Since I cannot get to any topic room other then the main forum I had to post here.
So I was thinking after I earn my chops and I get better at this I would like to sharpen knives part time for some extra $. Can some of you post what you charge so I know where I need to price my services?
I don’t charge family and friends. And I don’t want to sharpen knives for money. But if I did I would charge $40 for the first time because I know I’ll have to reprofile the blade, then $10 to sharpen it after the first time for a basic toothy edge, if it has no damage. $50 or more for polished edges depending on the size of the blade.
You probably would never make much money taking my advice, but I don’t want to spend all day sharpening junk.
Hi Kenneth,
Sharpening knives to earn extra cash is a great idea! I have a small, part-time sharpening service in Santa Fe NM and I charge $8.00 per knife or $7.00 per knife when the customer gives me 5 or more knives to sharpen at a time. I don’t do any reprofiling on the knives I sharpen for my customers. I simply match the current angle on their knives by using the marker method, draw a burr with my 100 grit stone, and then progress up through my diamond stones and finish with 1000 grit. All my customers are very pleased with the 1000 grit finish, and using this technique my sharpening time is usually less than 4 minutes per knife. I use a Generation 3 Pro to do most of my sharpening, and I also have Wicked Edge GO which I keep in my car so I can sharpen when I’m out and about.
Four minutes a knife going from 100 to 1000 grit? Do you really expect us to believe that?
000Robert,
Yes, I’ve timed myself on many occasions. It takes me about 10 seconds to mount the knife in the sharpener, another 10-20 seconds to do the marker test to determine the sharpening angle, about 1-2 minutes to draw a burr from each side of the knife with my 100 grit stone, and then about 20 seconds to make 20 passes with each of the 200, 400, 600, 800, and 1000 grit diamond stones on each side of the blade. And finally, about 10-15 seconds to wipe the blade clean and remove it from the sharpener.
The knives I usually sharpen for my customers are kitchen knives. The highest quality knives I see frequently are Shun, Henkel, and Wusthof. They’re made from decent steel, but not like the super steels found in a lot of higher-end pocket knives and fixed blades, so it really doesn’t take too long to sharpen them, especially because I’m matching the current edge angles and not doing any reprofiling. If the knife has a bad chip or a broken tip, it does take me a bit longer and I will charge my customers extra for making those repairs on a case-by-case basis.
Ok.
Hi Kyle, wow. Impressive. I would like to learn how you do that to see if I could get even remotely close to those times for blades that don’t require reprofiling. Would you mind sending me a PM with some pointers? Or post pointers here if others are interested too.
Hi Rodger,
I’d be happy to share. I think the easiest way for me to show my techniques would be to shoot a video and upload it to YouTube. I’m picking up about 20 knives from customers this afternoon and I’ve never sharpened for these customers before, so it’s a great opportunity to show my process from start to finish. I’ll post the link to the video in this thread as soon as the video is uploaded.
There can be different goals when sharpening for a business. This needs to be decided and defined up front.
Are you offering your sharpening services simply to produce a quickly and simply sharpened knife purely for utility sake. This is what it appears Kyle has described he’s doing.
Or, are your sharpening services like those of Josh of Razor Edge Knives.
Or both?
This service you offer and the quality of your finished product will describe the way you use your Wicked Edge Sharpener, the time you’ll spend with each knife and your pricing structure. The quality, precision and design of the W.E. sharpeners allow for both ends of the business spectrum. Your sharpening knowledge, experience, and expertise may well determine which business model is right for you.
I just hope you guys don’t get hurt. Try to be Bruce Lee sharpening knives is a tragedy in the making.
Hey guys,
As promised, here’s a link to the video I made earlier today about how I sharpen knives. It’s a long video, but I talk about the whole process, sharpen 4 knives, and then I talk about how/why I price my sharpening service. Cheers.
My apologies Kyle, that’s pretty fast! I guess I’m just an old fogey. Setting the edge is quick work with that Gen 3!
I didn’t say that I “did” charge that much, I said that I “would” charge that much if I wanted to sharpen knives for money. But I don’t want to sharpen knives for money - that’s the point. 
I wouldn’t sharpen that fast anyways because I would be afraid that I might lose a finger or two. Also, you should wear a N95 mask while sharpening. I don’t think it’s a good idea breathing that stuff. And I always finish with a couple of edge-leading strokes to make sure there is no burr left on the edge. Be careful.
