This site is owned by Lena Rose Quinata, a biologist and adventurer with over 20 years experience at using and sharpening knives.

I grew up on a tropical island very near the equator. I love to do physical things and get involved where I can. Try new things and have fun while I’m at it. And I would always have a knife among my stuff. Over and over, so many times, a knife was just what I needed. And it would have to be sharp. Chopping or shaping wood for the campfire, for constructing lean-to’s or making simple tools. Slicing through rope to put up a canopy or to tie things down before a typhoon blows through. Shoot. Cutting through the vines and grass strangling my leg and preventing me from continuing my slide down the side of a steep gulley. It isn’t a good idea to be suspended in midair. For fishing, for diving, for hiking. My knife had to be sharp or I don’t want to know about it.

And then when it was time to prepare food. Oh, man. If that knife wasn’t sharp, and I’d have to really push at that thing, or saw with it just to cut through the meat? Or all those really delicate, beautiful foods I’d be mashing down while trying to cut because my danged knife wasn’t sharp? Let me tell you. Being able to make my knife sharp was essential for getting a job done well.

After all, if it isn’t sharp, then what’s the use?