Do-it-yourself knife sharpener - a master class on how to make it yourself, choosing materials and tools for creating at home

The duration of high-quality cutting of the knife tip is directly dependent on the methods of operation and methods of sharpening the blade. Yes, there are self-sharpening options, but in 90% of cases such a name is more of a marketing ploy than reality.

In today's article we will tell you how to make a sharpener with your own hands. Drawings with instructions will be included, and therefore, even beginners in handling garage equipment should not have any difficulties in assembling the device.

What to do with dull knives?

If there are no problems with knives with replaceable blades (naturally, if these same blades are present), then a knife with a sharpened blade must be periodically sharpened. Typically, a special knife sharpening device is used for this.

Buying this now is not difficult. But not everyone prefers this solution to the problem. And the point here is not only the considerable cost of such devices. High-quality sharpeners cost a lot of money.

Many craftsmen will get great pleasure from a machine designed for sharpening knives, made by themselves. Although, even using an ordinary “bare” block, of course, you can sharpen knives with your own hands, but in order to sharpen a knife efficiently using only a whetstone, also known as a “block”, you need to have a certain skill and “steady” hands, because you will need to maintain the sharpening angle identical along the entire cutting edge, and this is not the easiest task. A special sharpener for knives is designed to make it easier, be it factory-made or made with your own hands.

But just to speed up sharpening, any sharpener, both factory-made and home-made, will help.

Sharpener cover

You can create a lid to cover the stone. You just need to measure the protruding part of the stone. The depth of the lid (the height of the walls) should be 1-2 mm less than the protrusion of the stone from the box.

With this approach, it will actually be possible to cover the sharpening stone with a lid without disturbing the sealing area. This is an important point to consider when doing important work.

• The lid is nailed together using thin nails. You can use plywood. It needs to be polished.
• Usually done with fine-grained sandpaper. The lid needs to be well treated to avoid splinters.

It's better to coat it with varnish. There is no need to feel sorry for it, but it is important to distribute it evenly. You can use 2 brushes for this.

One of them is soft for basic application, and the other should have hard hairs in order to go through difficult areas with its help. Everything should work out, because the work is simple. Just make sure that the varnish is evenly distributed.

What are the differences between abrasive stones?

Sharpening stones come in a variety of shapes, bar sizes, and grain sizes. The optimal size of the bar is considered to be one in which its length exceeds the length of the blade of the knife being sharpened by at least one and a half times. This allows you to work with such a bar much more comfortably than with a bar that does not meet this simple requirement.

As mentioned earlier, sharpening stones can have not only different sizes, but also very different grain sizes. There are five main levels of grain size for such bars:

• Grain size 200-300 Extra coarse. In English called Extra coarse. Such bars are not used for sharpening tool blades and knives in particular;
• Grain size 300-350 Coarse grain. In English called Coarse. With the help of such bars, damaged or very dull blades are sharpened;
• Grain size 400-500 Medium grain. In English called Medium. You can do without such a block in the household;
• Grain size 600-700 Fine grain. Called Fine in English, these whetstones are the most popular for sharpening tool blades in the home workshop.
• Grain size 1000-1200 Very fine. In English called Ultra fine. These bars are used for final processing of blades that need to be brought to a shine. Such bars can be used as a tool for a homemade knife sharpener.

Main types of homemade devices

The main condition for homemade knife blades is not to distort the angle between the edges of the blades specified in production. It is not easy to hold it by hand without a trained hand and skill.

The device fixes the sharpening angle, so sharpening a knife with a special tool is much easier than with a whetstone.

