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Got this as a gift second handed and would like to sharpen it and make it usable again. The serrated top part started to just break off, so I am cautious about potential metal parts in my food. Any tips welcome, thanks.
Update: Yes it can be saved, thanks for all the helpful tips. Grinded it down with a waterstone to the lowest point of the dent and rounded it off in the front. It cuts like butter and I'm happy to give it another couple cooks at least.
It's a good start ... but ... if you've done what I think you've done, you've made the tip quite a wide angle.
In this first picture the secondary bevel is the "dark" grey section. At you get to where you've ground it, the secondary bevel gets a lot thinner. This means this part of the knife is "blunter" on the bevel. You might be able to get the same apex, but it wont cut as well.
I'd start at that tip and try and make the bevel even thickness the whole length of the blade.
Not sure I fully understand. There are only two parts/types of metal, the silverish grey (appears as two colours in the picture) and the dark blade which is the core and held by the outer layer.
If I were to grind more off the dark, there would be no more blade to cut with. So I'm reluctant to shave off more further down. What would be the benefit?
An aggressive reprofile would save it. But I would be worried more bits breaking off, and not just for the rusting, but it could chip or potentially really embed itself into a molar, or it could lacerate your gi lining. I would turn it into more of a show piece if you really want to save it. But I personally wouldn't chance it with food ever again.
Thinking about a shard of metal embedding itself into a molar just made me shudder.
Its steel, and any steel with bad stuff will pass through you before they rust out.
Take a piece of paper and a sharpie or permanent marker. Use the edge of the paper to cover most of the blade and leave the damage part exposed. This will define the new profile. It can go right up to the damage but that does need to be removed. Whether you make the tip quite curved or take it back to try and keep it as straight as possible is up to you.
Now that you have what needs to go marked use a belt sander and hold it long ways and remove everything that you marked. Dunk it in water often to try and keep the temper.
After that you can mark and scribe the new bevel, or you can just wing it. Can probably take the edge down to like 0.5mm with a belt sander than switch back to stones.
It'll be a different knife, better or worse who knows until you use it.
Thanks, this sounds manageable
If you want your knife to be useful later please do not try to fix that edge with a belt sander.
You need to go to a professional knife maker, your real pros and have them re-profile the blade. There is more than enough steel there to remove the current edge and grind in a new one, but will need a pro to inspect for cracks or delaminations.
Thanks! That sounds like a big job for big bucks. I will look into finding a blacksmith to get an idea about details.
That is a nice Nakiri (vegetable knife) - I am saying that because it looks like it has a hand-carved makers mark, which is indicative of a high-quality, hand-forged and -ground blade. I have one myself. It is intended for vegetable slicing, and you’re intended to just gently draw it across the thing you’re cutting with light pressure, and the blade does the vast majority of the work. If you’re using it as a general utility knife (chopping, whacking, mincing, deboning, etc)… that’s very much not what it’s for. The edge is too fine and fragile for general “chef knife” tasks.
As for repair: If you take it to someone and they don’t pretty immediately clock the exact type of the blade… don’t let them fix it, because they probably won’t do a very good job. A good nakiri is going to glide through an onion or tomato or daikon or potato like a goddamn lightsaber - it’s super satisfying to use - if it’s well taken care of.
This is good advice, cheers!
You make me want to get one based on how you talk about it haha. Any recommendations on brand?
Honestly, the best ones I have are from knife shops I’ve gone to while visiting Tokyo (thought I had some pics of the shops or the knives, but evidently I do not), as well as one from an old-school Japanese blacksmith in the Narita area that uses traditional sword making techniques:
That said, if you’re in the states, the best well-known importer I’m aware of is Korin. If you’re near NYC, their shop is downtown near the financial district. They periodically have sales where you can snap one up at a reasonable price.
