Fixing a chipped tip

Find deals on amazon
Kitchen Knife Forums

Help Support Kitchen Knife Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
C

CoqaVin

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 10, 2013
Messages
1,579
Reaction score
1
I am sure this has been discussed before, but I can't seem to find it through the glorious search tool, I left my knife on the line at work and someone knocked it down or maybe even myself, I can't seem to remember, anyways it ended up having a bent tip, so I went at it on the stones and thought I could just fix it that way, as I was successful doing this before. But it must have been a lot worse or something, when I sharpened out the bent tip, I ended up noticing that the tip was no just fatigued steel, and now it is just a chipped tip. What is the best way of going about this, I do not have a super coarse stone, since I am into naturals, any stone suggestions as well as techniques would be greatly appreciated. THANKS!
 
Diamond plate from the spine down until the chip is almost gone to where one quick sharpening will bring the edge up to make it whole again. No diamond plate? Sidewalk.
 
Or cinderblock!

14609612089_aecdf9fc31.jpg


8499155354_b6722122c3.jpg
 
ThEoRy said:
Diamond plate from the spine down until the chip is almost gone to where one quick sharpening will bring the edge up to make it whole again. No diamond plate? Sidewalk.
Click to expand...

really? I saw this on youtube with a cheapo knife, but I wasn't sure if I should do it with a more expensive knife
 
Mucho Bocho said:
Talk about nails on a chalk board. It must feel and sound torturous grinding a hard steel on a coarse concrete block.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Not pleasant.

vai777 said:
What in the hell happened there?
Click to expand...

It came to me in this condition so I don't really know....I'd guess it's a combination of "chippy shun," hard plastic cutting board, and abuse. Except for that chip that appeared on the polishing stone, I was quite happy with the product.

For the OP: this was the first time I did anything like this...so I'm sure you can fix yours too!
 
Zwiefel said:
Yeah. Not pleasant.



It came to me in this condition so I don't really know....I'd guess it's a combination of "chippy shun," hard plastic cutting board, and abuse. Except for that chip that appeared on the polishing stone, I was quite happy with the product.

For the OP: this was the first time I did anything like this...so I'm sure you can fix yours too!
Click to expand...

Yeah that is pretty insane... I have a shun santoku and it gets beat... the wife uses it... never got a chip ever. That thing looks like it was used to hack bone.
 
Removing the chips is straightforward, thinning the edge is the tricky part.
 
that shun reminds me of my old bosses, he used to literally beat the hell out of the thing, threw it everywhere and put it through dish multiple times a day, thing looked like the rocky mountains, and was a great example to me of how chippy VG10 shuns can be.
 
panda said:
knives get 'chippy' because of user error, not because they are inherently brittle steels.
Click to expand...

I think a combination of user error and poor heat treatment, no? That was my understanding about the Shuns anyway, hardened beyond the sweet spot for the steel.
 
Looks like a chippy old Sun. I got my 8 inch classic kind of uneven from my early days of inexperienced sharpening. Now it's got a huge fat convex that helps support the edge better. Despite the hideous bevels it draw cuts soft tomatoes better than some of my more expensive knives. That cinderblock puts my atoma to shame :) That was a great repair job and those bevels OMG...very nice.
 
i've dealt with plenty of shuns, they are not that chippy. their only downfall (if it applies to you) is it feels gross on the stones, and that deep belly profile, yuck.
 
Yeah that big Shun belly almost took a finger off last week :) I didn't want to wipe a carbon knife so I grabbed the old shun and rock chopped...wow that belly was so big the knife slid out from under me and sliced my finger...a good little clean cut.
 
panda said:
knives get 'chippy' because of user error, not because they are inherently brittle steels.
Click to expand...

I agree, sharpened up a guys shuns that were badly chipped like Zwiefel's knife. After repair used them a while, all kinds of cuts including chopping no chips at all. I kept a small slicer 160mm as payment. It had been chipped all along the blade. I use it to carve up & go between the joints of Costco roasted chickens, again no chipping at all.

Shuns are sold everywhere, most people who buy them know nothing of knife care. It is not like someone buying a Carter. They throw them around banging the edges into hard objects. Most come from German panzer soft steel bloc sets. I sharpened a lot of these too with dents & broken tips. The Shuns don't stand a chance.
 
keithsaltydog said:
I agree, sharpened up a guys shuns that were badly chipped like Zwiefel's knife. After repair used them a while, all kinds of cuts including chopping no chips at all. I kept a small slicer 160mm as payment. It had been chipped all along the blade. I use it to carve up & go between the joints of Costco roasted chickens, again no chipping at all.

Shuns are sold everywhere, most people who buy them know nothing of knife care. It is not like someone buying a Carter. They throw them around banging the edges into hard objects. Most come from German panzer soft steel bloc sets. I sharpened a lot of these too with dents & broken tips. The Shuns don't stand a chance.
Click to expand...

The above is my only experience...maybe we are seeing a disproportionate number of users with poor habits on those knives rather than poor quality heat-treat. :dontknow:
 
Just my experience, I sharpen a fair amount of soft stainless (mostly on diamond plate)finish on 1K stone & leather strop. The Vg-10 Shuns seem easy in comparison to sharpen. I do most of burr removal on the stone & strop a couple times on newspaper, no problem with burr removal on VG-10. I find that AEB-L is even better to sharpen almost like carbon. Also like the way the Carbonext & Gesshin Ginga take to the stones. Have little experience sharpening very expensive stainless, since it does not come my way ,my better knives are all carbon steel.

They make tons of shuns I would think that they go through a very specific Heat-freeze-lower heat again process. Even Cutco's have a quality heat treatment. The only thing I can think of besides abuse is perhaps because of the large quantity the edge steel is fatigued in the final edge work & has to be removed to get to the good steel. This is pure speculation only a guess. I have had that happen with a stainless Japanese small cleaver.
 
when i see a knife with as much damage as the one zwiefel repaired, the first thing that pops into my head is people trying to cut frozen stuff with bones. you use a knife with a 'good heat treat' doing the same thing, i guarantee you the damage will be just the same if not worse.
 
OP: sorry, I seem to have totally threadjacked you.

Strangely, I got a note from the owner of that knife a couple of days ago asking if I could fix it again, "it's almost as bad as before." <sigh>

panda said:
when i see a knife with as much damage as the one zwiefel repaired, the first thing that pops into my head is people trying to cut frozen stuff with bones. you use a knife with a 'good heat treat' doing the same thing, i guarantee you the damage will be just the same if not worse.
Click to expand...
 
That would not be the worst advice they received that day. :)

Unfortunately they were a gift from her father...so rather unlikely. I will offer some usage advice though. In any case, I enjoy doing the work.

panda said:
tell them to trade in for a henckels
Click to expand...
 
Zwiefel said:
OP: sorry, I seem to have totally threadjacked you.

Strangely, I got a note from the owner of that knife a couple of days ago asking if I could fix it again, "it's almost as bad as before." <sigh>
Click to expand...

At this rate it will become a petty, give the person the facts about knife care
 
Any reason why you would not use just a flat file to remove all the metal? Why are you so keen on diamond plates, sidewalk and cinderblocks?
 
krx927 said:
Any reason why you would not use just a flat file to remove all the metal? Why are you so keen on diamond plates, sidewalk and cinderblocks?
Click to expand...

you would ruin the file, a file is used to file iron not hardened steel

i prefer a diamondfile in this case to do the shaping and then finish on the stones
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Back
Top