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Simple sharpening tool. Sharpening knives: theory and rules, making sharpeners with your own hands for various purposes

I wanted to learn how to sharpen knives, I won’t say that I didn’t know how to do it at all. He sharpened, of course, with his hands on the stones, and tried to withstand the angle, it seemed to work out - the knives shredded the paper.

I decided to take this process more seriously. And, as usual in Russia, do everything yourself from what is at hand, and even for nothing. We have such fans and I am like that. For such, in fact, the article.

I looked at sharpening machines on the Internet, settled on Apex. First of all, I looked for it on Chinese sites, there are, of course, copies and they were inexpensive (before the dollar exchange rate changed), now Chinese ones are too expensive for us. I looked at how it works, what are the nuances. Yes, it can be repeated.

Making Apex

Looking ahead, I’ll say that it didn’t work out completely for free, I still had to spend money, but not much. About 150 rubles.

Instead of a base, I took a 2 mm galvanized sheet. I bent it by eye (for some reason I guessed exactly 20 grams into the corner). Attached to chipboard. Instantly glued magnets from old hard drives, it took 3 magnets. I looked out for knife stops on the Internet, it’s convenient, it’s a great idea. I found a support for the hinge in the garage, it is threaded 8mm.

At first I thought about changing the angle with nuts, but I decided that the angle changes often and driving the nuts back and forth and locking each time so that there is no play would be inconvenient.

Where can I get a guide for stones? An old bed caught my eye, or rather a back, remember, probably, these were in the years of the USSR. Why not a bar from the back. I attached a square profile 25x25 mm to the bar (preliminarily polished). Remember there curly bushings. With their help (it took three pieces), in one you need to drill a hole up to 11 mm (rod diameter). I added a nut for 10 and a hairpin with a ball from the same bed, I got a comfortable handle.

I decided to sharpen with sandpaper, there is such a method, it seems to be very budgetary and quite good. I bought several sheets of skins of different grain sizes. To avoid sandpaper remnants, I made the length of the square profile along the width of the sandpaper sheet 230 mm. I made a cut on the bar and drove an engraving washer of a suitable size there. Everything came together perfectly, as if it were intended for this.

I was afraid that it would be difficult to center the profile, but in this way, the profile itself fell into place. I glue the sandpaper on the stationery glue pencil.

Hinge for sharpener

I thought for a long time about this knot, how to make it so that there is no backlash. Thought to do it. I drove into a bearing store, it turned out that there are such AL supports (in my opinion, a sliding ball stands for). There are sizes 10, 12, 15 according to the inner diameter of the hole. But the stem is 11 mm. It's hard without a turner. But there was a way out. In the store, across the road, they sold spare parts for KAMAZ trucks, and there I found such a brass bushing for 10mm brake pipes. I bought ShS-12 (65 rubles) and a bushing (8 rubles). At home, I drove the sleeve onto the rod, it expanded remarkably with a hammer, rubbed it a little against the rod, as it was. I inserted it into the loop (with glue, just in case, to eliminate backlash) and flared it. Everything grew together again. There was a small backlash, in the AL itself, it is Russian-made and has a little backlash (I went over a dozen in the store - all of them). I wanted to weld the AL to the fastening nut, but another idea came to my mind how to do without welding. I went to a plumbing store and bought pipe fasteners. It says 3/8” costs 27 rubles. I worked it up a little on sandpaper so that the working angle of the loop would not decrease. Next, with a stud with an 8 mm thread, I connected the clamp to a long nut and drilled a 9 mm hole in the right place of the long nut. The lamb was made from a purchased lamb for 5 rubles. Nuts and studs are the same for 8 mm.

When I assembled it (I clamped the loop into the clamp), the play disappeared, the clamp bolts compress the loop and the play goes away completely. It turned out better than welding. And it is easy to replace during production.

Oddly enough, all the details fell perfectly into place. I had to do a minimum of alterations. There is no backlash. Everything turned out to be very simple, I even made a second rod to polish the cutting edge.

According to the knurled, I spent half an hour on the second barbell. Glued on the edge:

skin for goi paste
clean skin
wooden ruler with goi paste
clean wooden ruler

I use them in different order.

