DIY knife sharpening kit. DIY sharpening machine. Devices for sharpening knives with your own hands: types and drawings

Almost everyone home handyman in stock cutting tools. Over time, the cutting edges lose their former sharpness, and working with such a product becomes unbearable. There are two options for solving this problem: have the tool sharpened and pay a lot of money, or assemble a knife sharpening device yourself and sharpen the products yourself.

Causes of blade dulling

The dulling of the blade can be explained as follows. During cutting, the blade is exposed to tiny abrasive particles, be it fruits or vegetables. The cutting edge of the blade gradually wears off and the knife becomes dull. Another reason is to hold the blade when cutting at a certain angle.

Some areas of the blade are subject to increased stress and increased wear.

There are types of knives that are impossible to sharpen yourself due to the textured blades. Also, knives made from ceramics cannot be sharpened. But, as a rule, the quality of the steel in such products is high, and they rarely become dull. There are a variety of knives of low quality, and they have to be sharpened very often. As practice shows, if the steel is of poor quality, then sharpening will solve the problem for a while, and then the blade will become dull again.

To sharpen knives you will need abrasive wheels. If it is not possible to purchase ready-made circles, then you can make them yourself using wooden blocks and sandpaper different grain sizes.

The standard sharpening angle is 20 - 30 degrees. It is quite difficult to maintain the angle during sharpening, and therefore it is necessary to make a simple knife sharpener, in which it is not necessary to maintain the optimal angle. The basic rule in this process is maintaining a precisely specified constant angle. No force required here. The main thing is that the block and blade meet at a certain angle. This is the basic rule of the sharpening technique.

Basic mistakes

As it may seem at first glance, sharpening is simple, but if you delve into the process itself, you will notice quite a large number of various nuances. Most people make simple mistakes when sharpening knives, which leads to uneven sharpening or damage to the knife. Common Mistakes when sharpening:

The cutting edge was not sharpened. As a result, small burrs form on the sides, which temporarily give sharpness to the blade, and after working with the knife for a short time, the blade again becomes dull. To prevent this problem, you should carefully sharpen both edges, and then, as you sharpen, use sandpaper or a wheel of different grits.
Presence of paint, oil, dirt on the tip. The bottom line is that during turning, fat, dirt, oil and other components mix with grinding abrasives and lead to scratches and microchips of the blade. After such sharpening, the blade quickly becomes dull.
Pressure plays an important role. You need to remember one simple rule: sharpness does not depend on the force used, but on the duration of sharpening. Excessively strong pressure leads to chipping of microparticles from the blade and poor sharpening.
Incorrect angle selection. The angle may vary depending on the grade of steel and the purpose of the tool. For home kitchen knives it is 20 - 25 degrees. For other types of blades that will have to withstand heavy loads and work with hard materials, the angle will be 40 degrees.

By following simple but at the same time appropriate rules for sharpening, you can not only save time, but also not damage the product.

Sharpener "Domik"

A good tool for sharpening knives. Despite simple design, the sharpener does its job well. This design consists of a rectangular block, the upper edge of which is made in the form gable roof. The angle of inclination of one face is 20 - 25 degrees, which is optimal. The product must be installed with a blade close to one of the roof ridges, then take an abrasive wheel or a block with emery and move along a horizontal line. This ensures a constant angle of inclination, which leads to uniform sharpening of the blade.

There are also complex designs homemade sharpening machine. For manufacturing you will need the following materials:

A piece of board measuring 500x150x20 mm.
A metal pin with a thread that will serve as a guide for the bar.
M8 bolts and nuts and wood screws.
Clamping nuts or wing nuts.
Ordinary PCB or plexiglass, which will serve as a substrate for the knife and a kind of movable frame.
To attach the knife, use a neodymium magnet. The usual one will not work, since its downforce is quite low.

The board must be cleaned, processed, and then made into a rectangle. Another board should be made rectangular in shape, which will serve as a stand or support. Its height should be such that the slope of the main board is 20 degrees. You can fasten them together with wood screws. Then attach the resulting structure to the workbench or cut out a tabletop in advance, to which one of the studs will be attached. After securely attaching the pin to the tabletop, you need to take a 200x100 block and make two holes in it: one for the main pin, on which the movable carriage with the sharpener will be attached, and the other for the pin, which is attached to the tabletop.

Now you can begin assembling the carriage with the sharpener holder. For the pin that will hold the carriage, you need to make two clamps from wood, plexiglass or metal. Drill holes in the clamps, put them on the stud and secure them on both sides with nuts. The carriage will rotate freely along its axis.

The next step is to install a neodymium magnet on a previously prepared plate. It needs to be done longitudinal groove- so that the tripod can be moved up and down. Drill a hole in the middle of the frame and insert a bolt with a nut, which, in turn, will press the plate. You can simply glue a neodymium magnet to the end of the plate to hold the knife.

