A guy at work wants these knives fully repaired. He knows what’s involved and will pay me for my time… But I don’t even know where to begin in terms of price.
Any thoughts?
~Steven
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Hi Steven I’ll tell you that the chip will take longer to fix than the tip. It depends on the edge you plan on putting on it and thinning the blades. What’s your time worth?
woooow Dan is def. right… do you have a belt sander? That one will not cut the same after you are done as the edge will be much thicker. make sure he understands that!
Yeah, I told him the knife with the chip will never be the same and he totally understands. I also told him I’ll have to A) remove steel from heel to tip until I reach the bottom of the trench in the blade, and b) thin out the knife a whole lot. He said he plans to use it as a general utility knife.
Josh, unfortunately my belt sander was sold to to space issues in my tiny studio apartment so thinning it out will have to be done by hand… Which will take a long time.
So… knowing it will take along time for both, one more so than the other… What should I Charge?
What would YOU GUYS charge?
[quote quote=“KnifeKnerdAtX” post=21912]Yeah, I told him the knife with the chip will never be the same and he totally understands. I also told him I’ll have to A) remove steel from heel to tip until I reach the bottom of the trench in the blade, and b) thin out the knife a whole lot. He said he plans to use it as a general utility knife.
Josh, unfortunately my belt sander was sold to to space issues in my tiny studio apartment so thinning it out will have to be done by hand… Which will take a long time.
So… knowing it will take along time for both, one more so than the other… What should I Charge?
What would YOU GUYS charge?[/quote]
Well personally since I have a belt sander I would charge:
[ul]
[li]$3 for the chipped tip repair[/li]
[li]$10 for the chipped edge repair[/li]
[/ul]
but if I had to do it by hand at the request of the owner, it would be much higher as that is more time and time = money. But if he is/was fine w/ you using one then it’s not his fault you don’t have one so I would try to find a compromise. Don’t forget to charge for the actual sharpening (I charge $11/knife for wicked edge sharpening if I am simply matching the edge bevel, way more if having to reprofile).
Here’s what I quoted:
Broken Tip Repair $10
Chipped Edge Repair + Thinning $20
2 Wicked Edges $20
TOTAL $50
He expected it’d be much more so he’s happy paying $50… I hope I’m not taking advantage of him, it’s just seems like it’ll take a pretty decent amount of time to get things done.
[quote quote=“KnifeKnerdAtX” post=21915]Here’s what I quoted:
Broken Tip Repair $10
Chipped Edge Repair + Thinning $20
2 Wicked Edges $20
TOTAL $50
He expected it’d be much more so he’s happy paying $50… I hope I’m not taking advantage of him, it’s just seems like it’ll take a pretty decent amount of time to get things done.[/quote]
That’s great! Yeah if I did all that by hand it would be in that range but probably a little more so i don’t feel like it is taking advantage of him at all =) Remember… on that chipped tip remove metal from the spine side not the edge side so you don’t change the blade geometry. But I’m sure you probably knew that!
Josh is right. I personally wouldn’t sharpen/thin a blade like this on a belt and would would tell the customer exactly what my reasons were. I would then tell them their options and pricing accordingly. For folks that don’t want to pay to have me do all that is needed by hand , I then recommend that they contact Josh. He is skilled in using a belt and I know he will take care of any problems if they happen. I think you should try to take them on with the condition that you may keep them for awhile until they are finished. Take your time and don’t rush yourself. This will be a valuable learning experience that will help your skills and determine what your time is worth in the future.
This reminds me of my first large chipped blade . It was an old 12" kitchen knife that a guy had tried to open a coconut with..1/2 chip dead center of the blade haha
$50 is a very friendly price if your are doing that by hand
I used the contours of both knife edges to trace out potential new profiles.
Overkill?