I want to say that the idea was a success, in two days, I sharpened all the knives I could find. Angles can be measured with a household protractor, or a phone with an installed program for measuring angles

Compared to the manual method on stones, sharpening is much easier and sharper. Paper is cut, hair is shaved. I didn’t try to cut my hair, I think it’s excessive sharpness and it’s useless in life, although with due diligence you can achieve it.

Spent:

ShS-12 - 65 rubles;
brass bushing - 8 rubles;
clamp - 27 rubles;
lamb - 5 rubles;
long nut - 5 p.;
a sheet of sandpaper 240 - 2 p.;
a sheet of sandpaper 600 - 2 p.;
a sheet of sandpaper 1000 - 10 rubles;
a sheet of sandpaper 2000 - 10 rubles..

Total: 134 rubles. The rest was found in the garage for free. And plus work with hands and head.

Too lazy to mess around, I found an inexpensive sharpener of the same type, the reviews are good, you can take it.

Also handmade.

Sharp knives for you.

Article tags:

knife sharpening;
knife sharpener;
homemade Apex;
knife sharpener;
sharpening machine.

This article is found by:

sharpener apex homemade sandpaper
DIY knife sharpener
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do-it-yourself apex sharpener
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DIY knife sharpener

Sharpening video.

It is quite difficult to sharpen a knife by hand. It will take some time to develop the habit of maintaining a constant sharpening angle, which is not at all easy. A tool for sharpening knives can make the task easier. There are factory options. But for good copies you have to fork off a couple of hundred dollars, and this is clearly a lot. The good news is that these devices are easy to make with your own hands. Moreover, many home-made knife sharpeners are no worse in functionality than those from eminent manufacturers, but they are many times cheaper.

Knife sharpening basics

Knives have different uses, and there are several of them even in non-ordinary kitchens. There is for slicing bread, other soft foods, there is for cutting meat, chopping bones, and other hard objects. And that's just household items. But there are still those who take hunting and fishing. If you look closely, you will see that they all have a different sharpening angle (this is if they have not been sharpened at home already). It is the sharpening angle that is the most important characteristic, which is determined by the purpose of this blade.

At what angle

The sharpening angle is determined based on the main field of application of a particular blade:

These are general recommendations based on many years of experience. There are, however, options: some blades have several zones with different sharpening. This makes them more versatile, but the complexity of sharpening increases many times over.

It follows from the foregoing that the device for sharpening knives should be able to set the required sharpening angle. And this is the main difficulty in its design and manufacture.

How to sharpen

For sharpening knives, sharpening stones of various grain sizes are used. They are conditionally divided into coarse, medium and small. Why conditionally? Because different countries have their own designation of grit. The most convenient classification is according to the number of grains per unit area. It is expressed in numbers: 300, 600, 1000, etc. Some firms duplicate even English terms. Here is an example division:

In addition to grit, grindstones are also distinguished by origin: they are of natural origin (shale, corundum, etc.), there are ceramic and diamond ones. Which ones are better? It's hard to say - a matter of taste, but natural ones wear off faster and are rarely fine-grained.

Natural ones are soaked in water before use or simply moistened with it. They absorb water and, during sharpening, an abrasive paste is formed on the surface from water and separated abrasive particles, which increases the efficiency of sharpening. For the same purposes, you can use a special little (honing oil) or a mixture of water and soap (whatever you like). In general, with each of the grindstones, you need to try all these options and choose the best one.

The shape of the grindstone for sharpening knives is a bar, and it is desirable that its length be much longer than the length of the blade - it is easier to sharpen. Convenient bars with double grain - on the one hand larger, on the other - smaller. To sharpen knives for general use, it is enough to have two bars with a medium grain (different) and two small ones (one can be very fine).

Manual sharpening procedure

The device for sharpening knives only facilitates the process of pointing the edge, therefore, knowledge of manual sharpening techniques is necessary. Without them, it is impossible to sharpen the knife correctly.