The homemade device is ready for use. It can be used to sharpen chisels and planes.

It should be noted that sharpening is carried out without water, so the abrasive paper or wheel will wear out greatly, but this option is quite suitable for sharpening knives and tools at home.

Homemade knife

If the farm has a sharpening machine, it will make the process easier, but there is one circumstance. When sharpening on a machine, it is almost impossible to apply even pressure on the knife. Therefore, it is possible to make a device for sharpening knives, which will serve as a guide for the blade and ensure uniform pressure. The result is a simple but effective electric sharpener. To make it you will need the following components:

Beam.
Four bolts or four studs with M8 thread.
Four lambs.
Self-tapping screws for wood.

Opposite the electric sharpener, a guide is attached along which the slider will move. The guide itself can be attached to the workbench or a pre-made frame can be made. It must be mobile. To do this, you can cut a longitudinal groove in the frame and secure the tripod with two studs. Then take two bars, drill holes on the sides, insert studs and tighten them with screws on both sides. The next step will be the mount on which the cutting product will rest. This can be done using small pieces of timber, which should be attached to the sides of the moving carriage.

After this you can start sharpening. Set the movable carriage to the desired height and clamp it with the thumbscrews. Move the tripod itself to the required distance, securely fasten it and sharpen the product by moving the knife along the side guides.

Sharpener LM

If in the future you plan to do professional sharpening of tools in large quantities, then you can make a sharpener called: Lansky-Metabo. Fixture drawings for sharpening knives with your own hands look like this:

If the product is clamped in the clamps with the root part, the sharpening angle will be greatest. A knife with this angle can be used as a “cleaver” and processing hard rocks wood You can also easily sharpen knives from jointer. Knife clamps can be made from angle iron or wood. The disadvantage of this design is the complexity of assembly and the large number of parts.

If it is not possible to collect complex instrument to sharpen knives, you can make do with improvised means and make manual knife sharpeners. A simple sharpener can be made from a corner frame in which a whetstone is mounted.

If you add a sliding carriage to the sharpener, you won’t have to hold the knife at a certain angle, which, in turn, will have a good effect on sharpening the blade. To make a movable carriage you will need a triangular block and a magnet. It is best to use a neodymium magnet, which allows you to attract the knife and fix it securely. If such a magnet is not available, then you can take components from the HDD (hard drive).

Before you give a knife or other product for sharpening, you should familiarize yourself with the material, which will help not only in making a sharpener with your own hands, but also save a certain amount. The main aspect is to gain additional experience, which will be useful in the future.

Interest in making knife sharpeners with your own hands arises for a reason. The consumer qualities of hand-held cutting tools are enhanced through the use of modern materials and technologies for blade manufacturing and precision factory sharpening. At the same time, the price of the product increases, but it is becoming increasingly easier to ruin a fairly expensive item with primitive sharpening. Therefore, various household devices for sharpening knives are no longer needed only for convenience. To understand why a knife sharpener is still needed and how to make it correctly, you will have to start with the ideology and evolution of the knife.

Why do you need a sharpener?

A living relic of our days is the Finnish hunting knife. Not a bandit finca with a sometimes bizarre shape, but a hunting knife Finnish type, left in Fig. Traditional Hunter knives(in the center and on the left) are similar in shape, but the difference between them is very large.

The blade of a Finnish knife is forged from cast iron, which can be smelted right in your yard from swamp ore in a furnace-furnace, without resorting to the blast furnace process, puddling, and other methods of converting cast iron into iron and steel. The viscosity of crinkly iron is excellent; it is very difficult to break a blade made from it. But the hardness is also low, somewhere around HRS55, the knife becomes dull quite quickly. The Finnish hunters did not care about this: a blade of such hardness can be pointed (sharpened) by beating at many natural stones, and there were always enough smoothed moraine boulders in Fennoscandia.

They sharpen a knife by beating it in much the same way as beating a scythe, only the whetstone is motionless and the blade is moved. First, they pull it along the whetstone with the butt away from you, then they turn it over and pull it with the butt towards you. The position of the cutting edge (CR) on the whetstone is always dragging; quick movements: shirk-shirk! During each movement, you need to keep the contact patch of the blade with the touchstone (see below), but the requirements for maintaining the angle of inclination are not so strict. Learning to sharpen a knife by beating is not very difficult, and with some skill you can create a smoothly running profile on the blade, see below. However, the Finnish knife is, in general, a dead end in the evolution of a cutting tool, surviving in special natural conditions.

