SHARPENING PROCESS FOR ROUND POINT HOOKS
How you hold the hook is key to getting a good sharp hook point. If you’re holding the hook between thumb and forefinger, it’s almost impossible for the hook not to move when filing. It’s also difficult to hold a smaller hook and leave enough room to manoeuvre the file on each side of the point.
The JAG vice allows your hand to keep a firm grip on the length of the vice, while its jaws grip the hook securely, yet the hand can fully rotate to give access to the full hook point. You can also position the hook so that you have maximum room to work the file fully around and over the hook point.
I wouldn’t want to go back to holding hooks in bare fingers. It’s important that you brace the holding hand, either against your knee, or have your arm on a steady table.
If you position the hook in the vice with the hook point facing away from you and the hook shank leaning backwards a little, this gives you lots of all round freedom to work on the point. The sharpening process is the same whether you hold the hook in the free hand, or when its clamped in the vice. Here’s my system…
Using the eye glass to check the hook point
On smaller hooks, without a knife-edge point, I start just above the barb and file towards the point, but at this stage I’m looking to reduce the thickness of the point’s stem below the point without touching the point itself. You can reduce the thickness of the point above the barb by at least 20 per cent without unduly effecting its required strength.
Make sure you follow the exact line of the point’s stem, aiming to remove any thickness evenly. I use no more than four strokes of the coarse file at a time. I then do exactly the same to each side above the barb, then check it. Keep doing this until the stem length of the point is thinner, but equal on the outer edge and both sides. The thinned stem, in conjunction with a sharp hook point, penetrates a tough jaw much easier and requires less pressure than an unworked hook.
Once you’re happy with the slimmeddown stem, take two or three strokes, more if needed, with a fine file on the top and sides of the main point to fully sharpen it. Do not take off too much at once, but aim to keep metal removal
Honed down knife edge point on Viking hook
equal on the outside face of the point, and on the two sides.
What I’m looking for is gradually thinning metal reaching towards the hook point, with the point itself ultra-sharp. It needs to dig into your thumb nail or short section of hard wood as soon as any pressure is applied. If it skids over the surface, work on the point with the fine file a little more.
The last act is to use an eye-glass to
Working the knife edge on Viking pattern
check for any imperfections in the point after filing. An eye-glass allows you to check for any over-sharpening of the hook point, which creates weakness, and you can check a point that has been fished for a while and become blunt or burred over. Hooks may feel sharp to you, but when trying to sink a hook into a cod, bass, ray, tope or huss at long range, then the sharper the hook, the better.