No disrespect to Kyle. He’s providing exactly the service his customers are asking for, or at least, paying for; “fast and cheap”. That’s not to say they wouldn’t find they prefer a better finished product if that had been offered to them.
There’s fast, there’s good and there’s cheap…there’s not all three at once:
http://www.pyragraph.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/GOOD-FAST-CHEAP.jpg
Like I wrote above:
There can be different goals when sharpening for a business. This needs to be decided and defined up front.
Are you offering your sharpening services simply to produce a quickly and simply sharpened knife purely for utility sake? This is what it appears Kyle is doing in his video. Does he do this well?? I’d place his finished knives dead centered in the overlap between the “cheap” and “fast” circles, in the “not the best quality” range. (I think if I were using Kyle’s business model, I’d carry my W.E. sharpener and a folding work bench to sharpen “on site”. Pick-up and drop-off is killing his profit potential).
Or, are your sharpening services more like those of Josh of Razor Edge Knives? Josh’s customer base are the high end collectors and knife efficianados, or a knife user wanting simply a “good and well sharpened knife” and they’re willing to pay for this quality.
Or both? …The price you charge is commensurate with the quality of your finished products. It’s up to you conducting this business to decide what price is fair for the value and quality of your finished product and for the time you needed to put into it.
This service you offer and the quality of your finished products will describe the way you use your Wicked Edge Sharpener, the time you’ll spend with each knife and your pricing structure. The quality, precision and design of the W.E. sharpeners allow for both ends of the business spectrum. Your sharpening knowledge, experience, and expertise may well determine which business model is right for you.
Hey Kyle. I haven’t been on in a few days but I was watching YouTube videos and saw your video. As you were describing the circumstance I said “Hey that’s me” lol. Thanks my friend. I liked it and also subscribed
Regards,
Ken
I also strive for speed. Attached is a link to my Jersey Double Stroke.
Also, I currently use the 50/80 stone which will reprofile in 1 minute. I watched your video and you mentioned angles up to 25 DPS I think which is probably appropriate for the cheaper steels because they dull real quick (crap steel) but I prefer 20 DPS.
As Kyle said, his business is addressing a market that will accept any edge that cuts. That said, I’ve got a few items to comment on, hopefully to prompt some more discussion.
I noticed that Kyle uses almost dead-horizontal strokes and seems to be applying a lot of pressure. Hmmm…
Kyle accepts whatever angle the existing bevel seems to be. He doesn’t look to see if the “apparent bevel” is factory-made or buggered by some unskilled person. I would never return to a customer a knife of decent quality with a 27 degree edge. It will perform at a level less than the poorest knife you could buy at Walmart.
He doesn’t do a magnified inspection and ignores any deep dents or chips. He doesn’t even run a fingernail down the edge or check for reflected light before starting. In his defense, he preserves more steel and small dings and chips don’t hurt the apparent sharpness of a toothy edge. The dents, however can be quite long and deep.
The basic difference is whether you’re wanting the customer to try his newly sharpened knives and think, “Yeah, that’s sharp enough,” or do you want him to think “Wow!”
I’ve had a couple of friends bring me bunches of knives to be sharpened - the record is one that brought his knives in buckets, 35 all told. For the cheap knives which are in decent shape, I now use one of the powered sharpeners; Worksharp or 1X30 belt sander. I have also used my double-ended Jet buffing wheel stand. I install a 600 grit 10" wheel on one side and a white or pink polishing compound on a 10" wheel on the other end. I make two passes on each side on the 600 grit wheel, then two passes on each side on the polishing compound wheel. Total time about 45 seconds and after cleaning, the knife will very easily slice phonebook paper.
I’m in agreement with everything Tom says..
The 27° degree angle that Kyle stated he was using was from a glance down at the Gen 3 Pro’s lever position. He read the 27º angle from where the adjuster lever is pointing to the angle delineations printed in white on the blue (semi-circular) base plate. This was after Kyle had determined he was matching the existing profile using the sharpie method. That angle reading alone has no basis in reality. It’s simply the angle he had set his Gen 3 Pro sharpener to, for that particular knife, clamped in that manner with that position, during that sharpening session, on that day.
I guess I’m one of those people that likes to fuss over their knives. I sharpen the family kitchen knives to 1000 grit, mostly 20 degrees with a few at 17 degrees. My personal kitchen knives are sharpened at 15 degrees (or less) to 3000 grit and stropping if time permits. It definitely takes longer than 4 minutes per knife since I’m not a slap - dash sharpener. As others said, to each his/her own but I believe if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well. This is not to say Kyle’s way of sharpening isn’t good but it isn’t something I would do.
