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The worse I get are chips from careless use.

One knife from a chef had a crack between the handle and blade because he had been using it to "slap-flatten" meat. The handle points to one direction, and the blade in another.

One home cook was using a cheap meat cleaver to chop through beef and pork bones. The blade was not only chipped (>5mm chips), but also warped.

A professional Michelin star restaurant chef was "sharpening" his $200+ Japanese knife with a 3000 grit whetstone and a honing rod. His "skills" made the middle section of the blade significantly thinner.

Another home cook had been sharpening her Chinese cleaver on a soap bar shaped whetstone, creating a concave blade.

A butcher just kept thinning his blade on a rounded whetstone, so there was no secondary bevel at all, and the blade kept flexing during sharpening.

A home cook allowed his Japanese knife to corrode so badly, that after corrosion removal, the blade was slightly thicker than aluminium foil.



I should start charging more for my services (or start slapping people in the face)

I believe the 10 degree angle is from the jig that holds the scissors. If you look at it from the side, you'll notice that the clamps and base are not completely parallel.

On a side note, I had recently sharpened a pair of hairdressing scissors. They were some Japanese brand with that clamshell-shaped blade profile.

All I knew was that the hairdresser had set it aside because it had gotten dull, and it cost her about $200 for that tiny pair of scissors (barely 15cm in length)

I scrutinised it under my digital microscope, looking for areas with a consistent scratch pattern (to know how it was sharpened) Then I just pressed the inner side of each blade against the side of my SJ-250 for about 2-3 minutes, cleaned it up and reassembled it.

She said it was as sharp as brand new, but was not using it as frequently as before. (It was a shop rental/leasing issue, not the scissor sharpness)

From my limited personal experience running my own sharpening business...

If it's the first time your knives are meeting the T8, save yourself time and start at 220/360 grit. Reprofile the entire edge and work your way upwards to your 1200 grit (LA-220 inclusive)

When they start to feel dull again, start with the LA-220 first, before you decide if you want to break out the grindstones for (re)sharpening.

He laughed and replied that his contacts could get the knives ( I think they were Victorinox) cheaper than the sharpening (which I doubt).

The argument for getting something "cheaper" only makes sense if it's a like-for-like comparison. Like maybe getting the same model Zwilling chef knife at a lower price from another vendor.

If there's someone else using the Tormek and producing the exact same results as me, I'd openly tell the customer to go for whoever is cheaper.

But the most bizarre still has to be the customer who had been doing a hatchet job on his own knife and ground it out of shape with his own honing rod and rolling sharpener. (The knife belly was basically gone and became a straight line)

He handed it to me for sharpening and I re-ground the entire blade back to its original shape, reprofiled and sharpened it to below 200 BESS (from 700+) And still he felt compelled to sharpen it some more to "make it sharper" the very next day I returned it to him (after only one day of use).

Lessons learnt during the brief time of my new knife sharpening business... Let me share the hilarity.


If the knife shows any signs of customer sharpening, it'll 100% need to be reprofiled.

Customers buy knives based on how they feel, and decide how to use them later. (I get to see a lot of bizarre damage)

If anyone brings me multiple knives of the exact same design, from the same household, I know they'll destroy all the knives I've sharpened within a week.

Professional chefs often have no idea how to sharpen their own knives.

All my customers who spoke about high carbon steel, have no idea what it is.

There are customers who do years of damage to their knives, and want it remedied within an hour.

The most common remark about my business is "Why sharpen knives? Just buy cheap ones and throw them away"

Customers lie to me about their knife usage, like how people lie to their doctors.

Every whetstone a customer has shown me was shaped like a used bar of soap.

There are customers who bring dull knives to me (700+ BESS), I sharpen it to below 200 BESS, and they'll still sharpen it after I return it to them. (One customer actually said he did that to make it sharper. Yes, the same method that he dulled his knives with, he used to make my sharpening "sharper")



I often ponder how these things still happen in the year 2025.

For my sharpening setup (T8), I use mainly diamond grindstones. I typically use the DC-250 (360G) for first time customers to reprofile the edge, sharpen with the DF-250 (600G), then refine the edge with my DE-250 (1200G)

That being said, my context is different from yours as I typically sharpen individual customer knives, and I have emphasis on the "wow" factor to increase repeat orders.

If you've already done the heavy lifting of reprofiling all their knives with your T4, and will be the only person sharpening their knives, then I personally recommend the DF-200 (600G) diamond stone as having the most bang for your buck in keeping their knives functionally sharp.

