Does anyone sharpen for money?

Dave Costin

Dave Costin

Joined
Oct 14, 2000
Messages
466
I have been looking for a way to make some extra money and thought "why not sharpen knives and sissors"? I called a few beauty salons in the area and although they have means of getting sissors sharpened they are not happy with the service or the results. Still need to call the local gun shop and see what they think.

I'm just wondering if anyone here actually makes any money at or has their own sharpening business?

Thanks for any and all input.

Dave
 
Sure, there are sharpening services everywhere. Most specialize in kitchen cutlery for food service operations or in cutters for machine tools but others specialize in dental tools or sawblades etc. and some don't specialize at all. My gourmet store does sharpening for kitchen knives for consumers while they wait. Just look through the yellow pages. There should be all kinds of them. I think, like any business, those that are managed and promoted well succeed and those that don't fail. Take care.
 
I'm just wondering if anyone does this on a small scale. Maybe has a small route or a sign in their yard. In my area there is only a saw blade sharpening service that is open to the public. There is also a surgical instrument sharpening service that travels all over the state. Other than that there is nothing. I'm in a small town, approximately 15,000.

I just thought it might be a way of making a couple hundred extra bucks a month or so. There are roughly 25 beauty salons in the county alone so I thought maybe this would be a good place to start.

I'm just hoping to hear from someone who has maybe tried this or something similiar.

Thanks,

Dave
 
Dave,
There is a guy in My small Town that just hung a shingle on his house and put some ads in the local weekly neighborhood Papers that come out. He now has been in the sharpening Business for years!!
He sharpens everything from custom knivves to lawnmower blades and does a fine job.
A sharpen job on a knife goes for $5.00, scissors run $3-$6.00. His only problem was discovering he needed "insurance" after doing a re-profile and sharpen on a knife for a local here and the guy said he 'ruined" the knife and took him to small claims Court. He also once was accused of losing a knife a person claimed to have left for him to sharpen, but that turned out to be false. Was a major league headache, and these things need to be taken into consideration if you open a "business".
He makes money and really knows his stuff and I would see no reason why you would not be able to make a decent side-income as long as you have the proper equipment, do some conyinual small-scale advertising and pick up some liability Insurance in case somebody walks onto your property and falls, claims they injured themselves in your 'workshop" or says you lost, ruined or screwed something up. Also, check out your area and make certain you do not already have far too much "competition"

Good luck.......Ira
 
I'm just echoing what was already said, but I think there is definitely room for a one man flexible shop. Renting space in a mall wouldn't be all that good. But word of mouth advertising could really get yourself some business. NO ONE sharpens their lawnmower blades. Many homes probably have an axe and/or hatchet with a 1/8" thick edge! Yup, the EDGE is that thick! EEEK! I volunteer sharpen a knives at a group home here. They LOVE me for sharpening the blades in their food processors. Sharpmaker touches those up nicely. And as you saw, scissors are all over the place, and suck. You could make a lot of people happy with a sharpening business, and it may be interesting to further your knife education.

If those hair places aren't liking their sharpening service, all it would take is borrowing what, 2 pairs of scissors and sharpening them. If they liek it, you'd have their busines :)
 
Wolfmann, I agree in reference to the insurance however I may hold off on it at first. Mainly due to not having anyone at my home for now and as far as ruining something I may just have to "buy" it. I will know the value before attempting any service on it forst though.

and Crayola... This is what I have in mind is just a small fexible service to provide. I was talking to Ben at EdgePro and he stated that sissors normally bring $15.00 to $25.00 per pair. After talking to a couple of salons they said that price would be fine so sounds like it could be some decent extra money. Let alone the fact it would be fun.;)

Back to the insurance issue, I currently have two million dollar liability for my business so I may be able to add this to that. I'll have to see.

Anyway, thanks for the positive comments.

Any others?
 
I think it's a good idea, especially if there's no one in your area that does it now. Here in Hawaii there's no place (that I know of) that sharpens, and before I got my Sharpmaker I was in desperate need of a sharpening service. But there is/was this one guy that had a truck that looked something like a lunchwagon that would do on-site sharpening for anything you wanted--lawn mower blades, knives, etc. I see him driving all over the island and he's been around for as long as I can remember. If you are able to get yourself out there through word of mouth or whatever you should be able to get yourself some regular and loyal customers. He had his advertising written in big letters on the side of his wagon. He had some kind of grinding rig set up in the back where he did all his stuff. There was also this guy named "Santa Claus" (no joke-his given name and he looked the part) who used to set up at the local gun/knife show and do sharpening there. Actually, to tell you the truth I never saw the other dude so they could've been the same guy. Anyhow, I think you should probably go for it. No harm, no foul, it's not like you'll be investing in some huge thing--just give it a shot. Hope that helps.