The procedure for sharpening knives is as follows:

On this we can assume that the sharpening of the knife is completed. Some still bring the edge on the old belt. A piece of the belt can be fixed on a wooden block (glued, not nailed), rubbed with goyim paste. Then several times alternately hold one or the other side, but turning the cutting edge back. So the last grooves left by the abrasive are polished and the belt is not “cut” at the same time.

How to make a homemade knife sharpener

All homemade knife sharpeners solve the main problem - they allow you to accurately maintain a given angle of inclination of the bar to the blade, which is very important for obtaining a good cutting edge. There are very simple devices, there are a little more complicated, but they allow you to work with great comfort. Choose to your taste.

One of the options - from improvised means

Simple knife sharpener

In fact, this is a holder for whetstones. Everything is elementary: two triangles of wood, which are connected with studs with “lambs”. A bar is clamped between the corners at the required angle. You can set the angle using a protractor, a special program on your smartphone, or using the rules of trigonometry (right triangle).

Knife sharpener - abrasive holder

When sharpening on such a device, the knife must be kept directed strictly vertically at all times. It's much easier than holding it at a certain angle.

The same idea has a different embodiment: on a reliable basis, make movable holders into which bars are inserted and fixed in the desired position. Corporate prototype in the photo below.

Homemade tool for sharpening knives made of wooden blocks. It turns out that it is light so that it does not move from its place, it must be fixed with something. In order not to hold by hand, you can use clamps.

Swivel holders allow you to set a given angle, and then fix it with the help of "lambs"

Such a device for sharpening knives, of course, facilitates the work, but it is still quite difficult to maintain the angle: you must constantly control the verticality of the blade. Such a habit develops over time, but it is difficult to start.

Fittings on wheels

An interesting variant of a manual knife sharpener with a fixed bar and a trolley on wheels, on which the knife is fixed. It is made on the basis of sharpeners for knives, chisels and planes. With a knife, such a device also works well, but you need to adapt to sharpening the rounded edge.

In this version, as in manual sharpening, the bar is stationary, and the blade of the knife, mounted on a movable cart, moves. The angle is set by the height of the bar relative to the platform on which the blade is attached. The peculiarity of this device is that the table must be level. It can be a countertop made of natural stone, you can put glass on a regular table.

In the embodiment presented above, the angle changes slightly, which is usually sufficient for sharpening the same type of kitchen knives, for example. If necessary, the design can be improved by adding holders (pictured below).

All this is implemented very simply, as it resembles an ordinary constructor: strips, there are holes in them, everything is assembled on bolts and screws.

To ensure the immobility of the bar, there is also a device.

The advantage of this whole design is that it is easy to unfold the knife while maintaining perpendicularity in the rounded area, and it is also very easy to process on the other side: you need to turn the trolley over. For this, four pairs of wheels are made.

Homemade manual knife sharpening machine

Slightly more complex and much more convenient home-made devices, which are made on the basis of well-known branded devices. They have an adjustable platform on which the knife is fixed. The site is set at a given angle. The bar is mounted on a movable bar attached to the rack.

Do-it-yourself devices somewhat repeat the design presented above, but there are some differences. There are many options. Let's bring some.

Option one: a fixed platform on which the blade is fixed

This fixture is made from the remnants of a laminate (can be used), two steel rods with a diameter of 8 mm and a movable mount.

This design has a fixed base, to which a platform with a knife lock is attached on ordinary hinges. The near edge of the platform can be raised at some angle convenient for work. But other than that, she's immobile.

On a vertically mounted steel bar, there is a movably mounted latch in which a loop is attached to the side. A rod is inserted into it, on which a bar is fixed. This loop is a simple, but not the best solution: there is no rigid fixation, which means that the corner will “walk”.

Particular attention should be paid to the latch of the bar. Emphasis is placed on the rod at some distance from the edge (about 30-35 cm). This will be the fixed anchor. The second is made movable, it is fixed after installing the bar with a screw and a thread cut into the body of the holder. The second option is to cut a thread on the rod and press the installed bar with a nut.

