Knife Sharpening Tips

As your arm tires while sharpening your blade, it’s tempting to switch to a powered grinding wheel. Most people should avoid that urge. Warranties do not extend to knives that have been sharpened on wheels and damaged. The chance of scratching or chipping your blade goes up. So does friction, and that means your blade will heat up rapidly. Eventually, this could burn the temper from your blade and, in the process, greatly weaken it. That said, if you’re sharpening blades en masse you might have little choice. One of the best ways to approach sharpening blades in this manner is to remove the cover from your bench grinder and flip it around 180 degrees. This way, the wheel will travel upwards, rather than downwards, giving you more control and decreasing the likelihood of a chip in your blade. Be sure to get a wheel with a very slow revolution rate, or outfit it with an “electronic speed controller” available at most hardware stores.