Professional Knife Sharpening

---

Tuesday through Saturday from 10AM to 5PM

 
Bronk’s Knifeworks & Sharpening Service can tune up your cutlery, hair shears or garden tools to exceed the original factory edge and also sharpen a variety of other items as well, such as fabric shears, wood chisels and mower blades.   

I was set up at Country Village for 20 years until they sold out to developers. I am now set up at the North Creek Valley Grange location at 

19510 Bothell-Everett Hwy, Bothell, WA 98012 

near Mill Creek across the street from Lombardi’s restaurant. I am situated on the South side of Tiles for Less and between Wise Key Shop and  La Sabrosa Taqueria food truck. 

If you need a key made or a locksmith to break into your strong box, these are the guys. 

The Taco truck next to me is a must visit, good food.

Look for our new location and brand new building next to Wise’s key shop. You will be able to see my tiny shop once you have entered the parking lot right next to the Taqueria Taco truck, which by the way is some darned good grub, if I say so myself.

Note that the above address is my shop location but not my mailing address. Mailing address is 

Bronk's Knifeworks

2020 Maltby Road, Suite 7

Box 180

Bothell, WA 98021

 Update May 2022:  I moved the shop 40 feet to the South to allow the Wise Key Shop to set up their new building on the Northern border of the Grange property. 

This will open up the front of the property and let folks see what businesses are at the Grange.

Sharpening a dull knife with a fine grit stone, that is meant to polish the final edge, is too fine to remove metal and is similar to using a tea spoon to dig a basement.Using a coarser stone for the job can still be laborious as well and takes time and patience. 

For a professional to sharpen these dull knives by hand is not cost effective and can be very expensive. On the other hand, someone who is not knowledgeable or careful can ruin a blade by over heating it with power driven tools. Then again there are motorized sharpeners that do poor job at best of sharpening and can chew up a blade in short order. No wonder folks have trouble keeping their knives sharp.

Holding a knife to stone while sharpening at the proper angle can be difficult but there are a few sharpeners now that can take the guess out of that part of the equation.  The Edge Pro system is one of these systems and I use one occasionally but I still prefer the belt grinder for the benefit of speed. 

After years of standing at the belt grinder, it feels like just an extension of my arm and it saves me much time and my customers money for sharpening services. 

There are knife sharpeners who charge Three dollars an inch for their services and more for extras and they are no doubt good at what they do. I’m often asked now often to bring in knives for sharpening and the answer is, whenever you can’t cut anymore safely or easily with the blade. Often you can bring a blade back to use by a few strokes on a steel or by a quick few strokes on a ceramic stick like the Spyderco Sharpmaker.

 A professional service comes into play when it becomes difficult to bring up the edge quickly or when the blade develops sway or some other abnormal shape.  Quick touch ups can be accomplished by Spyderco’s Sharpmaker in between sharpening and some even use it for major edge repair 

Warning: I have noticed a large number of German knives with damaged handles. One is caused by soaking the knife in water with soap etc. Many of the rivets are zinc and the galvanic action in electrolyte solution such as salt or soap will quickly eat the rivet away.

Second: is the deterioration of the plastic handle itself, from leaving the knife in the dish washer, during the drying cycle. That heat drives out the solvents in the plastic and lets the handle shrink enough to split the handle at the rivets.

History of modern manufactured cutlery:

For many decades or even centuries, manufactures set up shop near the steal mills and learned what the best steels for knives were. !084 and other steels with .75 to 1 percent carbon dominated the knife industry and over the many decades tooling evolved to mass produce these steels into quality knives. Carbon is the ingredient that turns iron into usable steel and proper heat treating of it make for superior knives. Too much or too little carbon makes for an inferior knife. 1060 or .6% carbon steel was commonly used to  make both plow shares and swords because of the toughness of the steel. 

When stainless steel was invented some thought that it would be good for cutlery but real stainless has no carbon and would not take or hold an edge so the idea faded away for a time. When the newer stain resistant carbon steels came into being that were used for projects needing more hardness such as aviation, it was discovered that some of these steels, such as 154CM, would make a good knife and be resistant to corrosion. This Boing steel was pioneered for knives by Bob Loveless and I used it for many years myself. 