Knife holder - one or two steel plates fixed on a movable platform. They are fixed movably - with the help of screws and "lambs". After loosening the fasteners, insert the knife blade, clamp it. It is very difficult to move it. Then, having installed a hairpin with a fixed bar in the loop, its height is adjusted so that the required angle is set.

You can, as in the photo, make templates with the desired angles and achieve the coincidence of the planes. After the transverse bar is fixed, you can work - hold the bar in the right direction.

This tool for sharpening knives works well, but you can only move the abrasive along the blade when sharpening a kitchen knife. Classic sharpening - movement perpendicular to the cutting edge. On the straight part of the blade, this can be achieved. If the blade is short, it will be almost perpendicular, but on the rounded part on the fixed holder, this cannot be done. And all such devices "suffer" from this shortcoming. Once again, they are a great option for sharpening kitchen knives (below is another good option from the same series).

Option two: with a movable platform and a magnetic holder

In this version of a homemade knife sharpener, the problem of previous sharpening is solved. Here the frame remains motionless, which sets the angle of movement of the bar. The bar holder moves freely along the guide, set at the desired angle. The knife is mounted on a movable table. You can, as in the presented version, make a magnetic holder, you can - the usual one from a metal plate and “lambs”. Move the table so that the movement of the abrasive is perpendicular. Actually, everything is in the video.

One clarification: in this case it is very important that the surface on which the table with the fixed knife moves is horizontal and even. You can put glass or use a polymer countertop (marble will do too).

Sharpening knives is a process that even delicate female hands can handle. Indeed, in our time there are many devices that facilitate this task. Ceramic knives, for example, do not require sharpening, which is very convenient, while steel knives require periodic sharpening, as the material becomes dull. To sharpen the knives, you can use abrasive-coated whetstones or a knife sharpening machine.

Whetstone.
Files with a special notch.
Sharpening devices.
Machines for sharpening knives.

Note.

Sharpening knives the old fashioned way is certainly a good and effective way, but a finely tuned machine for domestic use gives a better result with the right angle of blade edge formation.

Rules for sharpening knives

Experts recommend following a number of rules in order to get high-quality knife sharpening at home, which in turn will reduce the number of blade sharpenings.

If you are a supporter of using a bar with an abrasive coating, start with the sharpest part of the blade, and finish with the blunter one, namely the one that is little involved in the process of cutting food. Often the process starts from the middle, moving towards the edge of the blade with a slight turn. The shape of the knife and its thickness affects the angle of sharpening the blade. The sharpening machine for kitchen knives performs turning at an angle of 25 °, the blade is tilted over the bar by 12 - 13 °.

The type of sharpening machine for thicknesser knives and the material from which it is made also affects the quality of the work.

On various Internet resources, you can find special video clips that clearly show the process of sharpening a knife blade.

Note.

The production of knives comes mainly from alloy and carbon steel. Hardened steel must be sharpened with a bar with an abrasive, stainless steel with a trihedral file. This is due to the fact that relatively soft metals, in the process of sharpening, forget the surface of the bar with an abrasive. The forged blade is quite flexible, so it is advisable to fix it and sharpen it with a bar with casual movements. The frequent use of abrasive stones contributes to the formation of a greasy film on the surface, which must be rubbed by roughing.

Previously, bench grinders for knives were made from wedge-shaped bars and oak. The bars were placed on both sides of the wooden blade, so that the cutting edge was free. The structure was pulled with a rope and, with the help of a grindstone, the blades were sharpened to the utmost sharpness, while obtaining an excellent sharpening angle.

Sharpening knives that are used in planers is performed as follows: on glass of great thickness, emery cloth with a fine fraction is applied, the beveled part of the cutting edge is applied to the abrasive and sharpened in a circle.

Sharpening knives at home

For this purpose, you will need to take a block of hardwood, the surface of which is formed by sharpening at a certain angle, necessary to form the edge of the blade. This makes it possible to keep the angle of the processed edge. For the convenience of sharpening the blade, fix the blade in the plane of the bar with self-tapping screws.

Grinding machine for jointer knives make a tool with your own hands, this will make it possible to make the process easier, and the quality of work is much higher. The main thing is to follow the rules and nuances in the work, and there will be no problems.