A good knife has never been cheap, but extreme situation the durability of the blade, combined with the viscosity of the blade, became vital factors. Therefore, even in ancient times, they learned to harden knife blades from the surface and cement them: the core remained viscous, not brittle, and a hard, red-hot crust formed on the outside, see next. rice.:

It is still possible to sharpen a knife with a cemented blade, but you need a skill that is not given to everyone. And the abrasive is already needed from a special type of stone - lithographic grunstein slate. There is little of it in nature; Grünstein is still considered a strategic raw material. There is no artificial grenstein and it is not expected. It’s as easy as shelling pears to ruin a cemented knife with inept beating - a little somewhere the cementation bark will be stripped down to raw metal (this is not visible to the eye), the knife will only have to be thrown away, the blade will immediately become dull and begin to crumble.

Note: If you have an old scythe whetstone of a slightly greenish color lying around somewhere, don’t throw it away, it’s a valuable rarity.

Service knives do not require the same durability and toughness as hunting and hiking knives, and they should cost much less. As a result, special steels and powder metallurgy are widely used in the production of utility knives. The blade of an “eternal” kitchen knife is structured like a rodent’s incisor: in longitudinal layers, the hardness of which decreases from the core outward. In any case, you have to sharpen the knife less often, but chipping is definitely ruled out - the blade immediately becomes discolored.

How to sharpen a knife?

For these reasons, push-pull sharpening technology (push-pull sharpening or push-pull sharpening technique) was invented long ago:

The blade is pushed along the touchstone away from you with a twist, holding the butt towards you, the position of the RK is advancing (scraping);
Then, without lifting the blade from the whetstone, they pull it with the butt towards you, turning it reverse side, the position of the Republic of Kazakhstan is dragging;
The blade is turned over and repeat steps. 1 and 2;
pp. 1-3 are repeated, reducing the pressure in each cycle, until the burr formed on the RA disappears (does not stick together).

Note: when they say or write “the hangnail will go away,” etc., this is incorrect. Metalheads have a slang word for it: "zausavka"; for electricians - “switch off”. But in Russian, a burr and a switch are masculine.

Push-pull sharpening protects the blade, but requires high skill from the operator, because During the sharpening process, a number of conditions must be continuously and precisely observed, see also fig. below:

Maintain the angle of inclination of the blade to the whetstone, smoothly changing it in accordance with the curvature of the wheel.
Make sure that the tangent to the generatrix of the blade and the transverse axis of the contact spot of the wheel with the touchstone coincide.
Also ensure that the axis of the contact patch is always perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the touchstone.
Smoothly change the pressure on the blade as the area of the contact patch changes.

It is very difficult to meet all these conditions at the same time, completely symmetrically on the forward and reverse stroke of the blade along the touchstone, and a modern knife, as mentioned above, can be damaged by improper sharpening. Any household device for sharpening knives is designed to relieve the sharpener from continuous monitoring of at least part of these conditions.

Note: For successful push-pull sharpening, the length of the whetstone (see below) must be at least 2 times the length of the knife blade from the handle to the tip.

Sharpening profiles

The profile of a knife blade is linked to the properties of the material and the structure of the blade, as well as to the properties of the materials for which the tool is intended to process. Sharpening with a simple blunt wedge (item 1 in the figure) gives a stable but rough blade: the cutting resistance is high, and the knife tears quite viscous materials. A sharp wedge (item 2) quickly dulls or chips; on viscous and/or fibrous materials, the cutting resistance may be greater than with a blunt wedge due to the friction of what is being cut against the blade.

Ideal in all respects is the ogival (smoothly sloping) profile, pos. 3. Experts are still arguing which generator is better - an involute, a hyperbola or an exponential. But one thing is certain - making an ogival blade in production conditions is difficult and expensive, and it is impossible to direct it yourself. Therefore, ogival sharpened knives are used only in special equipment, e.g. microtomes - biological devices for obtaining the thinnest tissue sections.

For disposable blades, e.g. safety razor blades, faceted sharpening is used, pos. 4, i.e. The ogive generatrix, as mathematicians say, is approximated by straight segments. The number of sharpening edges is indicated in the certificate or on the manufacturer’s website. For thick, rough stubble would be better suited 3-4-sided; for delicate hair not on the face - 8-sided. The 6-sided one is considered universal.

Angle α

The sharpening angle is always given in half the value α, because Many tools and, for example, bayonet knives are sharpened on one side. For knives for various purposes angle α is maintained as follows. within:

10-15 degrees – medical scalpels, straight razors, knives artistic carving.
15-20 degrees – pastry knives (for cakes) and vegetable knives.
20-25 degrees – bread and fillet knives.
25-30 degrees – hunting, hiking, survival knives.
30-35 degrees – general purpose household knives.
35-40 degrees – carpentry tools, shoe knives, axes.

One and a half

Sharpening knives, except for special ones, is done almost exclusively with a one-and-a-half profile, on the left in Fig. One-and-a-half sharpening is so named because the flat edge of the blade (descent) is formed during the manufacturing process of the blade and cannot be sharpened. In fact, sharpening a knife with one and a half sharpening is no more difficult than sharpening it with a simple wedge. One-and-a-half sharpening is optimal for a knife that is used to work with the most different materials, and making a knife sharpener with one-and-a-half sharpening is much easier than making a knife sharpener with a faceted sharpening.

