Sharpening Service Fail?

I had no idea Crack Heads had an interest in sharpening. This sharpening dude sucks.
 
jdspaw said:
As the general manager of a mom and pop hardware store, I wanted to see what the greater knife community thought of the local sharpening service here in a corner of South Western Connecticut. As background, we had a very cantankerous old bastard doing our sharpening for years. He was mean and uninterested in customer's time frames, but he was excellent at sharpening. Chainsaw chains would come back like new and knife blades would be mirror polished. He fell out with the owner of the store though, and we had to find another service.
Below are a few shots of some knives we got back today:
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In my opinion, these knives were butchered by the service. Maybe these edges are what restaurants want, but I'm fairly sure my customer doesn't want his decent kitchen knives ground unevenly and rough. I know my own knives would never be sharpened like this.
For those of you who operate sharpening services, would edges like this be an industry norm? For those of you who are customers, would you accept these knives back and pay for them?
Thanks for your thoughts.
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To give you my personal opinion, and my professional one is the same, those are an abomination. Without having before pics, I simply assume that those knives didn't have a secondary bevel running almost a quarter of the way up like they do now. In addition to ruining the finish on those knives, the edge has probably been ruined beyond repair, and regardless, NO, NOBODY wants their knife to come back looking like that, restaurants included. I agree with you, I would be going after the sharpening service to replace those knives for sure, as any repair attempt would be just that, an attempt, and would be prohibitively expensive. I am sorry you are caught in the middle of this, and that is clearly an unacceptable "sharpening" job.

Sam :thumbup:
 
I knew I should've taken the question mark out of the title of this thread. I was just hopeful they weren't as bad as I knew they were...
You guys are seriously making me laugh. If I didn't have to explain this to a customer and sort out a solution, this thread would be hilarious. The guy is a regular, has an account with us, and we get along well, so it shouldn't go hard with him. I was looking into a new set of knives for him, but my catalog doesn't have much in comparable quality. In the end we'll do what we need to so that things are right with him. As far as the "sharpening" service, we are certainly done with them. We'd gotten a few complaints on chainsaw chains with the new service, but this is the first time I sent them knives. Lesson learned.
I'm not sure if I should call them out... is it against the rules here on BF? Also don't want any libel suits for myself or my store.
 
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jdspaw said:
I knew I should've taken the question mark out of the title of this thread. I was just hopeful they weren't as bad as I knew they were...
You guys are seriously making me laugh. If I didn't have to explain this to a customer and sort out a solution, this thread would be hilarious. The guy is a regular, has an account with us, and we get along well, so it shouldn't go hard with him. I was looking into a new set of knives for him, but my catalog doesn't have much in comparable quality. In the end we'll do what we need to so that things are right with him. As far as the "sharpening" service, we are certainly done with them. We'd gotten a few complaints on chainsaw chains with the new service, but this is the first time I sent them knives. Lesson learned.
I'm not sure if I should call them out... is it against the rules here on BF? Also don't want any libel suits for myself or my store.
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Since there is a review section I wouldn't see why there would be an issue with posting a PSA telling people to avoid them. You shouldn't have any issues with them suing you either.
 
Im given to understand that "The Good , The Bad and The Ugly" section is an appropriate place to name names. And we are all very interested. Post a link should you decide to call this place out.

To me those look like they were done on a bench grinder. While I feel there are better tools for the job , with a little skill a person can make passable work with one.

These on the other hand are a nightmare. And whoever did this needs to be hung out to dry. This is an embarrassment to the community as a whole.
 
This is why I ask people what result they expect from sharpening, when they ask questions about how to make a sharp edge.

I would guess these knives are sharp. So he sharpened them.
 
Sorry for your pain. I thought I sucked at hand sharpening(learning) even mine look better than those. I really think they need to pay to replace all those knives.
 
Oh, Lord! I wish he'd asked someone for an opinion on his work. "Hey, Bob? Does this look right to you?" "Sure! Do the entire set like that."

My worst sharpening job when first learning looked much better than that. Did he just go "Good enough!" on his first attempt and stop learning?
 
flatblackcapo said:
Wow! That is the worst sharpening job I have ever seen in my life! Those knives are ruined! It is very unfortunate that you are caught in the middle of this. It is very plain to see that the owner of those knives is owed new knives.Those knives are beyond repair. If this was done by a professional service,please post the name of the business and the details in the "Good Bad and Ugly" so others will know about the poor work that they do.
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That's probably as good as I could say it, without profanity...I also gasped as the first pic came into view. GEEZ!!!
 
jaymack9100 said:
I've seen better edges on lawnmower blades!
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Those look extremely bad. If they were mine I would be very angry and I would want compensation of the knives. Those grinds would look bad even on a lawnmower blade.

Why doesn't the store buy a 1" Harbor Freight belt sander or a set of paper wheels and do the sharpening themselves?
 
That is horrible, It honestly looked like it just ran the blade against a coarse grinding stone with utter disregard for angle or appearance. You could get better results with a carbide pullthrough.
 
I'll add to the chorus. Those look like the gorilla on the glue label ground them.

We run a sharpening business in North Eastern Ct. My customers would run me
out of town, tarred and feathered and tied to a rail if I returned blades in that condition.
 
I once sharpened my cornstalk knife on a belt sander with 100 grit paper. It hacked cornstalks fine, but no way would it have worked in the kitchen. It looked better than these.
 
My jaws dropped and cringed at the same time when I saw the pictures and realized it's not one of those nice wavy patterns that some samurai swords have on the edge of their blades. That is just heinous....

The dude just went to town on those knives on a grinder with complete DISREGARD. Not a single F**K was given.
 
I'm thinking this is an early April Fools posting. Nobody sharpens knives like that. It has to be a joke.
 
This is what makes it hard for sharpening services. I've seen some really bad attempt's at sharpening, but this is the the worst. It is alarming to know that people continue to do this sort of work and making it difficult to explain to every third person you're "not one of those guys".
 
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