Bolster reduction

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GorillaGrunt

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I have some older European knives that I used before I started learning about knives. They are not bad knives for home use, and they were great to learn how to sharpen, but they are now to the point where due to the use of pull-through sharpeners and excessive steeling over the years, the full bolster finger guards need to be reduced.

I have three carbon Sabatier Thiers-Issard (**** Elephant) knives from the 1970s, a 10" chef, 5" utility, and 3" sheepsfoot parer, and three stainless Wusthof Classic from the 1990s, an 8" chef, 9" slicer, and 6" utility. I'm not terribly worried about doing the Sabs because the relevant piece of metal is rather thin (under 1/8") but the Wusthofs intimidate me a little bit since the steel to be removed is about 1/4" in each dimension.

I've never done this before, or really any metalworking at all, but I've pretty much made up my mind to do it myself. I don't have a belt grinder and I know a bench grinder is the wrong tool for the job; opinions seem to be split on the use of a Dremel tool, but I have plenty of files. Based on the threads I've seen on this and other sites, I'm thinking I'll wrap the blade in tape, secure it in a padded vise, and use a medium coarse file to remove the majority of the metal, then use a finer file to get the shape pretty close, maybe sand a little bit, then use my stones to match the bevels and sharpen.

It seems that I'll have to do some reprofiling too - should I get a sub-1k stone for that or can I use a 1k? Currently for the big knives the height off the board at the worst point is around 1mm, just enough to look and say, "oh, yeah, that's not right" but with a significant impact on chopping food unless I hang the heel of the knife off the edge of the board.

Are there any big omissions or pitfalls in my plan, or other things I should know before I try to imitate what I've seen online? What are your opinions on the Dremel?

The thing a lot of people seem to do, and the way I'd try to do it in a vacuum, is remove the entire finger guard. I'm not going to do that because I am not the only person who uses these knives so I don't want to change the balance point too much or create a sharp pointy heel that nobody else here is used to using.

Thanks for your help!
 
The good old carbon Sabatiers tend to have rather narrow finger guards and the steel is not very abrasion resistant. See what BDL writes about it.
http://www.cookfoodgood.com/?p=351
Very different situation with modern German stainless.
Very thick finger guards and very abrasion resistant.
Next complication: when the blades have been a bit neglected, not just the heel will be protruding but the blade will show a reverse belly, which will necessitate an entire profile correction, including some belly reduction to have the edge touch the board over its entire length.
 
Most files are just too soft. I use automotive sand'paper' with a linen backing, starting @P120. Or, when a small adjustment will suffice, a 400 or 220 stone.
I never used a powered equipment, but with these huge stainless finger guards that seems unavoidable. I wouldn't try it for myself.
 
Tonight I did the paring knife and the Sabatier utility. What I failed to notice was that the smaller knives had receded more than the larger ones; the 10" is about 1mm off the board and the 8" less, but the 5" utility needed to be taken down over 1/8". The tool I forgot to mention that turned out to be most helpful was the 140 grit Atoma plate. I first tried the method I described, using a file and vise, to do the small one along the lines of the BDL post. This was not a good approach; all my flat files are too wide and then I slipped and gouged the blade with a triangular file.

It seems that just reducing the finger guard is much simpler than reprofiling the blade and sharpening the new portion, at least for me, at least at this point. For the utility, I used my Atoma plate to grind the finger guard down, grind the rear half inch or so of the blade up, and make a sharpenable edge on the "new" part. Of course these have never been thinned, so there was some work to do after bringing the heel up so far. Then I sharpened on my 1k and 6k and it's ... ok. It looks like a Sabatier again instead of a piece of junk, but it still needs work. Next I'm going to try the small stainless with the Atoma and see what happens.

I have to further correct the profiles on both knives: the utility still has a high spot and a low spot and the point needs some adjustment, but I feel like I'm headed in the right direction. I got my medium and fine stones to maintain my new knives, but if I'm going to be working on old or dull ones and changing profiles should I get something in the 300-500 range? Any recommendations? Shapton glass gets mentioned a lot, as do Beston and Gesshin; anyone have thoughts on these?
 
I beg to differ about files being too soft. Most metal files I've used, (even inexpensive ones) are hardened more than enough to take down those bolsters. I do it all the time on both carbon and stainless knives, (coincidentally on both Wustoff stainless and my own Thiers Issard carbons) for paying customers and they're always happy. Just be careful about not getting too carried away when you're close to getting flush with the blade face to avoid scratching it? (Guess how I know that!).
 
Well, I finished up on these yesterday. I would have taken "before" and "after" pictures but I didn't think the difference would be dramatic enough or the results nice enough to warrant it. I found the BDL post referenced above very helpful, as well as this thread:

http://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/showthread.php/29706-fixing-a-knife-with-a-quot-frown-quot

and Benuser's recommendation to use sandpaper. I found some small flat saw sharpening files and used those, as well as the Atoma 140 plate, some 150 grit sandpaper on a piece of wood, and my 1k stone. The tricky part (of course) was figuring out which to use and when to switch. None of these tools had any problem abrading the stainless; it may have taken me longer than it could have but it was almost certainly best for me to proceed slowly and carefully anyhow.

I was able to fix the gouge I put in the 3" carbon, put new points on the two utility knives for which this thread:

http://www.cheftalk.com/t/64048/tip-of-knife-chipped-off

proved helpful (I used the sandpaper for those), and get the two chef knives and slicer to sit flat on the board again. They look a little amateurish but not crude or rough, and ultimately I sought to restore function above all.
 
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