In the center and on the right in Fig. The stages of blade sharpening and the numbers of abrasives used on them are shown. The abrasive number corresponds to the number of its grains per 1 square meter. mm surface. The finishing stage has some features:

Hunting and camping knives are not supplied. This makes it easier for them to cut hard things (for example, bones) with broaching (with filing). In addition, if you accidentally cut yourself, the slightly lacerated wound stops bleeding faster, heals more easily, and there is less danger of infection getting into it.
After abrading, the blades of straight razors, shoemaker's knives and for artistic carving are brought to mirror smoothness on a leather whetstone with GOI paste.
Guiding and finishing the blades of kitchen knives can be reduced to one operation with abrasive No. 800-1100.

Touchstone

A homemade knife sharpener will be much more convenient and accurate if you do not buy a whetstone for it, but make it from a piece of square corrugated pipe 200-300 mm long (on the left in the figure below) or wooden block.

The edges of the base are pasted over emery cloth resp. numbers. Glue – stationery adhesive stick. The advantages of a skin-based donkey are obvious:

Much cheaper than an emery block.
Can be made with 4 numbers of abrasive, while sanding blocks have a maximum of 2 sides.
Wear (depletion) of the abrasive is possible no more than the thickness of the abrasive layer of the sandpaper; the waviness of the RK due to the rotation of the whetstone on the sharpener rod (see below) is also no more than this amount.
As a result, the sharpening angle error due to the development and rotation of the whetstone does not exceed fractions of a degree.
The pipe whetstone can be put on threaded rod(in the center in the figure), which speeds up and facilitates the change of abrasive.
A touchstone made from a pipe or a wooden block is held in any clamps under an emery block no worse than the last one, on the right in Fig.

Knife sharpening devices

The simplest manual knife sharpener is an angular frame in which a whetstone is clamped, pos. 1 on next rice. The same type of “company” is on sale, and this is marketing: they want up to $50 or more for a plastic board with inclined nests for whetstones. Touchstones – non-standard sizes; regular ones won't fit into the holes. If you are used up, you need to buy more original ones. Price - you understand. And all the convenience - holding the blade strictly vertically when sharpening is still easier than maintaining its angle of inclination.

The use of a simple knife sharpener can be further simplified to the point where no skill is required if you add it with a sliding shoe with magnetic holder for knife, pos. 2. The sharpening order in this case is as follows:

Knife right hand hold by the handle, turning in the direction of movement according to the curvature of the blade;
With the fingers of the left hand, except the thumb, press the shoe to the whetstone;
With the thumb of the left hand, they press on the butt of the blade, pressing the RK to the abrasive.

The function of maintaining the angle of inclination is removed from the operator, and the rest are distributed between 2 hands. In this case, the skill of sharpening with your own hands is developed immediately, but you need a holder that firmly holds the knife and at the same time allows it to slide over its surface. You can make one from the magnets of the write-read head carriage drive from an unusable HDD drive (hard drive). The “screw” carriage drive magnets are niobium, thin, flat, smooth and very strong (shown by red arrows in position 3). They are glued with DIFFERENT poles onto a steel strip, the force of attraction of the blade will then double. And to ensure sliding, the holder is covered with a fluoroplastic film 0.05-0.07 mm thick. PET from bottles will also work, but it is thicker and the attraction will be weaker. Polyethylene is not suitable, it will wear out immediately.

Note: remember this holder, we will need it later.

L.M.

The use of a manual knife sharpener such as Lansky-Metabo, pos. 1 in Fig. The diagram of its device is given in pos. 2, and the procedure for use is in pos. 3. The disadvantage of the Lansky-Metabo sharpener is the instability of the sharpening angle along the length of the blade: a rod with a touchstone is driven along it. The offset of the touch point is constantly changing, because it describes an arc of a circle, and the blade has a different configuration. Resp. The angle also “floats”. Therefore, the Lansky-Metabo sharpener is used primarily for sharpening camping and hunting knives with a relatively short blade.

However, this disadvantage can be turned into an advantage if the blade is clamped in the terminals with the root part A (at the handle) and the tip slightly turned away from you, pos. 4. Then the sharpening angle at the root of the blade will be greatest, which is optimal for processing hard materials or using a knife as a cleaver. This is how they work in such cases, so that the outer arm of the arm-blade lever is shorter.

Towards the middle of blade B, the sharpening angle will gradually decrease and reach a minimum at the bend of its generatrix B1, which is convenient for fine workmanship. Then towards the tip the B angle will increase again, making the tip more resistant to drilling, chiselling/impacting and punching (piercing).