When the cutlery corporations tried to adopt the stainless steel knives for their line of cutlery they found that they had a major problem in that these steels would not yield to the same tooling as used by carbon steels.

To this day many of these companies are still using the same technology and tooling and have reduced the amount of carbon to .5% in the stainless steel to accommodate their manufacturing equipment. That reduction in carbon is significant in the performance of their current blades, sadly.

During this same period of time the Japanese were coming on strong and making quality items for export. Facing the same dilemma they chose to travel a different path as the newly invented laser cutting machines were available but too prohibitive for European and American manufactures. 

To this day, Japanese knives rule and are of the best quality found anywhere in the world and now the rest of the world is slowly waking up to the reality and investing in laser technology.

Brands to look for are: Kia, Kershaw, Misen and a myriad of small Japanese manufactures too many to mention here for now.

_________________________________________

$9.00 for a 8” chef, add $1.00 per inch extra for longer blades, 

$8.00 for utility blades and 

$6.00 per pairing knives.

Serrated knives  $1.25 per inch. Serrated blades are normally sharpened on the flat side only but will eventually remove the serrations and will leave you with a regular knife. It is impossible to maintain the serrations as different manufacturers use a wide variety of sizes and shapes of serrations.

Cleavers  $9.00 Cleavers are made in different thicknesses to accommodate different tasks. They can be sharpened for heavy chopping or for fine chopping.  

Swords:  Some swords were never factory sharpened and may take considerable work to establish an edge and if it is etched with false hammon, the etching may be ground off in order to obtain a proper edge angle. Please inquire for estimate.

Hair Shears $20.00  

Running a $10.00 special on hair shears to introduce my services to the beauticians trade.

Fabric shears $8.00 pair.
Knife Edge $10.00  Kitchen shears $6.00  

Machetes $15.00  

Axe Start at $7.00  and can run a bit more if it needs a lot of work to bring back to correct edge geometry. Axe Start at $7.00

Pruners,  Grass loppers and other garden tools sometimes need to be disassembled to be sharpened as well as cleaned and oiled. This makes it difficult to set a price as time can vary to each task. Shop time is set at $50.00 per hour.

Chisels  Chisels and planner blades are best hollow ground and then hand sharpened and come under shop time. Average price $7.00.

 Double Bevel Edges;  Some shops expound on the double bevel ground edge and that basically is what I normally do as standard fare. I first bring up the edge angle and then if needed, I will grind in a shallower angle at the edges heal, for better performance. It is then finished off by polishing with finer grits until razor sharp resulting in an apple seed shaped edge that is strong and long lasting. Some blades will require an actual blade thinning however.  

Reconditioning the Blade  Reconditioning the blade tip by Straightening or regrinding $3.00. Sometimes a blade tip will be bent or broken by dropping the knife to the floor or by using it to pry with. I will attempt to straighten the tip but about 1 in 20 will break in the attempt and then I will simply regrind the blade to a new shape before sharpening.

Bolsters,  Cracks and Blade Sway: Level blade & bolster $3.00, 

Reshape bolster by hollow grinding $5.00

Most knife sharpeners will remove more metal between the bolster and the forward curve of the blade, leaving the cutting edge sway back and off of the cutting board in use. This needs to be addressed in order to use the knife on the cutting board properly.  I also check the blade for cracks, chips and blade sway and regrind the blade and bolster to remove these problems. I further recommend thinning the bolsters by hollow grinding them down to the thickness of the blade edge in order to make clearance for both cutting and re-sharpening.  

Hollow Handles and Bolsters

 The hollow handles are a problem with the chef knife in some cutlery sets as the hollow handle is also included in the bolster that extends down to the edge. As the edge wears the extended bolster gets lower  than the edge and prevents the blade from cutting all the way through to the cutting board.   Because the bolster is hollow, it can't be ground off level with the edge without grinding through and leaving a cavity for food to get trapped.   

Edge Thinning.   Most of the time, I can spot whether or not a knife needs a lot of thinning, but it can be difficult to establishing on some knives before I establish a new edge. It is easier to determine how thick the blade edge is after I first grind in the edge angle

The reason that a knife becomes thicker at the edge is because most of the blades are ground with a taper from the edge to the spine, which is left thicker to give the blade some strength and stiffness.  Blades are ground from approximately 1/8” stock, some thinner,  up to ¼” stock or even more. 