The simplest and most popular sharpeners are listed below, each of which you can make yourself:

1. Selecting a quality stone. If you have a sharpening stone in the shape of a roof with two slopes, you can easily restore the sharpness of a dull instrument. This “house” is easy to work with: the blade is attached to one roof slope, and its other side is sharpened with an abrasive stone, making horizontal movements. Then the knife is turned over and the second surface of the blade is processed. The convenience and effectiveness of the method is that you do not need to maintain the angle between the blades with your hands; it is fixed by the shape and angle of the bar.
2. A simple home sharpening device can be made from two wooden triangles.
   They are placed parallel to each other and connected with wing screws. The sharpening stone is fixed between wooden supports at an angle, which can be changed if desired. The required inclination of the abrasive can be easily set using a protractor or a program on a tablet. Knife sharpener diagram. When processing blades on triangles, the knife must be held 100% vertically. If such a design is used for a long time, the ties may weaken and the set degree of the beam will change, and with it the sharpening angle.
3. Instead of vertical triangles, you can make a reliable horizontal base from wood, plastic or metal. It must have movable mechanisms for fixing the sharpening stones. The idea is that it should be possible to set different angles of inclination of the bars. Abrasive stones are inserted into holes in the base and fastened. The knife “walks” vertically. Such a device must be held by hand so that it does not move on the table or secured with clamps.
4. You can make a sharpener from a stable block that is attached to a rolling cart with wheels. The knife is sharpened by moving the hand back and forth. The sharpening angle is determined by the height of the block in relation to the working surface. This device is used for working with kitchen knives and only on a flat plane. It happens that the sharpening angle during movement deviates slightly from the specified one. For greater accuracy, the structure should stand still in place.
5. A more complex device, the manufacture of which will require time and effort, involves not only fixing the beam, but also the ability to adjust its position. The peculiarity of the system is as follows: the knife blade is securely fixed on a horizontal support, the sharpening stone is attached to the guide, and a slotted bar is made on the vertical stand. Thanks to the hole in the vertical support, the guide with a fixed abrasive surface can be moved and the angle of the blade can be adjusted. With this method, maximum accuracy is achieved.

A sharpening (abrasive) bar or stone is a necessary element of any factory or homemade device for sharpening a knife. It is convenient when it has the shape of a rectangle (it should be longer than the blade), it makes it easier to sharpen the tool.

Stones come in different grain sizes: coarse, medium and fine.

It is determined by the number of grains per unit area and is expressed as a number; the smaller it is, the rougher the stone.

To sharpen knives, you will need stones with medium and fine grain.

To sharpen knives, abrasives with a grain size of 200-350 are not used. Such grains can deform the blade. Knives are sharpened on medium-grain whetstones - from 600. After the main processing, the blade is ground and brought to a shine with 1000-1200 grain sandpaper.

A double-sided whetstone, with a rough abrasive surface on one side and a more refined one on the other, is doubly convenient, since it can be used for basic knife sharpening and finishing work.

Stones also differ in the material from which they are made. Natural - from shale and corundum rocks. These stones have a large grain and are quickly ground down because they are moistened with water or oil during operation.

There are diamond and ceramic bars, which are more wear-resistant and will last longer than natural ones.

Why do knives get dull?

In order to ensure long and comfortable work with a knife after sharpening, first of all try to answer the question, “Why do knives become dull?” Why is it necessary to sharpen the knife again some time after sharpening, and sometimes to completely sharpen the knife again?

The reason for the loss of sharpness by the cutting edge of any tool is this: when working, the cutting edge of a knife or any other tool is exposed to the smallest abrasive particles of the material being cut.

Such particles are found in any material, be it stone, wood, or food.

Even soft vegetables and fruits contain such particles. There may just be more or less of them, but they will definitely be there. Their size, sharpness and quantity only determine the speed at which the instrument will become dull.

Lansky sharpener: instructions on how to sharpen and use

There are instructions for the Lansky sharpener, but you need to learn how to use the system:

1. In advance, tape is glued to the middle of the butt of the knife, which will protect the steel from damage and make the fastening more durable.
2. The bolts on the clamp are slightly unscrewed, a blade is inserted between them and tightened again until it stops.
3. The edge of the blade that will be sharpened is drawn with a marker to better see where the stone should move.
4. The corner of the guide rod is inserted into the groove on the bar and clamped with a screw (the lower plane of the bar and the long pin should be located on the same line).
5. The structure itself with the knife already attached is held in the hand, but you can also fix it on the edge of the table.
6. The guide is inserted into the groove of the vertical plane corresponding to the desired sharpening angle.
7. The block is moved along the blade from the base to the tip.