Note: Another disadvantage of the Lansky-Metabo sharpener is the difficulty of performing desktop version. But this drawback, as they say, is fake, see pos. 5.

Drawings of parts of the original Lansky-Metabo sharpener are given in Fig. The numbers at the windows under the rod (guide) correspond FULL corners sharpening.

On the trail. rice. Dan Assembly drawing clamp, and then - drawings and dimensions of Lansky-Metabo terminals, made from angle 90x90x6 mm. The author of the development hides under the pseudonym Serjant. This is certainly a matter of his modesty. But, by the way, in production, technological innovations that make it possible to use standard profiles for the manufacture of shaped parts are sometimes valued more than serious inventions.

Note: on the trail. rice. An assembly drawing of the Serjant sharpener is given. Regarding the inconvenience of fastening in a vice, see above.

Knife sharpening machine

The most advanced household manual sharpener today is the Apex type knife sharpening machine. His appearance, device diagrams and instructions for use, see Fig. Apex can be made with a continuously variable sharpening angle (item 2) or with fixed angles like Lansky-Metabo (item 3). Normally on Apex they work like on Lansky-Metabo (item 4), but for more precise sharpening other options are possible, see below.

Homemade version of the Apex sharpener - Skomorokh knife sharpener

In 2016, the desktop modification of Apex by Ivan Skomorokhov made a splash in the RuNet, perhaps no less than the bubafon stove once did, see fig. on right.

Skomorokh sharpeners are much simpler than the prototype and are in no way inferior to it in functionality.

How to make a knife sharpener Skomorokh, see video:

Not just knives...

The original Apex sharpener is not very suitable for sharpening carpentry tools- chisel, plane iron. The sharpening angle of the Apex floats for the same reasons as that of the Lansky-Metabo. Meanwhile, if the sharpening angle of the chisel along the width of the blade “walks” by more than 1-1.5 degrees, then the tool strives to move to the side, crawl out, or go deep into the solid wood along its fibers. It is very difficult to evenly and accurately select a groove for a tenon/ridge using such a chisel.

There are special devices for sharpening carpentry tools, which require a special discussion. Homemade products like a roller sharpener-trolley, see fig. on the right, they are more of a curiosity: not to mention the complexity, they require a stone or steel table, and, most importantly, they do not guarantee against distortion of the blade on the whetstone, which leads to the same undesirable result.

Meanwhile, 2-3 years ago, in one of the Chinese magazines on technical creativity, a modification of the Apex for sharpening was flashed, not inferior to that of a factory electric semi-automatic sharpening machine. The alteration is not difficult, see figure: the rod is set horizontally according to the level and the rod level is held along the same level while sharpening. Within the angle of rotation of the rod in the horizontal plane of 10-12 degrees to the right and left, the sharpening angle error is less than 1 degree. If the offset of the contact point is from 250 mm, it is possible to sharpen chisels and planer pieces up to 120 mm wide.

In this operating mode, a zero (theoretically) sharpening angle error can be achieved by keeping the bar stationary and moving the knife held by the magnetic holder, see above. In this way, it is also possible to sharpen the pieces of shaped planes if a round, semicircular, elliptical or segmented whetstone is placed in the clamps. The main thing is that the touch spot is always point-like.

...but also scissors

Another modification of the Apex sharpener for sharpening scissors (also a necessary thing in the household) is shown in Fig. on right. The total work required is a couple of pieces of angle or galvanized scraps and 4 additional holes in the sharpener table. For the process of making your own attachment for sharpening scissors for the Skomorokh sharpener, see next. video:

Video: sharpening scissors, attachment to the sharpener Skomorokh

Finally, about scissors

Before you grab your poorly-cut scissors and stick them in the sharpener, check to see if the hinge is loose. Open the scissors and look at them from the side. Do you see how the tip is turned with a screw towards each other? That’s why scissors cut: the point of contact of the blades when cutting moves from the roots to the ends. And therefore it is difficult to cut with scissors with your left hand: turning the ends is designed for the kinematics of your right hand. And if the hinge of the scissors is loose, the blades will move away from each other and will not even be able to cope with paper. In this case, you just need to tighten the riveted joint with a hammer and the screw joint with a screwdriver.

With the help of a knife we cook food, cut food and do other housework. Therefore, it is very important that the knife blade always remains sharp. Theoretically, there is nothing difficult in sharpening knives, but in practice it turns out that not everyone can sharpen a blade well. To have an idea of what to sharpen knives with and how to do it correctly, we recommend reading our article.

Before you start sharpening a knife, you need to find out what material it is made of. There are several types of knives:

- Carbon steel knives are the most affordable, made from an alloy of iron and carbon, easy to sharpen and remain sharp for a long time. Among the disadvantages, it can be noted that the knife blade oxidizes from interaction with food or an acidic environment, due to this, rust and stains appear on the knife, and food acquires a metallic taste. Over time, after plaque forms on the blade, oxidation stops.

