How to make fish hooks with your own hands?

Why sharpen hooks

In my opinion, sharpening hooks is only relevant at the fishing spot, if you arrived, and the hooks turned out to be dull due to an uninspected inspection, and there is no opportunity to change them. In all other cases, there is no point in sharpening, it’s easier to replace them with new ones. But sometimes there are situations when it is not possible to replace the hook, for example on some baits: for example, silicone fish, winter balancers, jigs, so it is still necessary to have this skill.

Unfortunately, it is practically impossible to sharpen a good modern hook from a well-known manufacturer at home, let alone in the field, but some are possible, it all depends on the type of material from which they are made.

Manufacturing of miniature offset hooks

Unfortunately, specialized stores very rarely have miniature offset printers for sale, and if they do, their quality is often low.

During fishing in the summer, when the temperature is high, it is not possible to catch fish in reservoirs with a spinning rod.

In such heat, she prefers to hide in dense thickets of aquatic vegetation or in places with flooded snags. It is in such places that you can hope for a good catch. For such fishing, miniature offset hooks are very useful.

Fishermen make these hooks from ordinary steel fishing hooks with a long shank. If the steel from which the hook is made is overheated, then the hook may break when bent.

To avoid this problem, it is recommended to first hold it over the fire (for example, over a blowtorch or burner), but only the part that should be bent is held.

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When fishing, the main load from its weight lies on the underframe, and a step that has a bend will not be able to straighten up.

Miniature offset hooks are perfectly combined with different baits and types of fishing.

How to sharpen hooks

There are quite a lot of ways to sharpen a fishing hook; you can use special sharpening stones, a regular whetstone, even any stone, it all depends on the hardness of the hook.

I personally use the following sharpening tools, one cheap Chinese one or diamond ones, they all do their job perfectly.

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The main thing is that the grain size of the bar should be in the region of 500 - 600 grid. Some fishermen use files and needle files or nail files, in principle everything works, it depends only on the hardness of the steel of the hook.

The sharpening process is as follows: three or four quick passes along a special groove on the hook, moving from the bend to its tip; if the hook is old, then much more passes are needed.

Watch the video below, everything is shown in detail:

It is necessary to take into account that many hooks have a special protective coating that protects it from corrosion, so sharpening destroys it and the hooks begin to rust. To protect against corrosion, you can paint the erased area with a regular permanent marker of a suitable color; this will protect it from corrosion and extend the life of the hook and sharpening.

Sharpening fishing hooks using a special sharpener

Fishing stores sell fine-grained hook sharpeners. With their help, it is easy to restore the sharpness of all types of hooks. Many models even have instructions for use. It is safe to say that every angler should have such items.

Sharpeners come in different sizes, folding and regular whetstones, diamond-coated and metal. But each of them has a narrow groove. The tip of the hook is inserted into it and slowly drawn away from you. You need to sharpen evenly. First, you can swipe one side of the sting 2 times, then the opposite side. Then we sharpen the middle. Finally, we process the inside of the sting, applying it to the edge of the groove. If the sharpener is sharp and the hook is made of thin wire, then this operation will take up to 20 seconds.

With hooks made of thick wire you will have to spend more time. Well, you'll have to tinker a little with the tees.

The correct sharpening should be checked not by eye, but with a magnifying glass. Take a large magnifying glass and carefully examine the results of your work. You should get stings like this:

Naturally, it is quite difficult to obtain a perfect sharpening of fishing hooks at first. But if you have a good tool and you remove metal evenly, you will quickly master this technique. Experienced fishermen can easily sharpen small hooks while fishing. Therefore, always keep a sharpener with you so that, if necessary, you can bring a dull hook to the desired condition.

How to check a hook for sharpness

There are a lot of ways to check the sharpness of a hook, you can look at your nail to see if it scratches your nail, you can try to pierce your skin, you can look through a magnifying glass, in my opinion, all this does not reliably show how sharp it is.

I advise you to simply buy one high-quality hook with a factory sharpening and compare how it feels with it; with experience, you will immediately understand how sharp the hook is.

Testing on a nail is not a bad way, but it depends on the type of sharpening; it may not work with some hooks. When checking on a nail, the hook should not slide over the nail; the sharp hook will immediately bite into the nail. Watch the video below:

What types of knives are there?

When reading about sharpening a blade, many assume a bladed weapon intended for combat. In fact, most often you have to cut bread or sausage, spread butter or paste. The table set includes several knives for:

Types of table knives are for:

1. Fried chicken cutters are blades with a thick blade at the base and a somewhat obtuse angle at the top of the tip.
2. Cutting pieces of fried or stewed meat requires thin, light strips of metal with razor sharpness.
3. Eating fried or boiled fish - here the front part has small teeth, suitable for extracting small bones.
4. Spreading plastic products (butter, paste, caviar and others) – they don’t even think about the spiciness; it’s more important to have a solid flat surface to make it more convenient to distribute the material.
5. Cutting cheese with a wavy blade shape - this is the surface that prevents sticking. The movement is carried out from top to bottom, it is not accompanied by longitudinal movement, which is usual for other products.
6. Cutting fruit from compote - very short, rounded blades. Some specialists cut small teeth closer to the handle to saw through the fibers.
7. There are several options for peeling apples and removing the core, and there are also exotic designs.
8. Cutting meat into pieces, removing veins and films when cutting fillets.

Some craftsmen classify knives as cleavers and small axes, without which it is difficult to imagine kitchen utensils. Even a tool for preparing chops, equipped with a set of needles, is classified as a special type of blade.

Vegetable shredder, fixed blade:

There is also a special group of cutting tools that help cooks chop food. These are passive blades. In them, the cutting edge is stationary, and the product actively moves. It is placed on a sharp surface and pushed through the blades. Some may have a mutually perpendicular arrangement.

Sharpening hooks with files and force

For such delicate work, old fishermen always used fine-grained diamond files with a width of 1 to 2 cm. The main thing is that he removes the metal a little at a time. The ideal files for this job are 3000-4000 grit. If you remove too much at a time, the tip will become too thin and can easily break if a normal fish is caught.

For convenience, it is better to clamp the hooks in a small vice. This will make it easier and faster to sharpen them from different sides.

First, we remove the metal from different sides of the sting with a file. We control that the sharpening is uniform. We definitely sharpen it on our own, as in the previous method. The tip should always be parallel to the vice, as in the photo. Movements when sharpening should be light, tangential. You should not put pressure on the fore-end with a file, you just need to scratch one side several times and move on to the next.

We sharpen the inner part of the tip only after sharpening all the sides. To do this, turn the hook 180 degrees so that the inner part is directed towards you. It is better to sharpen it with the finest sandpaper nailed to a small block.

After sharpening, we inspect each hook through a magnifying glass. If necessary, we remove various roughness and bring the sharpening to the desired state.

The sharpness of a hook can be checked by applying the tip to the pad of your finger or to the palm of your hand. Sharp hooks literally stick to soft tissues. Another method is to prick your nail with a sting. If the sting sticks in easily, it means it is sharp; if it slides, it means it is dull.

If you don’t have a file, you can sharpen it with a whetstone or a fork for fine-grain knives. This tool is sold in almost every hardware store. It's very cheap. Sharpen the hooks by force according to the same principle as in the case of a file.