A do-it-yourself knife sharpening machine is designed to facilitate the work with metal products. You can sharpen a home tool with your own hands using improvised means, and you can’t do without a machine in production. There are more volumes and more serious tools.

Professional knife sharpeners

The sharpest tool is considered a boning or carving knife.

This is used by butchers for cutting animal carcasses, and cutting skins. With such intensive work, the tool blade becomes dull extremely quickly. If the amount of work is not too large, sharpening can be done on a conventional machine, which is equipped with control over the angle of the edge of the blade. Knife sharpeners in the meat processing industry mainly use KNECHT USK 160. Such machines are universal, so absolutely any knives can be sharpened on them.

At the enterprises engaged in woodworking and in carpentry shops, equipment is installed that can cope with large volumes of work. It uses a tool that has jointers with long blades, as well as planers. Metal sharpening takes place on equipment with a mechanical drive, which feeds the tool for sharpening.

When trying to sharpen the tool yourself using a grinding bowl

... without using fixation and guides, then zones with a different sharpening angle will form on the blade. When processing wood with a poorly sharpened tool, you will get an uneven cut and a wavy surface. The sharpening machine for flat knives has a simple vertical design. Discs are sharpened on machines with a divider and a rotary table.

Universal sharpening machine for knives

This type of equipment is best suited for enterprises that perform large amounts of work per day. No one will manually fiddle with metal, since this is hard work. The desktop machine VZ-319 is equipped with a rigid frame and precisely fitted mechanical drive. Therefore, it copes with sharpening any type of tool - planers, milling cutters, knives, etc.

For domestic use, the Tormek T7 model is suitable. The equipment of this unit is large, there are many nozzles and additional elements for sharpening kitchen knives, scissors and other tools.

Making a sharpening machine for knives with your own hands

Making a sharpening machine for knives for domestic use is quite simple, for this you will need a piece, or, a wooden rail, sandpaper, and wing bolts. The first step is to make a knife holder, for this purpose cut a piece of material. To prevent the bar from catching on the holder, you need to clean the edge at a certain angle with emery. On a vertical stand, make markings and cut off the top, this will serve as the basis for. The angle is set to half that required for sharpening the blade.

For household knives, the angle is 10 - 15 °. To facilitate the construction of a knife sharpening machine, make a drawing, so it will be much easier for you. Take into account the fact that the height is affected by the transverse base. At the final stage, all elements need to be cut and sanded. Then, you need to make holes for the bolts in the plate, which will fix the blade. When marking, determine the distance of the holes from the edge of the base. This will allow you to sharpen blades of different thicknesses.

In the next step, the plate must be fixed using bolts. Racks of a vertical position are fixed with screws. It is important to remember that the pressure force on the bottom is small, so thermal glue can be used to fix the elements. The horizontal bar is fixed in the same way.

To make a bar, you need to cut a rail of a certain length. An sandpaper with a sufficient fraction of abrasive particles is attached to one edge. In order to achieve a better result in the work, you can make more bars with different abrasives. P600 - P2000 is considered a good grit range.

Note.

In order to protect your hands from injury when sharpening a tool, screw a handle onto the top of the rail. Thus, you will get a machine for home use with good functional qualities.

In the process of sharpening knives, the device receives support on the table, which in turn facilitates work with it.

I keep sharpening my knife. I have already shown my homemade device for making descents (tapering blade surfaces). At the same time, I made a polishing disc, stitching several discs together so that they do not diverge. Next, the task was to sharpen the knife - to make cutting edges that form the cutting edge.

An attempt to sharpen with a bar did not give the result I needed, because the metal of the blade is hard and it takes a long time to sharpen. Therefore, I decided to make a homemade device, similar to the one I did to form the descents.

The main part of the fixture - the corner - I set at the point where the surface of the grinding wheel is at an angle of 75 degrees to the vertical line. I used a regular corner, making a hole in the central part. I aligned the corners at 90 degrees so that the existing small semicircle does not interfere with work. I drilled a hole in the center for a 16 bolt. A nut in the form of a clamp is welded to the bolt. A channel is installed below, the bolt and nut presses the structure by 12.