- Low carbon knives of stainless steel- made from an alloy of iron, chromium, carbon and in some cases nickel or molybdenum. Stainless steel knives are inferior in hardness to carbon steel, so they quickly become dull and require regular sharpening. The advantages include corrosion resistance.

- High carbon stainless steel knives – more high class knives with a high carbon content and additions of cobalt or vanadium. Due to the higher quality alloy, this type of knives does not require frequent sharpening and is not subject to corrosion.

- Damascus steel knives are mainly made as edged weapons, but there are also kitchen options. A Damascus steel knife is a multi-layer blade made from different high-quality alloys. The disadvantages include the high cost of knives.

Ceramic knives have gained popularity due to their sharpness and ability to long time don't be dumb. But besides the advantages, Ceramic knives have a significant disadvantage, which is their fragility when dropped from a height and poor resistance to fracture.

Sharpening tools

Touchstone (sharpening stone)

Sharpening stones are available with different amounts of abrasive grains per square millimeter. Therefore, for rough sharpening and final grinding you need to use bars with a minimum and maximum abrasive content. In foreign-made whetstones, information about the number of abrasive grains is on their labeling. You have to choose domestically produced sharpening stones “by eye” or ask the seller which whetstone to use for initial sharpening and which for final sharpening.

Mechanical sharpener

Mechanical sharpeners are mainly used for sharpening kitchen knives. Although the sharpening process is quick, the quality leaves much to be desired. For this reason, for hunting and sporting knives, it is recommended to use other sharpening methods.

Electric sharpener

Modern models electric sharpeners allow you to achieve high quality sharpening due to the built-in function of automatically determining the angle of the blade. The electric sharpener is perfect for both household use and for sharpening knives in catering establishments. The lineup There is a wide range of electric sharpeners, so the price may vary, but if you want your knives to always remain sharp, then buy more “advanced” and expensive models.

Musat

Musat - designed to maintain the sharpness of the knife edge. In shape, the musat resembles a round file with a handle. Musats are included in knife sets, and many owners often confuse them with a tool for fully sharpening a blade. Please note that with the help of musat you can maintain the sharpness of a sharpened knife, but if the knife has become completely dull, you will not be able to sharpen it with musat.

Sharpener "Lansky"

This sharpener is used for sharpening small and medium-sized knives. The design of the sharpener allows you to sharpen the blade at the angle you choose. The Lansky sharpener consists of a rod with a removable touchstone and two corners connected to each other. The corners simultaneously serve as a vice for the knife and a scale for selecting the sharpening angle. The sharpener kit also includes sharpening stones of different grits with ANSI markings.

Sharpening and grinding machines

Sharpening machines are used mainly in production for high-precision sharpening of rotating shaft blades. In addition to high-precision machines, there are electrically driven abrasive wheels and rotating discs for grinding. Sharpening knives on such machines should only be done by an experienced craftsman, because due to the speed of rotation of the circle or disk and high temperature heating, with any unsuccessful movement, the knife blade will become unusable.

Do-it-yourself blade sharpening

Sharpening a knife using a whetstone

Sharpening of a blade made with a sharpening stone is considered to be of the highest quality, of course, provided that it was carried out by experienced master. To sharpen a knife on a whetstone, do the following:

1. Place a low abrasive grit sandstone on a stationary surface. If the block is small, it can be clamped in a vice.

1. Holding the knife at an angle of 20-25 degrees relative to the surface of the block, begin moving the knife along the whetstone with the cutting edge forward.

Move the blade along the block so that during movement it touches the surface of the whetstone along its entire length.
As you move, try to maintain the same blade angle.
After making 2-3 movements, turn the knife over and repeat the sharpening process on the other side of the blade.
Thus, alternating sides, sharpen the knife until an edge (burr) appears along the edge of the blade.
Swap the coarse whetstone for a grinding stone.
Sand the knife blade until the edge disappears.
Test the sharpness of the knife by cutting a hemp rope folded several times, or try cutting a sheet of paper.

How to sharpen a knife using a sharpening stone, see also in the video:

Sharpening a hunting knife on a Lansky sharpener

Hunting knives are made of hard steel, so their initial sharpening requires sharpening stones with a low content of abrasive grains.

Clamp the knife in a sharpener vice.
Place a sharpening stone with a low content of abrasive grains on the rod.
Select the angle of the block (for hunting knives it is usually from 20 to 30 degrees).
Insert the rod into the desired hole.
Lubricate the whetstone with the special oil included in the sharpener kit.
Start moving the block along the knife blade, from the base to the tip.
Flip the sharpener over and repeat the process on the other side of the knife.
Once the edge is formed, change the stone and do the final sanding.
Since hunting knives are mostly made with a double-sided blade, after finishing sharpening on one side, change the position of the knife in the vice and begin the sharpening process on the other side.
Once you've finished sharpening, polish the knife blade with felt.