If the knife is very dull, you should first work with a rough stone. As the blade sharpens, you need to change the grit to a finer one, and at the end, sand the edge with the softest stone.

Sharpening angle, what is it?

So, since it is impossible to stop the process of dulling the cutting edge, then at least try to slow it down, and for this you need to sharpen your tool very well. Earlier in this article you have already come across such a concept as the sharpening angle of the cutting edge. And now more about it.

Blade sharpening angles can vary greatly. From an angle of about 10 degrees for razors and scalpels, to an angle of about 50 degrees for various Machete-type knives.

Using replaceable blocks and making a carriage

When making a sharpening carriage, the machine operator performs the following actions:

Welds 30 cm M10 threaded rods with a smooth rod whose thickness is 10 mm;

Uses 2 solid bars 50x80 mm and the thickness is 20 mm. In all blocks, in the center and on top, 20 mm is retreated from the edge, and then a gap is made 10 mm wide;

Screws a wing nut onto the rod, then a large washer and 2 bars, then a nut and washer;

Clamps rectangular sharpening stones between the stones or makes several replaceable sharpening stones.

As a timber base, the machine operator uses a rectangular tube from a profile or a piece of cornice, the width of which is 50 mm;

He sands the flat machine part and cleans it of grease, and glues strips of sandpaper with a grain size of up to 1200 grit using Super Moment glue.

The sandpaper should have a fabric base, and on one of the blocks you need to glue a strip of suede to apply polish to the blades.

What could cause such a significant difference?

The fact is that the sharpening angle depends on what materials the blade is supposed to cut. The smaller the angle, the softer the materials should be and vice versa.

The fact is that a blade with a small sharpening angle will not only be easier to cut, but will also become dull more easily. That is why there is not and cannot be a single universal sharpening angle.

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After reading this article, you will not only learn how to properly sharpen a knife so that it can serve you for a long time until the next sharpening, but also answer your question about how to make such sharpening easier.

To facilitate the correct sharpening of knives, a lot of different tools have been invented, from the simplest devices to the most exotic ones, at a quick glance at which it is not only unclear how to work with them, but it is also difficult to figure out what it is in general.

Recommendation for finishing work

The points outlined above are in many ways the main and almost completely completed work. However, there are some tweaks you can make to ensure that your knife sharpener is great in every way.

• You can coat the box with paint, but it is better to do this before applying varnish. It will also not be superfluous, because it will be able to preserve the paint.
• It is also important to dry everything. There may be some space where the edges of the box end and the stone protrudes.
• It is better to seal it so that moisture does not accumulate.

You just need to have a thin stick (match), with which you can evenly distribute the sealing substance.

The process is very simple, because it is important to ensure that the sealant does not leak beyond the application area. If this happens, you should immediately remove excess from the surface.

What knives can be sharpened?

Not all blades can be sharpened at home, but only blades made from not very hard materials. So, if the hardness of the material from which the blade is made exceeds 55 units on the Rockwell scale (55HRC), then it will not be possible to sharpen it with any tool available to most people. But most of the knives produced now are made of fairly soft materials and such knives are not at all difficult to sharpen.

True, their service life between sharpenings is not long at all.

But no matter what metal the knife is made of, sooner or later it will still have to be sharpened. The only exceptions to this rule are knives with replaceable blades and ceramic knives that cannot be sharpened at all. Thus, a knife sharpening device must be universal, that is, it must be able to sharpen various blades with different sharpening angles.

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Therefore, when creating a device for sharpening knives, it is necessary to provide for the possibility of sharpening blades with different angles, and this is the most difficult task both at the design stage and during the manufacture of such a device.