Yes, they are a good bit more pricey than your bog-standard cooking knives, but they are truly a delight to use. And some of the more specialized types (like the aforementioned nakiri; or a boning knife (honesuki), which I’ve used to break down whole poultry and bigger bone-in cuts that I want the bone out of) are kind of a blast. No, you don’t need them, but if you’re into this sort of thing and really enjoy cooking, they’re a very fun and a delightful addition to your cooking process.
Material: stainless will hold its edge better, but is more of a pain to sharpen, though tends to be more difficult to get a truly insane edge on. Carbon steel is far more finicky in terms of care, but you can get that wicked sharp edge much more easily, and they’re not hard to re-sharpen.
If you go for carbon steel over stainless, do not neglect caring for your knife. If you want to get a good baseline for very good knife care, look at what a sushi chef at a nice sushi place is doing when they are slicing their fish. The actual technique (slicing the fish) is admittedly somewhat specialized to sashimi and nigiri prep, but the way they keep a damp cloth to the side to immediately wipe the blade after use is what I am talking about.
Do not use a sharpening steel, or those crappy v-slot sharpeners, or roller-sharpeners, or things that rely on ceramic or metalloceramic rods - you will immediately fuck up your blade. Invest in a decent whetstone (yes, really - if you do it a lot, get multiple grades of whetstone, as well as a stone fixer), and learn the technique appropriately (this includes understanding handed bevels, as well as getting a literal feel for how the knife edge is ground when you are sharpening it).
Look through Chef Knives To Go; the best ones aren't 'brands', they're made by individual craftsmen.
Thanks! This site looks great. Any other tips for a newbie to nice knives? If you had a budget of $500-600 what would you get?
If you’re starting out and want to dip your toe in without huge financial commitment: stay away from the ones with fancy handles/scales, and go for a yo-deba (much akin to a wusthoff or similar western chefs knife) or a gyuto (similar, though a finer blade). “Hand-hammered” finishes are a take it or leave it thing - it’s basically just an aesthetic they do for western buyers, and real blacksmiths don’t bother with that shit, but if you find a deal on one with that finish, that doesn’t mean it’s a “bad” knife.
I spotted this gyuto on CKTG, as well as this gyuto and this yo-deba on Korin. They’re definitely more basic, but they’ll work perfectly well if you don’t want to spend a ton. Note that many blades are “handed” - that is, a right handed blade is intended to be used with the right hand, as the side closest to you will cut almost straight down as you look along the flat of the blade. And of course the sky’s the limit in terms of price… so find the sweet spot that works for you in terms of price, quality, style, and cosmetic “extras” (if you like that sort of thing).
Thank you! You have been super helpful. I'm definitely going to explore this. I really appreciate the detailed reply :)
Depends on your idea of big bucks. I don't think grinding would be too expensive. If you happen to be anywhere near the Milwaukee area I know exactly the guy you could take it to.
Sharpening should be manageable, even DIY. Getting a blacksmith to forge in a new blade sounds very specialised and pricy, but worth asking around if the sharpening won't work
Yeah, and if it's like a fairly cheap knife or something, you could get a dude with a welder and have him weld in the missing steel, and then re-profile and sharpen the blade.
That's definitely more of a "make it work" fix rather than a "do it the right way" fix, though.
You should never weld a knife. It will ruin the hardening and temper. Just re-profiling the existing steel is a much better idea.
I mean, you can always re-temper as well, but now I do understand that that is going well beyond the pale of just grinding the metal down.
That being said, depending on the knife, it could have a relatively thin, harder edge and grinding it down could go into the softer core metal.
Heating, quenching, and tempering is not a great idea if it can be avoided. It stresses the metal and can introduce new weaknesses.
And very few knives will have a softer core. That requires extra work on the knife makers part, and is rarely worth it. And there are signs you could look for during the repair and reprofiling. So a decent knife maker should be able to tell if it will be an issue.
Personally I would be ready to trash it 🙁
Based on my experience this looks to require the removal of a minimum 15mm.
It's never going to be the same, and I really do not have any faith that anywhere you take it could do anything other than destroy it further.
You might be looking at mailing it to a specialty shop.