Additionally, I've used the 600G diamond grindstone to reprofile blades, but it does take a much longer time (compared to the 360G) If you don't foresee yourself sharpening individual customer knives like me in the near future, I'd say the DF-200 would suit your needs for your current context.

One mistake I made when pricing my services, was assuming that other knife sharpening services were doing work to the same standard as me.

That's why I don't really buy into the advice of "Look around and see what other sharpeners are charging". That advice makes sense only if you're duplicating the same processes/standards as what they're doing.

No way am I going to match the pricing of my T-8 sharpening with someone else who uses a bench grinder with a coarse grinding wheel shaped like a bagel that shoots sparks.

I think it's great that your daughter had the interest that went beyond just being a spectator.

Where I'm at, knife sharpening is seen as "low class" manual labour, made worse by a marketplace awash with cheap made-in-China crap that encourages people to treat kitchen knives as disposable.

Personally, anyone who has the interest in maintenance & repairs (instead of replacing) is worth nurturing & encouraging.

I have the T8 with the SG-250 stone.  Assuming I keep the stone grade at the nominal 1000 grit, how long will this last before it gets clogged with steel particles and will need to be regraded, or maybe even resurfaced?

One method I've been using to keep my grindstones as clean as possible during sharpening, was adding magnets to the bottom of my water trough.

Two flat button-shaped neodymium magnets pasted on the outside (bottom) of the trough have been pulling almost all metal particles from my grindstones. Once I started doing that, my ACC-150 solution has been kept clear, and I see a lot more swarf retained in the trough.

Instead of spinning the rectangular stones around on a carousel, it would be great if there was some sort of machine that would spin a round-shape stone against the knife instead.

Add an electric motor and some sort of holder to attach knives to during sharpening, and I think it'll be a winning combination.

I think a sharpening stone somewhere between 249mm and 251mm in diameter may work well.

What I've been doing with odd shaped blades, is to add equal layers of adhesive tape on both sides to increase thickness/adjust its shape.(I typically increase the thickness for extremely thin blades to raise my jig away from the grindstone)

It really doesn't matter to me if the KJ-45 is not closely clamped to the blade. As long as the blade doesn't wobble during sharpening, I was never affected by a wide clamp holding a thin/odd shaped blade.

I've been cleaning my Tormek diamond grindstones mainly with a lint roller.

I'm using the Ikea ones with the tear off sheets, and just letting them roll against the dry diamond grindstone spinning on my T8.

They've worked pretty well so far, and I haven't encountered any adhesives transferring.

I'm using a regular chair meant for a dining table, but my work table is set quite low. So that puts the contact point between the blade & grindstone at about eye level.

My T-8 is also positioned quite close to the edge of my work table, and I sit with the grindstone in line with the centre of my body.

I sharpen edge leading while seated, but I stand up while honing and sharpening edge trailing.

I think a key consideration is how you're detecting the burr.

I gently run the edge of the blade across my thumbnail (perpendicular) to "feel" the burr, and I also use a digital microscope for close up inspection.

A knife with a burr will still cut paper. You'll notice that in these YouTube videos, they tend to cut thicker paper, make very quick cuts, and you often don't get to see if the cut paper had a clean or ragged edge. (Got to remember that most of these content creators deal in the currency of attention) I stopped looking to these videos for inspiration or to benchmark my performance, and instead use my digital microscope.

Try the thumbnail method, and maybe get a cheap magnifying glass as a start (like I did)

From my personal experience:

1. When I used the T-8 standing behind it, I used to have the bad habit of resting my hands on the knife, with more pressure on the handle. This often made the blade "see-saw" across the grindstone, as well as applying uneven pressure during sharpening. This would often cause gouges along the blade, and uneven sharpening near the heel/tip of the knife.

2. I also used to speed up moving the blade across the grindstone when starting from the heel and finishing at the tip. This often created slow areas of progress along these two spots.

What I do now:

a. Instead of standing behind my T-8, I sit in front of it with an LED lamp overhead, shining directly onto the grindstone. This broke my habit of resting my hand on the knife handle, and I could see very clearly when the knife began to "see-saw". This also allowed be to monitor the water that gathered in front of the blade, and really helped me start with the heel of the knife fully squared against the grindstone.

But in summation, maybe look closer at how you've been applying pressure as the knife moves across the grindstone, and develop a setup that works best for your work environment and body.