I’m really happy with all the discussion about this!
When I decided what kind of a sharpening service I wanted to provide, I took a look at the market for sharpening services and tried to figure out how I could best position one that would require the least amount of startup cash and least amount of marketing to become successful. I landed on a local sharpening service that focuses on household cutlery for normal people who like to cook sometimes. I strongly believe that’s the largest market segment with the largest income potential - everyone has kitchen knives. The next piece of the puzzle was coming up with a quality / price formula that would be acceptable to my customer base. Most people don’t own high-end cutlery, so I had to set my pricing in such a way that normal people would consider it reasonable. I looked around my city and identified who my competition was and found out what they were charging. As these businesses had already set the price expectation, I priced my sharpening service similarly to what they were charging.
With my market identified and my pricing decided, I then had to figure out how to make my service profitable at the pricing I would be charging. This is how I decided I would match the current edge angle that I find on knives, and finish them all with a 1000 grit diamond stone. Using this technique I could sharpen most knives in about 4 minutes. To address tcmeyer’s point about edge geometry and not wanting to give customers knives back to them with a 27 degree edge angle: I’ve found that people are not only happy with the results I provide, but they’re so excited about it that they go tell other people about it. (You can see my testimonials here: https://www.nextdayknife.com/testimonials)
I know that if I took the time to reprofile the edge by 5 degrees or so, it’s quite likely the vast majority of my customers wouldn’t recognize the difference. So, why offer that service and have to increase my pricing to account for the extra time to remain profitable, and therefor price myself out of the market? It doesn’t make sense for the market I’m in, so I simply match the current bevel angle. Also, it just so happened that the knives in the video had wider sharpening angles, but many of the knives I sharpen have lower angles. The same logic applies to the grit level I choose go up to. I could go to 1500, 2200, 3000, stropping, etc., but I believe my point of diminishing returns, for these customers, is at 1000 grit. Adding 60-90 seconds to my sharpening job isn’t a big deal when I have a few knives to work on. But, when I’m sharpening a lot of knives that extra time would add up quickly. My best day this past year was 109 knives in a 6 hour period sitting outside a hardware store that’s near my house. It was exhausting. An extra 60 seconds per knife would have been nearly two extra hours of sharpening time. I know some of my customers would have chosen to not wait and I would have lost business if I took longer on each knife.
Regarding MarcH’s previous comment about losing profitability by offering delivery service, he’s absolutely right that I am giving away some profits by offering the delivery service compared to bringing a sharpening table and sharpener with me and sharpening at people’s houses. I actually do exactly that when my customers live farther away. But, the primary reason I don’t do that most of the time is because sharpening knives at people’s homes keeps me away from my home. I’m already gone 8.5 hours a day during the week for my day job. If I sharpened knives at people’s houses I could easily add a couple hours to the time I’m away from home, which doesn’t work for me. So, I run a pickup and delivery route on my way home, which usually takes about 30-60 minutes, and then I take the knives home where I can sharpen them in my leisure time. I can sharpen knives, get up and make dinner, take my dogs for a walk, and then sharpen some more knives. It’s just a more relaxed lifestyle, which I’m happy to sacrifice 30-60 minutes of driving time to achieve. I do set up a table and sharpening knives in front of a local hardware store sometimes on Saturdays, and that works out nicely.
So, if my objective is speed and I’m not trying to achieve perfect results, why bother using precision sharpening equipment? There are many reasons. The primary reasons I choose to use Wicked Edge are as follows:
P.S. to just to address a couple other comments:
The camera angle was weird in the video so it made it look like my stroke was more horizontal. I use an up and out stroke (edge trailing) and the bottom of the stone comes off the tip of the blade.
I do inspect the knives before I start sharpening. If I notice any chips or dings I make a mental note of it and will work to remove them when I’m sharpening. If the chips are deep or if I find a broken tip, I contact my customer to find out if he would like me to fix them for an extra fee which I assess on a case-by-case basis depending on the severity of the problem with the knife.
Ok that’s it for now.
Cheers,
Kyle
Have you figured out an effective way to handle serrated knives ? The best I came up with is to focus on putting new tips on each serration (using full blade strokes) and not to worry about the “inner” serration curvatures. Its not perfect but it refreshes the initial bite that a serrated knife has.
