It’s easy to use. Requires no special skills. A sharpener for dummies!

DSCN5653 “It’s portable and easy to use. It requires no special skills. You just lightly run it along the blade. It’s a sharpener for dummies!”

My in-house designated-critic, wife Linda, tried out the AnySharp Edge (anysharp.com), a tool and knife sharpener, that the manufacturer sent me, and was ecstatic about it. “It’s genius,” she told me, “so easy to use that I’ll use it a lot.”

That probably tells you all you need to know about this sharpener. But I will say a bit more.

First, over the years I’ve gotten lots of products to test and write about, from fishing rods to clothing. And I’ve only written about the products I liked (and there were plenty that I didn’t think were worthy of a column). Both Linda and I really like the AnySharp Edge. You can use it on almost any tool, including lawn mower blades and shovels, as well as knives. My hunting knives are next!

I especially like the safety guard that protects your hands, the lightness of the tool, and the fact it sharpens things so quickly. I’ve struggled with knife and other sharpeners in the past, but this one is really easy to use. You don’t even need any instructions. The blunt edge of the tool is placed in the “V” tool, and a smooth light stroke gets the job done quickly and easily. The instructions actually tell you that “light pressure is safer and better.”

AnySharp Edge in packageLinda used the AnySharp Edge first on her garden hoe. It had never been sharpened, principally because Linda didn’t like any of our sharpeners. After using the Edge on the hoe, she immediately returned to the house and gave me the comments at the beginning of this column.

I’m not sure, but she might have been encouraging me to use it with her comments, “It’s a sharpener for dummies’!”

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.