-Z
 
I work part time at the local Wal Mart Supercenter in the Sporting Goods Dept. I keep an extra Sharpmaker inder the counter. I started out sharpening knives for some of my buddies in the dept, then in the store, and finally some customers saw me and would reach in their pockets and pull out a knife and ask me to sharpen it. Now I am known as the "knife guy" and have someregulars that bring their knives in for me to sharpen while they wait. Usually just shoot the bull with me while I shapen their knives. I don't charge anything as Wal-Mart would severly frown on that, but it doesn't matter as I really enjoy seeing their eyes pop when I pick up a sheet of newsprint and slice it to pieces with a knife they claim would never cut butter. The Sharpmaker is some more sharpener!
 
I've been sharpening legitimately since January 2002 I've made a couple of hundred doing it on the side, mostly through word of mouth and fliers.
Almost everyone I talk to remembers the guy that used to come to their house when they were kids to sharpen their parents knives.

This nostalgia usually gets them thinking, and they always have a knife or two that need touching up, the problem is most of them have pretty cheap throw away knives that are way beyond the cost to value ratio needed to make sharpening their knives a profitable venture.

Now Retaurants, fabric stores, and hair dressers/beauty shops, that's where you can make some money, the key is to be able to sharpen their equipment in a short enough amount of time to make it profitable, this generally leaves out free hand bench stone sharpening, as this takes more time.

So now you have to get into jigs, and powered sharpeners, I've saved enough to purchace an EdgePro Apex, when I save enough I'll go for the Professional model. These are nice because you can literally carry them to the job.

My next step will be to put together a step van either with a converter to run 120 VAC equipment or convert motors to 12VDC at which point I'll probably get a Tormek and a grinder set up with the sharpening wheel and a leather buffing wheel, this to be capped off with a belt grinder.

Ultimately I would like to wind up with a rolling stock removal knife shop. One last recommendation set yourself up as a distributor for a decent brand of kitchen cutlery, so when you deal with people who have junk that they want sharpened you can at least offer them something that's quality made and worth keeping sharp, hell you might even make a few bucks selling knives.

One last bit of advice if you do this on the up and up, you'll be able to write off your equipment on the following years taxes, it does take time but in the end I believe it'll be worth it. I'm not gonna get rich doing this, but I like it, and every year I'll make a little more, and this sure helps supplement my knife collecting habit. :D
 
One summer when I was in college I couldn't find a summer job so I started a door-to-door sharpening business. This worked well in a reasonably large (100,000 pop) conservative afluent city (Pasadena, CA). In order to make a profit you need to be sharpening knives, tools, and instruments that cost enough to be worth repairing (sharpening). In the less affluent areas the knives and scissors cost little more than the cost of sharpening. In less conservative areas many people have such a disposable product mindset that they concept of sharpening knives or scissors is totally alien to them. If you sharpen professional equipment you do have an important customer base.

Besides locating customers the next key to making a profit is speed. I would plan on using a belt sander as your primary sharpening tool. You can expect most knives you encounter to be ten times duller than any knife you personally own and to be made out of stainless steel which is non trivial to abrade. You really need a belt sander when you handle grossly dull knives. Every few months I go down to the local soup kitchen in town and sharpen all of their knives. Working with a cheap belt sander I can do a rough job of sharpening 10-20 grossly dull kitchen knives per hour. This belt sander is about a $75.00 4" wide model from Home Depot. This sander runs slower than the ones the custom knife makers used, but it is about 5x-10x faster than using a bench hone. You need to be very careful not to scratch the finish on your customers knives. This is a real hazard with a belt sander.

Serrated knives are a real problem. You will face incredibly dull serrated knives with a variety of tooth designs. They can take a lot longer to sharpen than straight blades and require special tools to do it very neatly. I don't have a cheap and easy solution. A dremel and a series of specially shaped bits would help. It's not that you can't sharpen them, it's that it is hard to do with professional quality in a reasonable abount of time with a reasonable investment in tooling.

Scissors are one of your best bets. I found more women who wanted their scissors sharpened than their knives sharpened. One thing I found was that you want some surface roughness on the blade edge when you are done. Working with a file then a medium-fine diamond hone is good. The roughness reduces material sliding out towards the tip of the scissors as you close the blades. A bigger issue is "setting" the blades of the scissors. Scissors blades need to be slightly curved to sort of cross each other to achieve enough pressure near the tips of the blades. There are special tools to help you get that proper curvature. You risk breaking scissors if you try and adjust the set of the blades. You also have some serious challenges adjusting the pivot screws in scissors. The screws go into sort of thread-lock holes and are hard to turn. There are special tools that are like c-clamps combined with a screwdriver for this job. I used to clamp scissors in a vice with a short screwdriver. The screwdriver had a cross-bar that allowed me to turn it while it was viced into the slot in the pivot screw. You have to find ways to do these things without marring the scissors.

