tips for first mod attempt?

[Amon-Rukh]

Hi all,

I inherited this Hoffritz chef's knife from my Grandma a few years back and it has since become one of my wife's favorite knives. (It's a bit heavy and thick for my taste, but the profile is nice.) It's in pretty decent condition overall but I thought it would be cool to spruce it up a bit.

Two of the things that need to be done will be fixing the spine and the heel:

Sorry for the lousy cell phone pics there. As you can (hopefully) see, the spine has some divots and dings in it; I was planning on rounding the spine anyway, so hopefully that will take care of these in the process. Is there anything in particular I should look out for while doing that though?
As for the heel, there's the issue of that giant honking bolster. Any advice on what to do here? What's the best way to tackle that thing?

I also want to thin the blade and maybe work with my dad who likes woodworking to see about replacing those handle scales. But that will have to wait for later! irate1:

Anyhow, thanks for having a look and for any help!

 

[Eamon Burke]

What are you wanting to do with the heel? Raise it up a bit to make it land flat?

 

[Pensacola Tiger]

If you are ambitious, remove the finger guard as shown in this thread at FF (he calls it a bolster):

Good bye bolster!

Otherwise, grind off the "hump" on a DMT diamond plate, angling it to provide enough clearance to allow repeat sharpenings without having to grind the finger guard each time, like this Sabatier:

In your case, you'll have to re-establish the geometry of the heel, as well, after you remove the "hump".

Rick

 

[oivind_dahle]

Agree with Rick!

 

[chinacats]

If you are ambitious, remove the finger guard as shown in this thread at FF (he calls it a bolster):

Good bye bolster!

Otherwise, grind off the "hump" on a DMT diamond plate, angling it to provide enough clearance to allow repeat sharpenings without having to grind the finger guard each time, like this Sabatier:

In your case, you'll have to re-establish the geometry of the heel, as well, after you remove the "hump".

Rick

I need to work on my Sab to make it look like that...big improvement over my monster finger guard/heel...very nicely done.

chinacats