Knife repair - chips, tips and bends

 

We are masters at knife repair. Minor repairs are free as part of our service. Larger repairs cost up to $10 per knife (see details below). We specialize in bringing knives back to life after years of continued use. 

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The main benefits of knife repair are:

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• Cheaper - a fully usable knife for a fraction of the cost of a new knife.

• Less waste - a recycled knife rather than a knife in a landfill.

• Safer - a recreated tip is much safer than a broken-off tip.

• More fun - a smooth edge without bends or chips, which is safer and more fun to use.

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Chip repair

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Chips in a blade vary vastly and can, for example, be caused by cutting into something hard, or when the blade is mistreated. Chip repair is often necessary for knives with higher carbon steel or ceramic knives. A knife may be manufactured from varying qualities of steel. If the blade chips, the only way to repair the blade is to reduce the height of the blade, and create a new edge. 

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Broken Tips

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We can create a new tip for your blade. When we recreate the point of the knife we will have to grind down metal from the existing blade to form a new tip.The new point will begin where the old tip broke off. That means your knife will always be slightly shorter than before the tip was broken off. We will choose the repair that is most suitable for your knife. If you have a preferred way of repair, please get in touch.

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Generally, a new tip can be created in two ways:

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For most tip repairs we create a new tip by changing the curvature of the top edge of your blade. The end of the top edge will bend down to create a new point and more of the original edge of the blade remains.

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Alternatively we will keep the upper edge of the blade intact and recreate the curvature and ‘belly’ of the blade on the remaining length of metal. Your knife will basically look like a slightly shrunk version of the original.

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Bent blades and tips

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Bent blades and tips can also be repaired in some cases. If the tip of the blade is extremely bent, we might have to cut a new tip (see 'Broken tips' above).

 

Highly flexible knives such as fillet knives are impossible to straighten (see what we do not repair below), but many knives will become true again.

 

Strongly bent blades might never fully go back to being 100% straight, but they will be fully usable again. The repair of bent knives might result in slight hammer marks on the blade. Small bends in the tip or blade will be repaired for free.

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Bent and twisted edges

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We frequently receive knives that have been misused. These knives have bent or twisted segments in the cutting edge of the blade that render them useless. These twists can be ground down to create a new straight edge again. The process of this repair is similar to a chip repair, but it is more difficult to know exactly how much metal needs to be removed until only the straight true blade remains. As with chip repairs, the blade will be reduced in height as a result of the repair (see chip repair above).

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Charges

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To make our service as easy as possible, we do not charge for knife repair upfront. If you send us damaged knives, our knife smiths will assess the damage, and we will contact you prior to any repair. Most minor repairs are included in the sharpening service, and we do not charge for them.

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More time consuming repairs are charged per blade; ie a knife that has a broken tip and chips will only be charged as one repair. If you decline having your knife repaired, we can either return it unsharpened with a refund for the sharpening charge, or sharpen the knife as is. 99% of repairs are charged at $5 per blade. Extreme cases cost up to $10.

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What we do not fix

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• Knife handles: we specialize in knife sharpening and blade repair only.

• Bends in highly flexible blades such as filet knives or slicers.

• Twisted blades where the twist is along the vertical axis of the blade.

• Scissor repair - bigger chips in the blade or misalignment of the blades.

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