~Steven
No i think that’s a wonderful idea… gives you an exact goal of where you need to go. Knife makers do this all the time, it’s called a scribe line when you are putting the primary grind in =)
Wow! It’s incredible to me (not surprising but incredible) that you guys can even do a fix like this. When you re-profile to this degree how do you do it? Do you grind the edge down by grinding the sides? Going back and forth (side to side) until you have taken off enough metal to get to your scribed marks. Or do you just grind down the old edge by grinding perpendicular to the edge? I presume you need to do all this metal removal before you even try to start grinding a new bevel. Hopefully that question makes sense. I don’t know how else to ask it
Great questions!
Repairs like this kinda pick up right at the tail-end of the knife making process. What I mean by this is, as an owner of a particular knife that you picked up in the retail setting, you really only need to maintain its sharpness because everything else (making a new knife) has been done for you. Now, this can be rather simple - Keep it sharp. Or, it can be rather complicated and inexhaustible - Welcome to the Wicked Edge Forum B)
Such repairs call for reprofiling the actual geometry of the knife itself while at the same time keeping in mind the geometry of the edge throughout the entire process.
In order to do repairs like the ones you see in the photos, typically we take some sort of an abrasive to the steel in a fashion that is perpendicular to the blade steel. Typically, this removes the material faster and leaves you with clean 90° angles where you’d expect them to be. Now, whether these abrasives are dealt with by hand or by machine, the fact remains they are still abrasives doing what abrasives do… Removing material from an object.
Once the overall blade geometry has been achieved through the use of abrasives such as sandpaper on a block, sheet of glass, or on a belt fed through a machine, we then move on to the geometry of the actual edge itself… This is really why YOU are here and participating as a member on this forum… That being said, please stay involved and you’ll learn a ton from guys like Josh, Dan, and many other awesome cutlery lovers :woohoo:
Hope this helps a little!
Well, lawyers charge $500-$1000/hour. What’s your time worth, and how long will it take you? 
Oh, wow! Knowing that little tidbit makes me feel a lot better and much more confident.
Thanks Josh!
Haha. Well, I’m not defending certain inalienable human rigths, but simply getting something sharp for whatever it’s worth 
It’s been a lot of years since I worked for the wages you gents are quoting. I’m just a hobbyist and I wouldn’t dare ask people to pay me what my time is worth to me. But thinking as a businessman, I think that you should think of this as a medium-to-highly-skilled craft and as such, it should call for wages more on the order of $25-$30 per/hour, plus overhead - so think closer to $40-$50, total.
If a customer wants you to restore a damaged knife to some usable condition, he has to realize that it’s going to take you however many hours and that you should be compensated for that. When he goes down to the Chevy dealer to replace an outside rear-view mirror on his Tahoe, they’re going to charge him $75 per hour and he doesn’t blink.
That said, if you are a relative newbie to knife-sharpening, or if you’re a hobbyist like me, charge what you think the customer will find reasonable. But if you are a pro like Josh with a shop full of the right equipment, and you’re trying to produce some income, you really should treat it more like a business.
Another thing that you should consider is the cost of managing a small-batch order. Some people call this a handling fee. For instance, a single knife may be a 40 minute job in your hands, but you’ve spent time talking to the customer and you’ll spend more time delivering the finished product to him, collecting the money, etc.. There’s no such thing as a ten-minute job.
And while I’m at it, I’ll also advise you to think about those very rare(?) jobs that go badly - where it turns out to need far more attention than you planned on, and those more catastrophic jobs that send you to the clinic and cost you a day’s income. Who’s going to pay for that?
I know that a lot of the jobs you take in are worth less than the fee you would charge the customer, but in short…Don’t sell yourselves too short.
Ha! Yeah, the owner of these knives was on break and hanging out behind his other place of employment, then, out of boredom, he started hacking at a stump… Blows my mind.
[quote quote=“tcmeyer” post=21927]It’s been a lot of years since I worked for the wages you gents are quoting. I’m just a hobbyist and I wouldn’t dare ask people to pay me what my time is worth to me. But thinking as a businessman, I think that you should think of this as a medium-to-highly-skilled craft and as such, it should call for wages more on the order of $25-$30 per/hour, plus overhead - so think closer to $40-$50, total.
