Sharpening Cost's

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drmikeyb1966

Joined
Aug 2, 2025
Messages
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I hope I'm not in the wrong forum; it's my first time here. I've purchased numerous Hapstone sharpening pieces, and I love sharpening knives, but I also want to make sure I'm not overcharging someone. I'm a 100% disabled veteran with way too much time on my hands, but knife sharpening is something I've always wanted to do professionally. That's why I waited to have on hand some of the best equipment on the market before starting to be able to provide the customers with more than they anticipated, but I have no clue what to charge. Simple sharpening, reprofile, severely damaged, etc. Could anyone guide me in the right direction please and thank you very much.
 
Where you are located will play heavily into what the market will bear.
For example, in the rural setting I call home, I start out at like $3 for up to 4 inches (for machine sharpening). I have yet to have a local ask me to sharpen by hand.
 
I live in a city of 2.7m. I called every service I could find. Found one guy that did hand sharpening but he let me know he had to close up shop because of health issues. KO worksharp seened to be the most common.

Just saying, a good hand sharpener or even wicked edge would be a real valuable service around here.
 
Sounds like you might be focused on customer satisfaction over making a buck. Hang onto that.

Charge what you think your services are worth. Be modest about it at first. Make it worth their while to give you a chance. When you start getting return customers you can increase your prices. Or not. Depends on how you want to operate the business.

Consider that manual sharpening might overwhelm you depending on the volume of customers you have.

Don’t make promises you can’t keep. If you can’t accommodate the customer’s requirements, don’t pretend that you can.

Set the prices yourself. Customer satisfaction and word of mouth will take care of the rest.
 
I do most of my work on belts. For knives anything 5" and below I charge $7, up to 9" is $10 with anything larger being $13. I give foodservice industry folks a discount. My rate for tools is generally around $8 for household scissors and $10 for loppers & garden shears of any size and same for mower blades. For water stone sharpening I start at $35 (rate negotiable) and this is almost exclusively for local chefs with Japanese knives in the $300-$500 range. I do chisels but no often and recently bought the tools to do saw blades.

If someone has an interesting knife and I have the time I'll often do it on water stones or resin bonded diamonds. If this is done just at my whim I don't charge anything extra. Common repairs like broken tips and bolster reductions are part of sharpening IMO and I don't charge anything extra. Serious damage or massive thinning, that will be a few bucks more based on an examination of the knife.

It's uncommon for anyone to ask me to sharpen a blade by hand with no power tools and when I get the request it's invariably a chef with a Japanese knife.

My prices might be a little bit low but I'd rather a customer be pleasantly surprised by what they get vs feeling ripped off. I know I'm pricing stuff a bit too low for landscapers. Each time I do hedge trimmer I add $5 and they're still surprised at the low price! 😂 If I sharpen something that's a lot of work with the tools I have it's an excuse to buy another tool or jig.
 
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