How to sharpen knives in a Lansky sharpener, watch the video:

Sharpening scissors

Sharpening of scissors must be done on a special sharpening machine. Sharpening blades using improvised materials (sandpaper, the edge of a glass, etc.) can temporarily improve the sharpness of scissors, but not for long. If you do not have the opportunity to have your scissors sharpened by a professional, you can try to sharpen them yourself on an abrasive stone. When sharpening you need to follow a few simple rules:

The sharpening stone should be fine-grained.
The blade is sharpened over the entire surface of the edge at the same time.
The angle of the blade should match the factory edge.
The movement of the blade along the stone should be from the screw to the tip.
Scissors need to be sharpened disassembled.

When sharpening scissors, do not rush; patience will be your ally in this matter.

You can also watch the video on how to quickly sharpen scissors:

Sharpening plane and chisel blades

Sharpening the blade of a plane and a chisel are practically no different from each other. Therefore, the sharpening process described below applies to both tools:

Place the chisel on the whetstone at an angle of 30-40 degrees.
Holding the chisel with your hand, use the fingers of your free hand to press the bevel onto the whetstone.
Start running the chisel over the whetstone until a burr forms on the smooth side of the chisel.
Change the whetstone to a fine-grained one and do the final grinding of the chisel.
Check the sharpness of the chisel blade by removing shavings from the corner of the block.

Besides manual sharpening, the chisel can be sharpened on a machine with a rotating abrasive disk:

Turn on the machine and let the disc reach full speed.
Holding the chisel with both hands, place its bevel against the sharpening wheel.
Be sure to maintain the angle of the chisel, otherwise you will damage the blade of the tool.
Do not press the chisel with great force and do not hold it on the blade for too long, this will lead to overheating of the metal and destruction of the blade.
While sharpening, wet the blade with water.
The final grinding of the chisel blade is best done by hand, using a fine-grained stone or sandpaper.

Do not forget that when sharpening products on a machine, a lot of sparks and small particles are generated that can get into your eyes, so be sure to wear safety glasses. To avoid damaging your hands on the rotating disk, wear gloves.

You can also learn how to sharpen tools from the video:

Tips for quickly sharpening a blade using improvised tools

Stone

You can quickly sharpen a knife on a hike or on a picnic using an ordinary cobblestone. Use any stone lying on the ground instead of a whetstone and run the knife blade along its surface. You won't achieve razor sharpness, but you will return the knife to working condition.

Second knife

It is quite possible to sharpen two knives at once, without sharpening stones or tools. To do this, you need to take a knife in both hands and begin to sharpen the blade of one knife on the blade of the other. After 5-10 minutes of this work, the knives will become sharper than before.

Glass objects

The knife blade can be slightly sharpened on the rough edge of glass or ceramic objects. For example, about the bottom of a glass or the edge tiles. The main thing is that the surface is rough.

Leather belt

A leather belt is more suitable for finishing and shaping a knife blade razor sharp than for rough sharpening. But if there is nothing at hand except a belt, then you can try to sharpen the knife on it. To do this, you need to give the belt a stretch and start moving the blade along it, strong pungency You may not achieve it, but you will polish the knife to a shine.

By learning to sharpen knives and tools yourself, you will acquire a skill that will be useful to you throughout your life!

A knife sharpening device is a necessary thing in every home. Of course, you can purchase a sharpening machine industrial production. But you should keep in mind: the scissors that are sold in specialized stores are quite expensive and often fail.

Construct the simplest grinder you can do it yourself. This sharpener does not take up much space and is very easy to use. If you don’t want to make something, you can use a regular sharpening stone. However, a knife sharpening machine is still great idea, after all the simplest machine It will always come in handy, and you can sharpen other tools on it.

Why do knives get dull?

In some houses there are knives They remain sharp for a long time and there is no need for sharpening. And for some owners, on the contrary, they become stupid every now and then. Why is this happening? Here are the most common reasons:

DIY machine

Once upon a time, sharpening machines were rare. When a sharpener came to a village or town, all the local residents brought him their knives, scissors and other cutting tools. In those days, the machine was a circle on which a knife was placed in a horizontal plane. The circle rotated and the blade became sharper.

Until now, many owners who take care of their knives sharpen these objects in a horizontal position, using a special whetstone. It is made of an abrasive material, and the blade, in contact with the bar, restores its sharpness. If you don't have a sharpening machine, this method can be used. However, sharpening knives in a horizontal position is very inconvenient, especially if you do it while hanging. In this regard, many home craftsmen make their own sharpening machines. Here are the main advantages of such a machine:

Operating principle of the device

Here's how a simple sharpening machine works:

To sharpen on such a machine, you do not need to apply any physical effort, and good result achieved very quickly. The risk of injuring your hand is reduced to zero.