If a customer wants you to restore a damaged knife to some usable condition, he has to realize that it’s going to take you however many hours and that you should be compensated for that. When he goes down to the Chevy dealer to replace an outside rear-view mirror on his Tahoe, they’re going to charge him $75 per hour and he doesn’t blink.
That said, if you are a relative newbie to knife-sharpening, or if you’re a hobbyist like me, charge what you think the customer will find reasonable. But if you are a pro like Josh with a shop full of the right equipment, and you’re trying to produce some income, you really should treat it more like a business.
Another thing that you should consider is the cost of managing a small-batch order. Some people call this a handling fee. For instance, a single knife may be a 40 minute job in your hands, but you’ve spent time talking to the customer and you’ll spend more time delivering the finished product to him, collecting the money, etc.. There’s no such thing as a ten-minute job.
And while I’m at it, I’ll also advise you to think about those very rare(?) jobs that go badly - where it turns out to need far more attention than you planned on, and those more catastrophic jobs that send you to the clinic and cost you a day’s income. Who’s going to pay for that?
I know that a lot of the jobs you take in are worth less than the fee you would charge the customer, but in short…Don’t sell yourselves too short.[/quote]
Wow man… there is so much good advise here it’s unbelievable. Tom, I can tell you’ve been around the block once or twice! lol
A few points on what you said. You are absolutely correct on everything. I shoot to be making $1/minute when I am working to be able to cover both my wages and overhead/shop expansion. Have I always or do I always make that? absolutely not!! In fact, I have one job right now that I have spend 3 hours on and will spend another hour on to make sure it is perfect even though i only quoted the guy $60 (losing my hat on this one!!!) There have been COUNTLESS times that I have spend WAY more time on a knife than i should have, and made minimum wage on several. But guess what? I try to learn with every knife I do and always improve my technique to do better and save time. Because both customer service/quality and time = money to me. I time myself all the time to see what i am making and see how I can improve. I have found that two areas that I REALLY lose money in are mirror finishes and doing any type of scales. for the latter, i now collaborate with Zamfir (Eric) and we are working on several projects together since he has a CNC mill/lathe and can do pretty much anything.
The most expensive knife i have had to replace was a $650 Hinderer Eklipse, which was recently. I re-ground it but didn’t get the swedge just like the owner was wanting so I offered to replace it if he sent it back to me. He was really cool and understanding and i just ended up sending him some cash at way below the market value. i was able to then sell it and recoup the cost of the work I had into it, but that was only by my customer’s graces.
As far as time goes I do spend a decent amount of time online on some of the forums i pay for, but to me, a lot of that is advertising. To save time, I have done a number of things:
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i now have a google doc that both local and mail in customers fill out prior to sending in knives or dropping them off. When they enter this info it automatically enters it into a spreadsheet for me in Google drive. Then it is simply copy and paste for me into my master spreadsheet. =)
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i utilize a drop off location at a local UPS store. This keeps me from having to meet up with my customers and talking to them in person and handling payments etc. works REALLY well. And i have the freedom, if i wanted, to set up only 2 days going by the UPS store (for both online and local orders) of being Tues. and Thurs. if i want.
anyway. Great post and ideas. Thanks!
[quote quote=“KnifeKnerdAtX” post=21919]I used the contours of both knife edges to trace out potential new profiles.
Overkill?[/quote]
No, that looks great!
You really need to thin the chipped one flat on a stone, not with the WEPS, if you want a good cross-section when you are done.
I agree with Tom, don’t sell yourself short. In my honest opinion and not having a belt sander either, I would’ve passed on the job, frankly. But that’s just if it was me, and I hope it’s profitable for you. I’m afraid it’d take a really long time with the WEPS to straighten that out plus put a lot of wear on the stones. I’ve tried to get other people’s chips out before, and maybe since my stones are so broken in, but it took quite awhile. I’ve also told some people before that for what I’d charge to repair their knife, it’d be cheaper for them to buy a new one. That’s not being rude, but I know what my time is worth and some jobs aren’t worth the time and frustration if you don’t have the right equipment. I’m very interested to see how they turn out and how long it took you. Best of luck.