How to sharpen a knife: main steps and principle of operation

To correctly perform everything for sharpening knives, you should adhere to a certain algorithm for performing actions. To obtain a perfectly smooth and sharp blade, you will need to go through several stages of work, each of which involves the use of different tools:

The process of sharpening knives includes several successive stages

1. Initial processing or regrinding. The sharpening angle changes and gross mechanical damage to the base is eliminated. When using a knife sharpening tool, a significant layer of steel is removed at this stage until a perfectly smooth edge is obtained; a coarse abrasive is suitable for this.
2. Sharpening. It is carried out using medium and high-grained abrasives. If the knife sharpening device is used incorrectly, the tip may become unevenly sharpened.
3. Sanding or finishing. At this stage, even the smallest damage or scratches are eliminated, and the blade becomes evenly sharp.
4. Polishing. A variety of polishing pastes containing various abrasives are used here. The final work is to bring the base to a mirror shine.

Helpful information! Separately from all stages, the straightening process can be carried out, which consists of restoring the position of the side surfaces of the edge, folded to the sides. When performing this type of work, steel is practically not removed from the surface of the knife.

What properties should a sharpener have?

So, before you make a device for sharpening knives with your own hands, you need to think about its design. And to do this, you need to answer the question: what properties should a knife sharpener have:

First, any device for sharpening knives must securely fix the knife, preventing it from falling out, but without damaging the blade material.

Secondly, a homemade knife sharpener must ensure that the block is held at a strictly defined angle, which is necessary for sharpening the entire cutting edge at a constant angle.

Third, the most difficult and perhaps the most important, a sharpening machine for knives, both self-made and factory-made, should allow changing the angle of installation of the sharpening stone; this is necessary to ensure sharpening of various tools and will even allow sharpening of stepped knives.

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Warning before work

You will have to cut the stone, giving it the shape that a person needs. This may cause injury. In such a situation, you should pay attention to using special gloves. They must be dense and durable; It is also better to wear a protective mask.

You can use any option, including a welding helmet. This moment provides a person with protection.

In this case, you need to ensure that all the tools and material are nearby.

What will we make it from?

The next question to consider is.

The materials from which you will make it.

To create such a device you will need the following materials:

• A sheet of thick plywood (can be replaced with a sheet of chipboard) 16 mm thick;
• Self-tapping screws 50-70 mm long; (it is better to use furniture format);
• A drill corresponding in diameter and length to your self-tapping screws or conformation;
• M8 hairpin of appropriate length (approximately 70 cm);
• Aluminum plate (at least 5 mm thick);
• M8 bolts with nuts (it is advisable to use wing nuts, although you can also use regular nuts, but keep in mind that then, with each sharpening, you will have to use a wrench, and this, you will agree, is not very convenient);
• You will also need a small block of textolite or ebonite to create a movable connection between the stud and the frame, which can be adjusted in height (if necessary, it can be replaced with a block made of hard wood, for example, it could be oak, beech or hornbeam);
• Of course, you will also need abrasive stones of various grain sizes;
• You will also need a powerful neodymium magnet (“you can get” such a magnet from an old computer hard drive that has become unnecessary).

Base

When making a sharpening machine at home, you can use various parts. In particular, you can use laminated box plywood 12 mm thick, which was previously used to create radio equipment housings.

When constructing a machine at home, a household member performs the following actions:

Selects a base for such an installation, which must weigh at least 5 kg. Otherwise, it will be impossible to sharpen chopping devices and tools on the machine. Therefore, in the manufacture of such equipment, the tenant uses various steel angles measuring 20x20 mm;

Next, 2 parts are cut out of plywood with a jigsaw, which have a trapezoidal shape, the base is 170 by 60 mm, and the height is 230 mm. When cutting, the mechanic makes an allowance of 0.7 mm for sharpening the ends: they end up straight and fit according to the markings;

Installs 3 parts between the inclined walls on the sides - an inclined surface made of plywood with dimensions of 230 x 150 mm.

In such a situation, the trapezoidal sides are located laterally on a rectangular surface.

The result is a base - a wedge. In such a situation, a protrusion of an inclined surface measuring 40 mm is formed in the front part;

Then, along the side wall ends, the mechanic marks 2 lines with a thicknesser. At the same time, it retreats by half the thickness of the plywood;

Next, he drills 3 holes in the boards to connect the parts of the structure with screws;

Drills the ends of the inclined surface and connects the base parts for a while;

At the back of the structure, the mechanic connects the side walls using a 60x60 mm block, which is attached to the end with two screws on both sides; — makes a 10 mm gap in the block.

