How to fix a broken knife handle with your own hands so that it’s like new. How to make a quick DIY knife handle repair Where to repair a wooden knife case
For work we will need:
-Composite glue, popularly known as “cold welding”.
- Wood sawdust of fine fraction.
-Instantly acting adhesive.
-Water.
Operating procedure
It was no coincidence that we chose composite glue, because it has a special property: initially the composition is plastic, but after a while it hardens. We use the period of plasticity for our own purposes.
It is important that the handle is made by a person who uses a broken knife more often, because the new temporary handle is very individually adjusted to the hand.
We took welding glue in regular packaging. We will not use the entire volume; based on the volume of the palm, cut off a part from a piece of glue. In this master class, we worked up to about 5 centimeters from the total piece of glue.
You need to work with glue by first wetting your hands with water. The piece is kneaded until it gains sufficient plasticity. We prepared very fine sawdust in advance. Not many are required. The approximate proportion can be easily determined visually by ironing the photo in the text of this instruction.
The finer the sawdust used to create the handle, the less noticeable they will be in the glue when finished. It is important to mix the piece of composite glue with the sawdust as thoroughly as possible. Once we are satisfied with the result of mixing, we move on to the next stage.
The blade pin is immersed to the desired length in the adhesive mass, and the hand that holds the “ cold welding”, the handle itself is formed. This is the most important point the entire work process. Feel the knife in your hand, whether it is comfortable to hold in your palm. As long as the handle is pliable, it can be made to any shape.
Once you have formed the handle, set the knife aside for a minute. After this time, take the knife again and evaluate how comfortable it is in your palm. If you are satisfied with the result, let the composite glue harden a little, about a quarter of an hour.
After which the knife blade must be carefully freed from the glue. Now our task is to prepare the handle for final attachment to the blade. For this we have prepared an instantly hardening glue. We simply squeeze it into the hole left in the handle by the pin, and put the handle on the pin again.
Remove any glue that comes out immediately. Despite the fact that we chose glue that dries instantly, we recommend leaving the knife to dry for several hours, or even the whole day.
The knife can be used, but if you plan to leave the handle for more long time without changing it to wood, we recommend abrasive material polish it lightly and then varnish it. This handle may not be as beautiful as a wooden handle, but it does not have the disadvantages of wood; it takes a lot of effort to break or ruin it. Also, nothing will happen to it if the knife is stored for some time in conditions that would probably sharpen the wooden handle.
Be sure to complete such a large-scale knife repair by sharpening it and, if necessary, polishing it, since cutting tool new life, then let it be truly brilliant from scratch. Use it!
All things break sooner or later. In some cases, it will not be possible to do without the help of specialists. In others, the situation can be taken into your own hands. Here, for example, is what you can do if the handle of a knife breaks off. Such a critical breakdown is actually not as scary as it might seem at first glance, especially if the owner has the desire and his hands grow from the right place.
Preparation
You should not have any illusions about a broken knife. The best (and often the only) way to restore a tool is to create a new handle and install an existing blade in it. Therefore, before getting to work, we remove all remnants of the old handle from the shank of the knife.
In addition, for the work you will need red wood veneer (or similar in quality), a metal rod, epoxy resin, transparent waterproof varnish, another block of wood, this time hardwood (high-quality multi-layer plywood is also suitable). In the process of work, you are guaranteed to need a hacksaw, an electric drill, a vice, sandpaper and a grinder, as well as a carpet knife.
The working process
The dimensions of the manufactured handle depend on the dimensions of the knife shank. In this case, the thickness of the linings should not be less than 6-7 mm. Otherwise, such a handle will simply be inconvenient.
So let's take ours wooden beam and make two blanks for the overlays from it.
Now we take the prepared rod and, using pliers, separate the pins from it along a length slightly exceeding the total thickness of the knife handle. Their ends must be rounded for ease of installation and safety.
We take a knife, apply the shank to the workpiece and outline the front contour, as well as the place to drill the hole. After this, drilling should be done according to the marks, followed by processing of the linings on the side of the blade. If you do not do this now, then doing such work in the future will become extremely problematic. This stage ends with checking the conformity of the pin to the workpiece.
