Suggestions appreciated: bent knife tips

B

bdaabat

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Jul 2, 2025
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Suggestions would be appreciated for reasonable strategies that you all have found helpful in correcting knife tips that end up bent, likely from the knife being dropped. I've had a couple recent customers that have dropped off knives that had slightly bent tips (within a quarter inch from the knife tip).

I've seen tools to try to re-bend knives that have bends in them. Do they work? Or, are they mainly for bends that happen further from the tip where there is more metal available?

Do folks typically just regrind the tip to remove the bend?

Unfortunately, I have a knife in this condition right now. My son dropped one of our knives when he was preparing a meal. The good news is that this means I now have a perfect test knife to try your suggestions!

Thanks!
Bruce
 
I recently posted in another thread about a couple of kitchen knives my sister brought to me, one of them a paring knife and the other a 6" utility knife. At different times, each of them had fallen off a kitchen counter and landed tip-down on a linoleum floor over a concrete slab. The tips punched through the linoleum and were severely bent, essentially at a right angle. I don't like trying to straighten such severely bent tips on blades, as I believe the steel is likely too damaged and would likely be weakened over the long term by this sort of damage.

I don't have any powered grinders, so I'd previously improvised a very coarse 'stone' using a 3" x 21" 120-grit alumina-zirconia grinding belt cut at the seam and glued flat to a 24" board, which I used clamped to a tabletop. I'd originally made that to re-grind a broken tip on another knife in ZDP-189 steel, and I was impressed at how well it worked. In all cases, I ground from the spine side down to intersect the cleanly apexed edge just behind the bent portion of the tips. I laid the spine flush to the abrasive, making initial contact a little bit behind the damaged portion and made smooth, tip-trailing passes over the abrasive while gradually raising the butt end of the knife to follow the spine's contour out to the tip. And to apply some grinding pressure to the blade, I used a wine cork pressed onto the sharp edge of the blade to protect my fingers while applying pressure near the tip. This could also work using any other improvised piece, like a piece of wood or a folded piece of heavy leather or whatever. In the 2nd photo below, you can see the heavy burr created along both sides of the spine by the grinding. I used a ceramic hone to burnish those burrs away, in finishing up. In the 2nd photo, the blue backdrop seen behind the knife tip is the grinding belt glued to the board.

Before:
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After:
S3oD5Be.jpg
 
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Don't need to change anything. Just use it to cut around corners.


Okay if you really have to but don't power grind, bend it back as Nate said, or file it off with a sharp file or coarse diamond plate.
 
I wouldn’t hit it with any kind of hammer because there’s no telling how brittle it is from the stress already exacerbated on it. I gently crying on it with a pair of pliers with the blade locked in the vice you can manipulate it and have a feel for if it will snap or not. With it being a kitchen knife you’re not really gonna have any issues with the tip. Yes, in the eventuality it does snap one day you can re-profile it with a hardened file and then sharpen it.
 
Reprofiling is pretty straightforward and very satisfying. Generally, as mentioned above, to repair a broken/bent tip you grind from the spine to the tip.
 
You can bring the tip up to the spine as well. It’s not really any harder, but it might take a bit longer. You just have to make sure you are not trying to “sharpen” your way there. You grind perpendicular on the stone first to achieve the profile, and then sharpen.
 
I now see you are working with customers.
At first I was going to say that if the tip bent and didn't snap off throw the knife away and get one with some decent hardness.

OK I'll try to be more positive . Sure regrinding it is the right / smartest thing to do if someone's health is on the line .
Just for the sake of conversation and COOL TOOLS this here is what you want rather than channel locks or adjustable wrench
1776565547678.jpeg


the 150 size is about right though they make smaller ones .
Don't look at the price ; just buy it !
You'll be glad you did .
 
Wowbagger Wowbagger : Too late! I looked at the cost. Yeesh!

G Gottagofishn : for my own knife that had a bent tip, I took your advice and re-profiled. Considering the number of knives I've seen so far with bent tips, I expect this will be an ongoing conversation: to re-profile or not to re-profile. That is the question!

Bruce
 
bdaabat said:
Wowbagger Wowbagger : Too late! I looked at the cost. Yeesh!

G Gottagofishn : for my own knife that had a bent tip, I took your advice and re-profiled. Considering the number of knives I've seen so far with bent tips, I expect this will be an ongoing conversation: to re-profile or not to re-profile. That is the question!

Bruce
Click to expand...
Milwaukee makes straight jaw pliers wrench that are similar to the Knipex, but much less expensive. There are a few other brands making them as well.
 
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