Professional Knife Sharpening; In House and Mail order.
Professional Knife Sharpening was something that just came natural shortly after I started making knives in a small town in Montana, I set up shop on Main street during the hunting season to sharpen knives for the hunters that traveled from afar to hunt elk in the Big and Little Belt mountains. This gave me direct contact with the very folks who would benefit from my knife making.
I became very good at knife sharpening and when I relocated to my new location here in Bothell, Washington I set out my knife sharpening shingle. I have many good satisfied customers who visit me whenever their collection of knives need a little touch up.
Over the years of making and sharpening hunting knives and kitchen knives, I have become aware of many things about knives in general and I began to use this awareness to enhance the knives abilities to perform their jobs. This goes beyond just sharpening an edge to the proper angle and getting it razor sharp.
After being sharpened several times, knives usually develop a low spot along the edge just forward of the guard or bolster area. This will prevent the edge from cutting through what ever you are cutting on the board. The bolsters that are prevalent on many dropped forged knives also create the same problem as irregular sharpening.
When this happens it is necessary to grind the high spots until the edge is flat again or has a slight rocker shape before sharpening.
Also after several times of sharpening, the blades edge area becomes thicker and is evident by how large the edge facet becomes. This knife will have to be forced into the job with more force to over come the resistance to the materials ability to flex away from the knife and allow the edge to come into contact with and cut the material.
This can be remedied to a certain extent by grinding a double edge angle. First a very narrow angle is ground until the new facet nearly reaches the edge and then the proper edge angle is used to finish the sharpening.
In time a knife will need to be ground to the very spine in order to be of much use and by this time the knife may no longer be of the same class of knife but will now have taken on a new form and find new uses. This is such a case with many knives used extensively as in the meat packing industry. Yesterdays butcher knife will eventually become perhaps a boning knife.
Too often someone will try to use a knife for a pry bar, screwdriver, chisel or some other tool and become damaged. I have often reground a knife with broken tips to a new useful knife. Also a chipped blade will create the same problems as the before mention irregular sharpening.
After many years of doing this here at the shop, I have decided to offer my services to those who are too far away to travel to my shop by using UPS.
Do it with passion:
Lyle Brunckhorst
425 402-3484
23706 7th Ave SE, Suite B, Bothell, WA 98021
bronks@bronksknifeworks.com |