We take the prepared veneer and cut it. We do this along the contour. We place a piece of veneer between the overlays. All excess is removed using a carpet knife. Once this is done, you can apply epoxy resin on the outer part of the linings. In this case, the pin should already be installed by this time. We glue the veneer and make sure there is no displacement. Having attached both pads, we carefully place the entire structure in a vice.
Everyone decides for themselves whether it is worth restoring and repairing an old chipped knife or not. This probably makes sense if the knife has good memories and has proven itself to be a quality tool.
Most known species defect of knives - chips of the cutting edge of the blade. To eliminate chips on the blade, it is necessary to grind the metal down to the base of the chips, regardless of the width of the blade in this place. In some cases, the location of the chips leads to the need to change the shape of the blade. Once the chips have been removed, restorative sharpening can begin. Refurbished knives are sharpened in the following way– first, the blade is ground on one side and the other to the middle so that the blade does not bevel on one side, and only after that the cutting edge begins to be sharpened until a burr (burr) appears, as in ordinary everyday use. After sharpening is completed, the restored and repaired knife is polished on a polishing wheel.
A similar method can be used to repair a knife with a broken tip or tip of the blade. This knife is sharpened vertically band press, the blade is given the required shape, after which the tip is ground to be in the middle of the blade, without bevel to one side.
Scratches and chips on holomen are usually formed due to not very careful sharpening and they are not very easy to remove. The only way out in this situation is to thoroughly polish the blade on a polishing wheel, keeping the blade scratched as it rotates. But if the knife is made of hardened steel, such repairs are extremely expensive.
Repairing a bent blade is very difficult. Blade bending most often occurs due to an attempt to use the knife as a lever. Different varieties steel can react differently to an attempt to straighten the blade - they may give in easily, they may not give in at all, or they may even break. You most likely won’t be able to tell by appearance what will happen until you try. If you decide to straighten the blade, you should hold the knife in a vice and carefully bend it in the opposite direction, or put the blade on the anvil and lightly tap it narrow side hammer until the blade is straight. You should do this work with gloves, since attempting to bend the knives back is harmful to the inner layers of the steel and can lead to unexpected sharp breaks.
In cases where repair of the knife handle is required, it will have to be installed in the same way as it was installed at the factory, so evaluate your abilities. First, you should wrap the blade with tape so as not to scratch it or cut yourself when installing the handle. The most common failure is the falling out of the pins that secure the plate handle. Remove both halves of the handle, clean them completely from inside from glue, and clean the shank. Estimate the fastenings, if necessary, cut the necessary holes on the inside of the handle halves for the rivets, check that everything fits well. Separate all the parts of the knife, lubricate them with a thin layer of two-component glue and assemble the product, insert the pins and fasten it together. The handle cannot be placed in a vice or under a press while the glue dries - otherwise the parts will be fixed in an unnatural position and, after removal, will bend back - such a handle will be extremely short-lived. Cut off the protruding ends of the pins and carefully sand them.
If there is no desire or opportunity to replace/repair a knife that has become unusable from a craftsman, but they need to be worked on, our advice will help. With their help, it will be possible to repair the handle and correct the blade itself.
Types of blade defects and methods for eliminating them
Chips and deformations on the cutting edge
The most common type of damage is chipping or deformation of the cutting edge. They should not be confused with blunting: in this case, the line formed at the place where the leads meet simply ceases to be imaginary and forms an additional plane that glares in the light; chips are uneven damage to this very line of convergence. If you turn the knife towards you with the side where the cutting edge is located, or look carefully at the blade from the side, the chipping will be visible. These are the chips. In case of deformation, on the contrary, the cutting edge retains its integrity, but “goes in a wave” - it bends in different directions, preventing a comfortable cut.