Once the blades are sharpened, the question arises of how to properly use and store them. Many housewives, after washing their knives, do not wipe them dry with a towel, but simply put them in a pile in the dish drainer so that the water drains from the cutting tools. Under no circumstances should you do this. When undried, wet knives lie on top of each other in a horizontal position, they quickly rust and become dull.

Therefore, together with a sharpening machine, it makes sense to design special device for storing knives. Such a device is wooden stand, in which slots of various sizes are made. Blades are inserted into these slots with the blade facing down. This way, the cutting tools do not come into contact with each other and the blades are always dry. In order to remove the knife from the “socket”, you just need to gently pull its handle.

Correct use of knives

Of course, sharpen knives homemade machine- pure pleasure. It's nice to watch how a dull blade becomes sharp and begins to shine. However, no one likes to do extra work. Therefore, in order to sharpen them less often, you need to properly care for them. Here are some useful tips:

The sharpness of kitchen appliances largely depends not only on the quality of the product and the metal from which the blades are made, but also on storage conditions. Even the most good knife It will quickly rust if you constantly keep it in water and store it horizontally with other kitchen utensils.

Proper sharpening of knives is of great importance not in everyday life. When the blade is well sharpened, working with it is easy and pleasant. But the main thing is that it is much more difficult to get injured with a sharp knife than with a dull one. Sharpening knives on a homemade machine will not take much time and effort, but after that the cutting tools will become as good as new. Sometimes homemade sharpening machines are even used in cafes and restaurants to make the work of chefs easier. But you can also use an ordinary block, because it all depends on your desire and capabilities.

To perform their functions, knives must always be sharp. Any housewife who uses a knife to cut food knows how quickly it becomes dull.

Can make a sharpener from wooden blocks. You will need 4 bars of the same size: 2 wooden, and 2 abrasive. The wood is sanded, removing all burrs using sandpaper. Markings are applied to them depending on desired angle, a sharpening stone is applied to them and its width is fixed. On the markings, cuts are made with a depth of 1.5 cm. Abrasive bars are inserted into the recesses and secured with bolts.

Let's consider the action of the clamping device. The knife is fixed and remains motionless, and the stone makes translational movements. It forms a smooth cutting edge on the edge of the knife at the required angle. To make the blade perfectly sharp, you need to consistently change the sharpening stones. It must be remembered that the stones must move strictly perpendicular to the area that is being sharpened.

Chisels and plane knives can be sharpened at home. You need to make a basic device where the sharpening angle will be fixed. Sharpening is carried out strictly on sanding paper.

Simple knife sharpening machine

To make it you need two pairs of slats and a block. The slats are connected to each other using adjustable screws, and a block is installed between them. The structure must be stable, it is not advisable to move it on the desktop. To better secure the block, you need to provide support strips that can be placed between the wooden components.

Easy to do with your own hands. You need to prepare the necessary tool.

This machine has disadvantages:

it is not always possible to control the sharpening angle, especially if you work for a long time;
the structure is unstable, another fixation unit is needed;
You need to regularly tighten the screws so that the location of the bar does not change.

Sharpening planing knives

This is a complex process that requires certain knowledge and skills. It is difficult to find a device for sharpening planing knives on sale. Many people do this using regular sharpening tools. For this case, it is recommended to purchase a modern low-speed sharpener, which is equipped with water cooling.

To do planer knife sharp, you need to find a smooth and ungreasy stone that is used in this area. A water stone is perfect.

You can sharpen such a knife in any car workshop that has a tool for sharpening knives. For an additional fee, any blade will be made sharp for you using a special machine.

There are two types of knife sharpening: one-sided and two-sided. Working methods will differ from each other. This needs to be taken into account.

When choosing a quality block, you need to choose a stone with a medium grain.

Knives that have special coatings for cutting edges do not need to be sharpened. They are made of especially hard alloys that protect the blade from wear.

You should not try to sharpen a sharpener with a special cutting edge in the form of teeth in the usual way. For such a blade, you need to use laser control, which is not available in an ordinary apartment.

Wash blades frequently hot water This is not possible, as this will dull their blades faster.

To quickly sharpen a blade, without having a special device at hand, use an ordinary ceramic mug. Its bottom usually has a rough rim not covered with glaze - it can be used instead of a stone. The method is suitable for auxiliary pointing.

In some villages it is still practiced method of sharpening blades on a foundation. For its manufacture it was used cement-sand mortar, so the foundation surface has a grainy surface. Of course, this method is for residents apartment buildings can't be called acceptable, but it's a pretty good option.

Conclusion

Every home must have a knife sharpening device. You can make a simple model of a knife sharpening device with your own hands.

Let it be the most simple model, but if you do it yourself, your blades will never get dull.