The two nuts on the top bolt can raise or lower the fixture. When ascending, the sharpening angle will be greater, when descending - sharper (smaller). With the help of a clamp, the fixture can be moved towards the disc (for example, when the disc is being ground) or moved away from it.
The design can be simplified and put one long bolt to immediately make descents or, lifting it higher, sharpen the knife to the desired angle.

The cutting edges are very smooth, as if made on a milling machine. If you correct the edges on a small bar, the knife will be razor sharp. It turns out almost perfect sharpening. The advantage of this device is a very simple design that can be assembled from improvised materials.

With repeated use of knives, every housewife is faced with a problem when they begin to become dull and it becomes simply impossible to work with them. In addition, it is unsafe, as the knife may slip off while cutting and injure you. To prevent this from happening, the knives should be sharpened in a timely manner using a special sharpening device.

You can purchase a knife sharpener from your local hardware store or market, where you can find different types of devices. You will have to choose on your own. But, in order not to be mistaken, you need to know how to properly evaluate them in terms of convenience and quality of operation.

The options offered do not always suit consumers, so many make sharpeners with their own hands, using special stones, tools and drawing sketches with dimensions. The photo shows options for homemade knife sharpeners.

Features of knife sharpening

When sharpening knives, the main thing is to make the correct angle of contact of the edges of the blades so that they serve you for a long time and efficiently. Therefore, when sharpening knives yourself, it is necessary to maintain the existing angle of inclination of the blades.

Each knife blade has its own optimal angles of inclination:

from 10 to 15 degrees - for a medical scalpel or straight razor;
from 15 to 20 degrees - for household knives used for cutting bread, vegetables or fruits;
from 20 to 25 degrees - for multifunctional knives for cutting a variety of products;
from 25 to 30 degrees - for reliable companions of hunters and tourists on long trips;
from 30 to 40 degrees - for cutting materials that are particularly hard.

To sharpen the correct angle of the blade, you will need special tools, since it is difficult to do this manually.

The design of such devices is not complicated, so it is easy and quick to make it yourself, and detailed instructions for making sharpeners can be borrowed from the Internet.

Types of knife sharpeners

From a rather large assortment of various types of knife sharpeners, choosing the right option for yourself is quite simple.

The main elements of the grinding device are the stop for fixing the knife and the abrasive bar, which is used as ready-made abrasive materials (stones) or homemade. But before you get to work, you need to learn how to make a knife sharpener with your own hands.

Types of stones for sharpening

There are several types of grindstones:

water. Sharpening stones used in water wear out less during operation.
oil. In structure and configuration, they are similar to water ones, but with a more oily surface.
natural. For their manufacture, only natural raw materials are used with preliminary processing in the production process.
artificial. In this case, the name speaks for itself, that is, the abrasive material is created artificially.
rubber. They are not as common as the previous ones, besides, they are inconvenient in the process of application.

What can you make a sharpener for sharpening

To make a whetstone with your own hands, you can use the simplest way. Take a small rectangular glass plate about 5 mm thick. Using double-sided tape, fix strips of coarse and medium grit sandpaper on both sides of it.

The bar is ready for use, if necessary, worn sandpaper can be easily replaced with a new one. This method is the most budgetary in terms of cost.

The disadvantages of this device include:

rapid wear of the abrasive and fragility of the product (when fixing the beam, you need to be careful that the glass does not crack).
possible overheating of the material during rapid movements during the sharpening process.

You can find the best knife sharpener ideas on the relevant websites.

Wooden bars

This method of making a tool for sharpening knives is also simple and accessible to everyone. You will need four identical bars: two abrasive and two wooden.

At the beginning of work, sand the wood blocks with sandpaper so that their surface becomes smooth without burrs. Make a marking of the bar in accordance with the required angle of inclination. Attach a whetstone and mark its width on a block of wood.

Note!

Make 1.5 cm deep cuts on the basting and insert the abrasives into the grooves. Secure the stones with bolts. A piece of rubber fixed at the bottom will give stability to the structure.