In such a situation, it retreats 50 mm from the center - 25 mm from the edge. To maintain a vertical position, first drill with a thin drill from 2 edges, and then expand;

Then, at the top and bottom, two threaded fittings are screwed into the gap, and in the fittings - a 10 mm pin, the length of which is 250 mm.

If the threads do not match the studs, the lower fitting is adjusted.

What are we going to do?

The tools you will need are: a drill, a drill of a suitable length and diameter, a screwdriver with bits suitable for your screws or format. Instead of a screwdriver with suitable bits, you can also use a screwdriver (but this will be more difficult).

Any tool for cutting metal (a hacksaw or an angle grinder equipped with a cutting wheel).

Fixation device

The second important part of the tool rest is the clamping bar. It can be made from 2 parts.

L-shaped plank measuring 150x180 mm, the width of the shelves is 50 mm (top);

A rectangle-shaped strike plate measuring 50x100 mm (bottom).

When making a clamping bar, the machine operator performs the following actions:

Places the bottom bar on the far edge of the top bar;

Makes 2 holes in the center and retreats 25 mm from the edges of the part, connects the parts through the holes with two 8 mm bolts;

Screws in 8 mm bolts on 2 sides. In such a situation, the head of the nearest bolt is located near the top bar;

Welds the bolt heads to the plates and grinds them in advance until roundness is formed;

Yes, the inclined board retreats 40 mm from the edge and draws a line with a thicknesser;

Makes one 8 mm 25 mm gap at the bottom and top edges;

Using markings, he connects the edges of the slots and uses a jigsaw to make a cut with an allowance. Use a file to expand the groove to a width of 8.5 mm;

It fastens the planks using a groove that is in the board; the top bolt is tightened with a nut and thus firmly fastens the plank.

Then tightens connection 2 with nut;

When pressing the bottom bar (in the niche of the base), screw a wing nut onto the second bolt.

How will we do it?

Having asked the question “how to make a knife sharpener?” First of all, let’s find drawings for our future knife sharpener, which we will make with our own hands, and to do this, enter the following query into the search bar: “device for sharpening knives drawings.”

In response to such a request, any search engine will return a large number of suitable search results. Choose the one you like.

Having cut the plywood in any convenient way into parts for our future frame, we drill them at the points of attachment to each other, and then fasten them with self-tapping screws or conformat to each other.

On the frame we fix, using a bolt, an aluminum plate pre-processed according to the drawing (it will serve as a clamp for the knife being sharpened).

Next, we attach a vertical section of the pin to the frame and firmly fix a “cracker” on it. It consists of two parts made of an ebonite block (the Cracker is a very important part, it determines the angle at which the abrasive bar and the blade being sharpened will come into contact).

Now let's create a mount for the abrasive stone: for it we use the remaining section of the pin. Two blocks of ebonite or other similar material and two nuts.

Device for sharpening from wooden blocks

A simple device for sharpening knives is a tool consisting of a pair of wooden slats and a pair of abrasive bars with the same geometric dimensions.

Wooden slats should be thoroughly sanded with abrasive sandpaper. Then, after applying auxiliary markings, depending on the sharpening angle of the knife, make cuts to a depth of 15 mm. Insert sanding blocks into the resulting holes so that each groove matches, then secure them with bolts. To give the sharpening device greater stability, the lower part of the surface can be padded with a piece of rubber.

The types of devices for sharpening cutting tools are different and each master will be able to choose the manual machine that will fully satisfy his needs.

What did we get?

Having assembled the design according to the drawing, you will receive the simplest device for sharpening knives, however, despite its simplicity, this device will allow you to sharpen knives and any other blades quite efficiently.

In order to understand how to use such a device, just enter “video knife” in any search engine.

Did you manage to sharpen the knife? Hooray! You have successfully made a DIY sharpening machine.

We should not forget that any sharpening machine, even if it is made by hand, requires strict adherence to the rules and safety requirements!!!

Photo of a DIY knife sharpener