I would take a breath and move on with life.
I'd also like to share my experience as a home cook that makes everything from scratch, and I have learned that expensive knives are a huge money sink, they always crack or chip, they always end in tears.
I'm rock solidly convinced that a $10-20 German steel chef knife, abused with a sharpening wheel and a hone and replaced frequently is much better in the long run.
A cheapshit Henckel from a butcher supply shop that you touch up every few days will last for decades and do ridiculous amounts of work.
Knife aficionados are as ridiculous as audiophiles. They use a knife once a week and masturbate over it because it's expensive.
I agree.
One can either have a knife or one can use a knife.
Of course, we see the same micro-obsession within the cast iron community as well. They treat them like they're Fabergé eggs.
The best knives I've ever used were in a commercial kitchen - Victorinox with the molded plastic handles.
Held an edge great.
They're great, I have their serrated knives which are amazing
Victorinox! I have the 14 inch chef's hone, excellent product.
I'm the same.I got water stones. 1k and 3k grit. I forgot what I paid for them, but I sharpen maybe once a year. More if I notice its not sharp anymore. Stuff gets dropped, hit, banged on pots and pans, etc. Its unavoidable. Chips really bad? Buy another one. The ones I bought last were 2 6inch knives for like $45. Lasted 5 years so far. Usually a quick resharpen, 30 minutes tops. Half of that is getting the stones out and setting them up on the table.
And for me, the biggest pain in the ass is ya sharpen this thing to the point that you could shave a buffalo, and then you have to pamper the fuck out of it otherwise all that time invested lovingly sharpening is immediately wrecked.
Meanwhile, my kitchen is a chaotic place, I need to be able to just throw a bunch of things in soapy water and let them clatter around and not have to stress. I can't be setting aside special attention for some pissy knife.
Oh I get that. First week or so, real smooth slices and I pamper it. The novelty wears off and I don't care anymore. You can use a bigger angle so there's more material behind the edge. Less likely to knick, but also less sharp. Think meat cleaver vs. a straight razor.
One of my favourite cooking knife was a Chinese steel from Tesco whose tip I broke off while playing knife throwing with it. The damn thing kept its edge so well, it was amazing. I actually miss that knife :/
Aight, since you needed to ask, chances are that you can't handle doing it, otherwise you'd be asking what methods to use, right?
But it is possible to DIY that job. It's even possible to do it without losing a lot of the hardened steel, and without majorly changing the profile. I wouldn't advise doing that job as your first effort, but it is totally within the range of skill a beginner can develop with a little practice before starting the actual job.
But, being real, just find a pro.
Caveats: there's very little in the way of proper certification for being a pro. Any rando with enough money to buy a belt grinder can claim to be a pro, and there's not usually any way to prove otherwise or hold them accountable for being full of shit. And, even an actual pro with a decade or more of experience might not know how to handle that steel in a way that keeps full functionality.
Tbh, while I could do it, I'd be shitting bricks the entire time because it isn't exactly something a skilled hobbyist does often. Like, I've done it maybe a dozen times overt the last thirty years, and it was only the last few that I felt fully proud of the results. It's all hand work if you want it done right, mostly. You can use powered tools for some parts of it, but you shouldn't because the faster the tools, the faster mistakes get out of hand and ruin things. Again, I've done this kind of thing, and I still wouldn't want to use power tools for anything but the very first stages. And I'd never, ever use a belt sander btw. Don't trust anyone trying to do so with a heat treated knife unless they have a proper cooling system for their gear. I sure as fuck don't lol
Anyway, mostly useless I guess, but point is that the knife isn't trashed. It did lose life span, no way around that, but it can be brought back to useful
Edit: checked the comments. What you're dealing with is a knife with layers.
There's a core of hardened steel, with a softer steel (though iron is sometimes used) on the sides. The hardened core may or may not extend all the way to the spine, but the typical Japanese knives I've seen don't. Hence the issue with just hogging off metal willy-nilly. You grind down too much, and it isn't impossible to not have any hardened steel left to work with at the kind of angle that a know if that style is really meant to have.
