New Life

Hi there knife sharpeners. I thought I would share some information on how I repair knives because lately, I have had some real doozies to work on.
So I will attempt to go through the process here. Keep in mind that this work always needs to be followed by a sometimes very lengthy sharpening process. The factory edge is often in extremely bad shape or just completely gone after a repair job.
This particular knife was an 8 inch Henckels Chef knife.

The first thing I do when I have such severe damage is take the knife to a very coarse belt on a belt sander. These are special sharpening belts that I use for deep repair work only.

1 X 30 Inch belt sander for really deep repair work

I work from the spine of the knife only, never the edge, the tricky part and sometimes painfully long is to re-shape the spine/blade back to it's original form. The actual edge has not been touched yet. This knife is extremely dull at this stage. 

Starting to take shape but not finished yet.

Still more work needed

After I have done the majority of heavy grinding I switch to a different belt sander, this is a upgrade in both machine and belt. Now we are getting into the more delicate work and fun has begun.

1 X 42 inch belt sander with Trizact diamond belts. 

Repair work complete. Time to start on the edge

Now that I am satisfied with the shape, not perfect but pretty good. I can commence the sharpening process and for this knife I chose an angle of 19 degrees. This is where the amazing Edge Pro comes in and the precision device starts to do it's magic. I commence with a low grit stone, 220 here and move up when I am satisfied with the edge. I do move up in grit size until the edge from this 220 grit is very sharp. In fact, the edge is good enough to give back to the owner after this stone. 

OF COURSE, I move on to another stone.

Here I use the 400 grit stone.

I went through the stones up to 5,000 grit, I used the beautiful Shapton Pro stones.

The pictures below are the final product, the nice edge is not coming up well in the pictures but believe me, it is extremely sharp and easily passed my tests. 

Final Length 7.5 inches. 

This is not really that difficult after the technique is learned. I did manage to make a mess of many practice knives but with some mentorship colleagues in the States and other countries, and many knives, I did get better at it.  At least the knives get to a stage where they are useable.

This knife is 25 years old and remained hidden away in a drawer for most of that time.


I appreciate you being here.