A good average grind will leave the edge for most blades about 0.020” thick. A least that is what I shoot for with most of my blades that I make. Some blades are ground thinner such as straight razors and the Japanese laminated cook’s knives. These very thin blades cut very well but are very delicate and fragile.  

As the knife becomes dull and is repeatedly sharpened, the blade becomes narrower and the edge moves towards the thicker spine of the knife. The closer the edge approaches the spine, the thicker it becomes.  Some blades will require more that just an edge thinning after much use and will require the entire blade to be thinned. This usually requires an extra charge for these services.  

Blade Thinning:  $3.00 per inch or $20.00 for average chef knife

With use and multiple sharpening, a blade becomes thicker at the edge and cuts much less efficiently. Thinning the blade will extend the knife’s usefulness and make cutting chores much easier. It is accomplished by grinding the blade bevel at a very low angle, high up towards the spine of the blade, until the edge is again at the proper blade thickness and then giving the blade a new finish. Similar to the double bevel but much more extreme. 

You can send your knives to me and I will return them to you next day or soon after with new edges.
Mailing address; 

Bronk’s Knifeworks, 

2020 Maltby Road, Suite 7, 

PMB 180, Bothell, WA 98021 

Contact at bronks@bronksknifeworks.com. Phone; 425 478-6809

• Jfo L.
• Everett, WA 6/30/2016

I took 3 of my kitchen knives to Bronk’s and had a great experience. Not only is Lyle an upstanding, amazing guy to talk to but this guy can friggin sharpen a knife like no ones business! I was washing my knife with a sponge today and it straight up slit my brand new sponge! Oh and he sharpens them fast! I caught him when he wasn’t busy so it only took him 20+/- minutes for all 3 🙂

I wish I didn’t push off sharpening my knives month after month, so that I could have seen Bronk’s Knife Works when it was at the Country Village :/

Note: His location location is NOT visible from the street. It’s a small wooden type shed between F&F Auto Clinic and Tile For Less.

• Don S.
• Everett, WA  11/25/2015
• Found this place by accident as I was driving through and I’m glad I did. I stopped by this morning to get my folder sharpened and have the tip repaired. I expected to drop the knife off and come back a few days later. Nope the owner Lyle had it done Ina matter of minutes. When he was done it was the sharpest knife I’ve ever had sharpened before. Best $5 I’ve spent in a long time!While looking around his shop I got the opportunity to look at his other work. Lyles love and craftsmanship is top notch. Every blade is one of a kind and very high quality.Finding a great knifesmith is hard to find. I’ll be keeping this guy in my phone book.

• Craig W.
• Bothell, WA 2/20/2016
• I love cooking and I love my knives.
  I took an assortment of knives over to Lyle for sharpening.
  Wow!!! What a difference. He did an impeccable job. Lyle had them ready for me the next morning and charged me a very reasonable price.
  Thanks Lyle.
• 
  
  • Marty D.
  • Mountlake Terrace, WA 5/31/2015
• It might be 5 stars because I haven’t had sharp knives in a while.  The gentleman that works there, I presume the owner, also offers knife making classes on equipment that he made himself.  I’m glad to have a small local business around that does this.

Other web sites that you may like about cutlery and their use and care

https://helpfulchef.com/helpful-guide-to-kitchen-knives/

https://kitchenknifeguru.com/sharpeners/reviews-of-professional-knife-sharpening-services/

Brutus. As you might already know, I've been making knives since 1976 and one of my most recent will be offered up on Kickstart. This folding knife incorporates our patented Xrossbar Locking system and is the Workman's line of tools that will utilize the same handle but will be offered with a variety of different blades to cover many different job tasks.

The Xrossbar lock may very well be the strongest and safest folding system on the planet, but then we'll let you decide that.

E mail me at bronks@bronksknifeworks.com to place your self on the alert list and put Brutus in the subject box.

Have you opened a new location, redesigned your shop, or added a new product or service? Don't keep it to yourself, let folks know.

Customers have questions, you have answers. Display the most frequently asked questions, so everybody benefits.