You need to find what things you can sharpen quickly and reliably and stick to those. You need tools that let you do things fast enough to sharpen things at competitive rates.

I would go down to Goodwill and buy a couple dozen old kitchen knives for about $1.00 each. Experiment with how to sharpen them. Get at least a cheap belt sander and course, medium and fine belts. Experiment with how fast you can sharpen your test knives when very dull without damaging the edges. Be sure that you don't overheat the edges and damage the heat treatment. Don't let the blades get too hot to touch. Figure out what you have to charge to cover your sharpening time, marketing time, and customer service time.
 
I would like to thank everyone for taking the time to share your thoughts. It basically reinforces what I believed. Very good to hear your perspectives.

I plan to use an Edge Pro professional model to start out with and focus on the local gun shop (hunting knives) and salons.

The only real goal I have at this time is to pay for the sharpener as soon as possible. If it grows then great. If not I will have a very good sharpener for next to nothing other than some time spent. If it grows a little and I continue to make a few bucks then I will have a few extra bucks for this mild addiction.:D

Thanks,

Dave
 
I have been a professional knife/scissor sharpener for about 13 years now. I have also been a manager for a knife shop for about 8 of those years and a consultant for a seven store knife chain for about 3 years. I have also owned my own knife sharpening business in the Sacramento, CA area. What worked for me (also given this was just a side job) was I would go to the restaurants and sewing shops in person and sharpen at their place of business. The main problem that I see for you is that no one will know you exist if you remain at a fixed location. Why should they go out of their way to your location, when they might think they can do an "OK" job sharpening on their own? When I sharpened on a part time basis, I made it convenient for my customers, by doing it at their place of business. Also, trying to get an initial base of regular customers was difficult, but once you get a few, you can use them as references for bigger customers. I wish you luck on your new profession.
 
I plan to visit each salon personally and sharpen on site. Same with the gun shop, I plan to sharpen on site probably one day a week for a few hours. I figured this may increase his traffic too by placing a sign in the window or inside the store showing the service is being offered and the dates and times I will be there. I will also speak to him about having a "drop off" service where they will collect the knife and place in a bag or label it showing the name, address, telephone number and value of the knife. Also give the person a duplicate of what was filled out and signed by the customer. I'm in hopes this will reduce the possibility that someone may attempt to claim they left a better knife than they did.

Thanks,

Dave
 
Dang, I thought this was a post from some newbie wanted to send his knives in for a price!
"Sure, I sharpen for money, just send your knives to me! Only $50 per knife!"
ah well, maybe one day... :)
 
I add my 2 cents.

I sharpen the knives at a local restuarant for alittle side $ and 1 entree per month. I use stones and it is a pain in the A$$! they have crappy knives and I am putting some serious labor in.

I say not worth it unless you get a nice belt grinder. then safety is a real issue.


great posts above :D
 
I'll add my .02
I have a friend of my family who is a knife sharpener. He makes a very very good living out of it. The whole key is building up clients. His father has been doing the busness long back to a time when he had a hand cranked stone which he used to sharpen knives. Like stated below you have to find clients, you also have to sell them some story that you are the best at what you do. This is how this guy I know makes a good living, he has built up a client base which belives he is the best knife sharpener around. All he does is run the blades through a grinder set up. Their trust in him has made them choose him to sharpen their knives over other guys that could do it for a lot less.
But the bottom line is you will never know if a busness is sucessfull unless you try it. What have you got to loose.

Remember there should always be more money coming in the door than going out.
 
A guy is at the Daytona Bike Week rally and others each year, and because so many bikers carry folding knives, he makes enough to pay for all his trips and have money in the bank afterwards. He gets a razor edge every time so I hear.

~B.
 
Now there's an idea! That would be fun. I'm getting all sorts of ideas here. This is great.

I ordered the Edge Pro professional model and can hardly wait until it comes in.:D
 
ArtSig- That's really cool. I wish our WalMart people could do something besides showing that they have their thumbs up their butts
YC- That better be some damn good sharpening
Dave- Be sure to post a review! I just picked up a Sharpmaker and I love it. One fine tool. I would really like to know how the edge pro compares.
Matt
 
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