I have a Sabatier carbon steel butcher knife I bought on a whim 42 years ago. Turned out to be the best knife I ever had. I baby'd it for years but one day my knife acquired all these wrinkles in the middle edge as if it had been banged up with the sharpening iron from both sides. I had warned everyone in the house that knife was not to be sharpened by anyone but me. I was furious and hid the knife. It has been 15 years and being in isolation I moved a lot of things around and found the knife. A bit of rust all over. The wrinkles just seemed impossible to iron out as they were about 3/16 off on both sides. But I took some pliers, patiently got it pretty straight and blade did not crack. But there still is about 1/64 inch deviation on either side. What is the best way to attempt to straighten what is left? I thought about putting knife in a press with some soft copper sheeting in between knife and press. Would careful hammering be better? The affected area is roughly an inch long and you can only tell looking down the blade edge. From the side the edge looks almost perfect.
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Help needed with knife repair please
- Thread starter Leilei
- Start date
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2014
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- 402
Sounds like the edge was very thin and got pushed onto hard (er) material and got wavy. Happens. Photo would be helpful.
Do not hummer it as you could potentially take a large chip out. Likely rougher sand paper or diamond stone would be your friend. Try to sand it out and then move up in grits to polish/sharpen.
Do not hummer it as you could potentially take a large chip out. Likely rougher sand paper or diamond stone would be your friend. Try to sand it out and then move up in grits to polish/sharpen.
You can still buy vintage Sabatier carbon steel butcher knives from Sabatier -- although their definition of "butcher" seems pretty loose.
They ran those blades at 52-54 Rc, which is really soft. That weakness (softness) is probably what let them get bent, and it's also your friend now because normally, hammering the bends out is a pretty bad idea, as Amikee said. That soft steel might let you straighten the edge out, but it would be iffy. When steel takes a permanent bend it is weakened. Bending it back weakens it still more.
The Sabatier vintage blades from France are not that expensive 40 Euros or so.
They ran those blades at 52-54 Rc, which is really soft. That weakness (softness) is probably what let them get bent, and it's also your friend now because normally, hammering the bends out is a pretty bad idea, as Amikee said. That soft steel might let you straighten the edge out, but it would be iffy. When steel takes a permanent bend it is weakened. Bending it back weakens it still more.
The Sabatier vintage blades from France are not that expensive 40 Euros or so.
It's difficult to tell without a head-on view of the edge, but it looks like you could sharpen that out, although you'd have to remove more metal than you would in normal sharpening.
After harder-than-usual steeling, I'd try coarse diamond stones at a steep angle -- no more than 15 dps.
After harder-than-usual steeling, I'd try coarse diamond stones at a steep angle -- no more than 15 dps.
- Joined
- May 21, 2000
- Messages
- 6,250
You could try running the edge along a metal rod to try and straighten it out a bit before resharpening.
View attachment 1329724 A 1/4” diameter brass rod clamped in a vise can straighten the edge if you draw the knife, edge trailing, while applying pressure. Increase the pressure when you encounter a depression in the edge. This set up works because the two surfaces touching are quite small, and forces (per square inch) are quite large.