How do we fix it? To do this, we completely remove the metal to the place where the descents end and the approaches begin. If the blade has a profile without leads, we grind it down to the place where the deepest chip ends or where the deformation of the cutting edge began. We should get a flat additional surface, from which we will have to “extract” the updated cutting edge. This is done in three stages: first, the blade is rough sharpened to determine where and how much metal needs to be removed from the slopes, then the slopes are ground on both sides (that is, the supply is leveled - it is made equal in thickness along the entire length of the blade), and then the final fine-tuning
Broken off point
If the very tip of the blade is broken off, it’s okay; the repair is done almost identically to the previous case. First, the blade is ground down, giving it the required form, after that they sharpen, forming new slopes, and only then remove the cutting edge from the right angle. An option for the lazy is to grind off some metal from the butt and create a new point just below the location of the old one.
Scratches and chips on the holomen (side surfaces of the blade)
This and the next type of damage are the most difficult to eliminate. Usually the blade is hard enough to withstand household mechanical damage, that is, the risk of scratching it on something is unlikely. Most often, holomen are scratched during careless sharpening, when grindstone not supplied or Bottom part descents, if there are no leads, and the entire blade is flat.
Shallow damage can be removed using grinding wheel or sandpaper laid on a flat surface, for example on glass (ordinary GOI paste on a polishing wheel is unlikely to cope with them). If the steel is hardened, this will be very difficult to do. After all, in addition to removing deep scratch, you will also have to fill out the hole left on the surface of the blade from it.
Blade curvature
Often is another complex look damage - an “unhealthy” bend occurs when something heavy is picked up with a knife. Even if we perform the exact reverse action, we will either get an additional bend or even break the blade (for example, if the steel is hardened to high hardness units, that is, one that does not bend, but simply breaks under lateral load).
If the blade is flexible, it should be clamped in a vice through wooden spacers and carefully straightened with your hands, observing safety precautions, and always wearing gloves (preferably chain mail or specially designed to protect against cuts). When the blade acquires a shape close to its original one, it can be placed on a flat surface and tapped with the narrow side of a hammer, removing any remaining deformations and finally leveling it.
Repairing or changing the handle
Handles are divided into two main types - overhead and mounted. Before working with the handle, wrap the blade tightly with something to avoid injury; To do this, you can use tape, electrical tape or a strip of fabric, the ends of which are secured with thread or glue.
Inserting pins
Most often, handle play occurs when the pins and rivets that secure it to the shank become loose or fall out completely. In this case, the repair is done as follows:
- both plates that make up the handle are removed;
- their internal surfaces, as well as the surface of the shank, are cleaned of glue and adjusted together with a file or emery to eliminate both backlash and gaps when mating with each other;
- the parts are lubricated with new two-component glue and tightly applied to each other;
- pins are inserted;
- the resulting assembly is securely fixed with clamps or in a vice and left until completely dry, after which the protruding ends of the pins are cut off and ground.
This is important: while the glue is drying, you should not apply too much force to the assembly (for example, placing the handle under a press). The assembly may “float” under excessive load and lock in the wrong position in relation to the pins that have not yet been cut. Ready product after repair it will be unusable.
Changing the handle on a knife with a mounted mount is done in the same way, but instead of the old handle, a new one is taken. In the Japanese tradition, the shank is generally made in such a way that even at home, an old handle from a magnolia chef’s knife can be knocked down and a new one can be put on, which is sold as consumables. In the budget segment, for the most part, not the best materials are used for the manufacture of handles. suitable breeds wood, including those with defects; To hide the defectiveness of the material, a thick layer of paint and varnish is placed on the handle, which makes it slippery and uncomfortable. Replacing such a handle is forced and allows you to radically improve not only appearance knife, but also the safety of working with it.
Helpful advice: instead of varnishing, a wooden handle can be protected from rotting and damage by regularly oiling it with natural compounds, such as clove or boiled linseed oil.
If the knife has a slippery handle and there is no stop (guard or developed bolster), you can drill a hole at the end of the handle, thread a lanyard cord into it and put the resulting loop on your wrist - it will prevent your hand from slipping onto the blade and getting injured.
If you make the guard yourself, check with current legislation, so as not to accidentally modify an ordinary knife to the point that it would qualify as a bladed weapon.
The knife does not have to be repaired if it is purchased from a reliable seller, and it is used only for its intended purpose. You can learn about how to use knives correctly, how to store and care for them in other articles on our blog.