You can see, even in this pic, where the type of steel transitions. I doubt a good pic would show it, but sometimes, you can look at the front of the knife when it's a nakiri and see how much core there is. If it actually extends to or near the spine, there's a lot less issue with just grinding past the chips.
Thanks, I'll definitely run it over my waterstone a few thousand times and see the progress. Can't see the core fr the front but we have some very old school craftspeople around that offer sharpening courses, they will be my escalation point.
If you have access to something like a diamond lapping plate, that'll get you started faster, with the caveat that you have to work with the edge trailing or you'll just be making new chips. You can't "scrub" with those, or even the really coarse stones of other types, with harder steels. I mean, you can, but it isn't going to end well imo. I sure as hell wouldn't with a knife I cared about.
Fwiw, with something in the 400 grit range (or equivalent), it shouldn't take thousands of passes, just hundreds. Well, assuming the steel isn't freakishly hard. But I've never seen one like that that went over maybe 65 Rockwell. Ish. Obviously, if you've only got a single 1 stone, which is perfectly reasonable for 99% of what most people need, it'll take thousands lol.
Just to kinda babble on about something I enjoy as a tangent (so feel free to just ignore the rest lol), I tend to favor oil stones, particularly for rehab jobs like that, and leave the water stones more for polishing when I need/want something that can do fancy push cuts. It's what I reach for first with this kind of task. The coarser aluminium oxide stones can actually do a solid job on the Japanese steels, and they take less lapping over time by virtue of wearing slower.
There's the argument that water stones are exposing fresh grit faster, and thus the lower grit water stones can remove metal faster as well. However, I find that the faster wear of the stone shows up in a wonky bevel that then needs more time correcting. Plus, if you don't go with something crazy low grit (say, under 200 for this application) you can actually scrub as long as you're careful. I managed to do solid jobs on similar steel that way with no new chips.
Anyway, like I said, I'm just geeking here, not trying to get you to do any of that. It's really the kind of job that you either do because you enjoy it, do because someone is paying you, or you find someone else to do it :)
Love it, thanks for the nerdy deep dive. I appreciate the details.
So I think I did a pretty solid job. Turns out after cleaning there are two layers, the inner part which is the blade and another bit essentially enclosing from both sides. You can see the color changes. With a few tens of passes on the 400 grit I brought the blade down to the lowest dent and then rounded it off. Cuts through veggies like butter and I will keep an eye on additional cracking.
You can take an oil stone and just start grinding away until you get it to the shape you want. If you succeed this, I know some saints who need instructions on patience.
Agreeing with Akh; take it to a professional. I've seen videos of people saving knives that looked a hell of a lot worse.
Be careful of what "professional" you take it to, some of them will happily ruin your knives.
I would hope that's a given lol.
Any story on what caused the chip?
Other than that, just looking up the knife to find out the variety of steel it’s made of. If it’s cheap steel with fancy lettering, this will probably happen again and you should just display it. If it’s not cheap steel, it’s easily worth the cost to fix.
It's more often a factor of how the steel is treated and the resulting hardness of the blade.
Japanese knives are usually heat treated to a much higher hardness. That makes them more resistant to wear, but much more easy to chip if the blade isn't cut cleanly and twists on the cutting board, for example.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have German knives where they are not as hard, which makes the edge more durable to abuse but prone to losing it's sharpness faster.
In addition, eastern knives are often ground to a finer angle of like 10 to 12 degrees, while western knives are more blunt at 15 or even 20 degrees. A finer edge is by definition thinner, so combine that with higher hardness and you have a blade that can be seen as fragile to people that don't know better or are not as careful. On the other hand, it's seen by professionals as superior because they simply cut better and last longer, provided they are cared for.
In the last few years, there have been a huge number of “Japanese” knives produced in china with questionable quality, which is why I suggested checking the steel. You’re spot on with everything, just wanted to offer context.