to refresh. Features include a flat base that keeps it steady on even surfaces, a soft grip handle, and replaceable abrasive components (carbide and ceramic).
Smith’s Edge Pro Compact Electric Knife Sharpener
Our biggest issue with the current crop of electric knife sharpeners is the fact that they can’t run on battery power, requiring you to plug in to a wall outlet. Given how many folks actually hit the outdoors with power stations nowadays, though, it might not be as big of an issue, especially since you only have to use electric sharpeners in short bursts, since they can hone edges in very little time. The electric slots on this tool use motorized wheels made from a bonded synthetic abrasive that can quickly grind one side of the blade at a time, so you have to put in each knife twice to get the job done, with integrated blade guides that can hold your knife at the precise angle to ensure effective sharpening. In case you want to use it without a power source, there’s also a manual slot with crossed ceramic rods that’s ideal for honing and cleaning up rough edges.
Work Sharp Guided Field Sharpener
Probably one of the most popular pocket knife sharpeners today, this tool has five sharpening surfaces, namely a coarse 220-grit diamond plate on one side, a fine 600-grit diamond on the other side, a leather stop conditioned with micro-abrasives on one edge, and two ceramic rods, including a smaller one designed specifically for serrated blades. It also has guides for 20- and 25-degree angles, so you can check to make sure you’re holding the blade edge correctly, as well as a grooved section that’s ideal for sharpening fish hooks, in case you’re spending the day angling. The biggest knock here is how heavy it is, which isn’t surprising given how big the two diamond plates are, which measure 4 x 1 inches apiece.
Spyderco Tri-Angle Sharpmaker
Another bigger knife sharpener, this one packs up into a bar-shaped case measuring about 9 x 2 inches, so it’s a tad longer than your typical portable rig. If you don’t mind bringing it along, though, it gives you a really handy tool that’s designed for using on a bench or table. To use, set down the base unit on a flat surface and insert the ceramic rods you want to use for honing, putting it at whichever hole is labeled at the precise angle you want to use. Basically, the base holds the rods at the correct angle already, so you simply have to keep the knife’s blade level to sharpen it correctly. It comes with two sets of high aluminum ceramic rods: one set that’s medium grit and one set that’s fine grit. They even include aluminum rods you can put in to shield your other hand from the blade when you’re sharpening, just to be safe.
Work Sharp Ken Onion Knife Sharpener
Another electric knife sharpener, this one is easily the bulkiest in the list. However, it’s not that big that you won’t want to carry it in your pack. In fact, if you’re camping with a lot of gear, including a power station, it just might be a good idea to bring this instead of your typical manual fare. It has adjustable edge angle settings from 15 to 30 degrees, adjustable speed (you can slow it down for pocket knives and speed it up for bigger blades), and five types of swappable abrasive belts, allowing you to choose between extra fine, fine, medium, coarse, and extra coarse.