Find knife sharpening professionals near you

Knife sharpening services include inspecting the knife’s edge, sharpening the blade or knives with the appropriate tools, removing burrs, and testing the knife. Your hired specialists will perform all that’s necessary to repair or restore the cutting ability of knives that have been dulled from daily use. 

Inspecting the knife

Your sharpening specialist begins by testing the knife’s sharpness and looking for the blade’s flat areas. This is usually done with a “paper test” where the knife is made to cut through a sheet of scrap paper or old newspaper. If the knife edge is sharp, the blade should slice through the paper smoothly, leaving no jagged or rough edges.

Should there be any dull areas, the cut on the paper will come out uneven and will require more effort to slice through the paper. Your knife sharpening specialist may have other methods to test the sharpness of your knives, but this is the easiest way. 

Sharpening Butcher, Sabatier, and other knives

Once your knife sharpening specialist has tested the knife to spot the dull and sharp spots, they proceed with sharpening. Your specialist uses the appropriate tools for sharpening your knives. These include the following: a ceramic knife sharpener for your ceramic knives, a Butcher knife sharpener for large cleavers and other butcher’s knives, or (if you happen to have them) a Sabatier knife sharpener for your valuable Sabatier kitchen knives.

For very dull knives that have a lot of nicks or sections with missing material, some specialists can bevel a new edge with their tools and sharpen the new edge.

Knife sharpening service: Finishing touches

As sharpening knives involve grinding down on the blade and removing metal, your specialist takes off any burrs or tiny bits of material from the blade. This can be done with honing steel or a similar tool on the knife and wiping the residue off with a clean cloth. Some specialists may even apply metal polish on the blade to give it some sparkle. 

Testing the knife

After the finishing touches, your specialist can test the knife to confirm that it’s no longer dull. They can use the paper-cutting test, and use the knife the way you usually would; they can cut fruits or vegetables you have in your kitchen. If the paper or any fruits, vegetables or other foodstuffs that the knife is tested on appear jagged or meets resistance when cutting, the specialist repeats the sharpening process. This is done until the knife cuts clean and without much effort.