No good deed goes unpunished...

Magnaminous_G

Magnaminous_G

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Jul 13, 2011
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So I posted an advertisement in my company newsletter, asking for kitchen knives to sharpen. Sure enough, I got a lot of takers. And what do I get for my first three knives? Two cleavers as blunt as butter knives and a chef's knife with a serious bend toward the tip and an edge that has clearly been pulled through one of those carbide v-sharpening things. Bleh...

I know how to fix a bent knife, so I'm working on the chef's knife now before I start sharpening. As for the cleavers, one is a Global 8" and one is a J. A. Henckels 6". These are heavy mothers, and pretty darned thick to boot. No good deed goes unpunished indeed. :o
 
Turn lemons into lemonade! Just think of all the good experience you will get from this, and you did not have to drive all over to purchase thrift store throw-ways. Sounds like you got all the lost cause knives and cleavers.

If you can turn these around you will have anchored yourself as the "go to guy" for fixing and sharpening knives in the company. Maybe.. Maybe not the title you were after. :confused:

Omar
:rolleyes:
 
Magnaminous_G said:
So I posted an advertisement in my company newsletter, asking for kitchen knives to sharpen. Sure enough, I got a lot of takers. And what do I get for my first three knives? Two cleavers as blunt as butter knives and a chef's knife with a serious bend toward the tip and an edge that has clearly been pulled through one of those carbide v-sharpening things. Bleh...

I know how to fix a bent knife, so I'm working on the chef's knife now before I start sharpening. As for the cleavers, one is a Global 8" and one is a J. A. Henckels 6". These are heavy mothers, and pretty darned thick to boot. No good deed goes unpunished indeed. :o
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Totally awesome! It should feel pretty good looking down at those lost souls and knowing you're going to not only restore them, but put on the best edge they've ever seen.
Seriously, I think I improved the most when sharpening when I didn't want to - treating it like work instead of a hobby. It makes you really pay attention to the process in a somewhat detached manner.

Not sure if you've ever tried this, but the black compound can be applied to three or four layers of newspaper wrapped around your stone and used to polish the faces of beat up knives to a nice satin finish in very short order. This will also smooth any 'faceting' that might occur if you have to grind the face on a stone to restore some of the blade geometry.
 
Hi HH,

That's a fine idea with the black compound on newsprint to clean up the faces and any thinning work on secondary bevels. For the moment, I'm gonna give them the best edge they've ever seen, but I'm stopping short of full-on restoration. I already expended a good deal of energy and time straightening that chef's knife, but I'm proud of the job. I should have taken pictures; you can barely tell it was ever bent. I just finished sharpening it. He's gonna be very, very happy, I think. If he wasn't a cooking enthusiast--and it wasn't such a nice knife--I might have considered passing the job over. When I give the knife back to him, I'm going to tell him to throw that v-sharpener away and only use a straight steel *judiciously* when absolutely necessary.

Now on to those damn cleavers... :D :D :D
 
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Careful with the cleavers--if they're the sort that's going to be used for chopping bone the edges are traditionally pretty thick and obtuse. Still sharp, but WAY more broad than you're likely used to. I'd make sure you know your customer's intended use with them before you get too far with them. :)
 
How sharp do you sharpen cleavers to? I don't really sharpen my cleaver to the same sharpness as my slicing knives because it's often used to chop bones.
 
i use bone cleavers quite often in my kitchen, they dont need to split hairs obviously but you need to sharpen them properly or they wont chop bones clean. i usually do mine on a very coarse, very old oil stone i have, probably sub 50grit, you can actually see the grits. debur on a finer india type stone without trying to polish (obviously).

the angle on mines is close to 45°/side, it'll probably work at a slightly finer angle but as i often break down wild boars that i have to portion for plate serving and those bones are crazy hard. i could serve if boneless but i like some in my daube, makes it look more ''authentic'' :D
 
The henckel's chopper, if anything like mine is a convex ground. Mostly flat but it formed concex nearing the edge. Original factory edge was thin, resulting in some deformation on the supporting areas when used to chop coconut (the non-ripe kind you still can drink the juice & the flesh is tender). The shell is hard though :)

If uses includes hard chopping, I'd remove 1/2" of the edge going back to thicker section, but that's a hard long work with my available stones.

I hv hard time holding a steady angle due to the wide blade. Forcing a locked wrist is pretty tiring. Any tips?
 
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It's times like these I'm glad I have a belt sanders.
 
For me, it's a toss up between a belt grinder & concrete brick. The latter feels more muscular zen.
 
pwet said:
i use bone cleavers quite often in my kitchen, they dont need to split hairs obviously but you need to sharpen them properly or they wont chop bones clean. i usually do mine on a very coarse, very old oil stone i have, probably sub 50grit, you can actually see the grits. debur on a finer india type stone without trying to polish (obviously).

the angle on mines is close to 45°/side, it'll probably work at a slightly finer angle but as i often break down wild boars that i have to portion for plate serving and those bones are crazy hard. i could serve if boneless but i like some in my daube, makes it look more ''authentic'' :D
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Yeh, I have mine at 44° ps with the edge pro.
 
I know how you feel on a small scale. I regret letting my mother know I can sharpen knives...Now she doesn't take any care of her kitchen knives as she knows I can fix it. I don't know what she does with them but I wouldn't put chopping brick out of the question on some of those poor knives.
 
singularity35 said:
Yeh, I have mine at 44° ps with the edge pro.
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That's 90 inclusive :eek: (88 to be precise)
The factory grind on my Henckel is something like 30-40 inclusive :confused: perhaps what I have is not chopper, simply cleaver? What's the difference?

Just double checked. Mine is the 6" chinese cleaver Koln series. It's thin compared to it's bigger brother, which is the real chopper, with double the spine thickness and less tapered grind (towards the edge) resulting in about 1.5 mm thickness behind the edge (70 inclusive). This is by sight estimate, didn't have any measurement tools with me. It's clear now I did use the 'wrong' tool ;)
 
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