How to Grind a Chef knife for new knife makers!!!!

well guys thanks for coming back to another one today we are working on a bunch of chef knives i've got four of them i'm kind of working on right now i've got three of them all ground finished well actually two of them are finished round i'm about to do the third and i thought i would do a quick video explaining how i grind my chef knife so i pretty much have one very simple seven inch blade chef knife design that i do primarily in 52 100 steel and they're they're 332nd thickness is what i find works good so this is the design like i said seven inch blade uh they work great i absolutely love them and i haven't really messed with the design since i did it so i guess i'm going to show kind of my belt progression uh and how i get that edge nice and thin before hand sanding so here's what i'm working on actually hand sanding this blade and i'm like you know what i'm tired of hand sanding i'm gonna finish grinding this other one so this is a damascus one like i said i just started hand sanding and that's the plunge that we're going for you guys can obviously do however you want it a lot of people bring them up a little higher um but that gives you an idea on what grind we're going for let's see if it's really hard to show but this is almost at zero as far as the edge thickness i left just a tiny bit on there to uh so i could hand sand it and get it right to zero after hand sanding but uh i'm gonna take a break from hand sanding this right now and uh show you guys how to grind it all right so i got the grinder ready i've got a 36 grit ceramic red label abrasives belt on there um i like to use pretty much new ones when grinding these chef knives because there's so much material you're hogging off and i do all the grinding after heat treat which you know it's totally up to you how you want to do it i prefer to do it that way just to avoid warping is mainly why uh but it makes grinding them a little bit harder so right now this is this knife here is gonna have a full satin finish okay so my flats i've already got the satin finish done and i've laid down a little bit of tape as you can see underneath my plunge uh file guide and just so it doesn't get scratched up while i'm doing my grind on the uh bevels so you can see i've got my guide in place where i'm gonna have that plunge line i've got my center scribe line in there you can yeah you can kind of see it that's cool and we're ready to grind this thing right now so what i'm gonna do is pretty much run this wide open and i'm just hogging off a lot of material and getting that edge down down thin it's real key to keep it cool you know constantly dip dip dip keep it cold but with that 36 grit belt i'm gonna take this down really thin and i'll show you guys kind of how far i take it and that way kind of how this works is once you get that edge to where it's really thin it's a lot easier to to burn it or ruin your temper so i like to take it as far as i possibly can with a 36 before switching like i go 36 80 120 and then 180 240 normally so once you get up into those higher grip belts it's a lot easier to burn your edges so pretty much i get all my grinding done with that 36 grip belt and then i'm just really refining that scratch pattern uh with those finer grip belts and working my way up so enough that i'm going to flip this on get grinding and kind of show you guys along the ways and the different steps i'm taking to get that edge nice and thin [Music] all right so i'll quickly stop where i'm at right here and show you guys kind of okay so first of all the even the evenness of this bevel doesn't matter at all because it's all it's going full flat okay so the key right now is just getting that edge nice and thin and not burning it and trying to make sure you're getting it good and even on your plunge okay make sure that stays good and even all the way and your edge stays good and even all the way okay and as of right now i'm at uh about 35 000 okay so i've still got a long ways to go on that 36 grit but i wanted to just quickly show you guys what it's looking like and i'm going to bring this down quite a bit more obviously on the 36 before changing belts once i get my edge thickness roughly where i want it i'm going to i kind of continue to bring this bevel up higher and higher as i'm working that edge thinner that's totally up to you guys as well um you can see this one is a lot lower than this one okay which doesn't matter like i said i'm going to bring that up all the way and but my scribe line is what you really want to focus on and right now i need to bring a little bit more off this side just looking at that scribe line to make sure it's good and even but the main thing on this step is keeping your edge even and not not getting thinner in certain spots i guess is kind of how i would explain it keep it nice and even don't worry about your bevel top bevel line just worry about getting that edge even thickness while you're grinding this okay so i'm going to kick it back on i'm running this pretty much wide open too i'm just constantly dunking and dunking keeping it cool you don't want to mess your temper up while doing this and that's the that's the tricky part about grinding these so i'm going to bring this down thinner i'm going to bring my bevel up almost to full flat okay when i do these i bring them all the way up about uh you i just leave maybe a quarter inch with the 36 in or the 36 grit belt and then i bring it the rest of the way up with my finer grit belts uh so anyways done rambling i'm going to finish this on 36 and show you guys where it's at [Music] [Music] all right we are done with our 36 grit belt getting my other belts down here and we're going to an 80 right now and uh i'm going to show you really quick kind of what it's looking like so let me measure the edge thickness here real quick uh because i'm not i'm not positive what it's at i just kind of know off of uh me eyeballing it and we're at about fifteen thousands okay i think that's how you say it i'm not a machinist i don't know that's just i use these and they help them give me a good idea uh so as you i'm not sure how good you're gonna be able to kind of tell from me grinding in these time lapse videos i'm doing um but i got my edge thickness down to where i wanted it okay with that 36 grit belt and as i got that where i wanted i started applying more pressure up towards the spine kind of keeping it flat but just kind of giving it a little more pressure and raising that plunger that bevel all the way to the top to where you can see i've still got a little bit that is untouched there okay same with on this side it's a little bit that's not hit yet with that belt and the reason i do that is if you bring it all the way up with a 36 what happens is as you get as you move up belt progression you end up digging in a little bit and and you don't want that you want this to be fully smooth all the way down you past your plunge so basically you're just barely hitting that top part of your plunge uh with that finer grip belt to flatten it out even it out and you don't really want it indenting in there at least i don't but like i said that's all how you guys how high you want yours up whatever you guys want to do with that um this video is more about belt progression and how i uh grind these edges nice and thin so that being said with chef knives you know the goal is to get your edge to where it's about it's at zero so it should be pretty much sharp when it comes off the grinder before you even sharpen it and i've tested edges a little bit with this and i brought some down to five thousandths and and used them a little bit and i brought some down to zero and used them a little bit and those zero degree uh bevels do perform a little bit better obviously but you also have to know who's going to be using the knife and and kind of judge it off that a little bit now my personal chef knife that i have it's at zero um because i'm gonna take care of it i kind of know to be a little bit more careful with that zero degree edge it's so fine um if you're sending it off to somebody that maybe doesn't have a ton of experience with higher end chef knives maybe leave just a little bit more on that edge to avoid it from chipping or anything like that so this one i'm taking all the way to zero uh pretty much and i it also when it comes off the grinder you have to kind of know how you're gonna finish it so this one is getting a full satin belt finish okay i'm not hand sanding this one at all so basically i'm going to finish it right on the grinder and so that kind of [Music] is a variable and how how thin you bring that edge okay so uh you can see like i said i'm at about 15 thousandths right now let's see you guys can't really see and that's about where i bring my um hunting knives and stuff like that too but uh we put on an 80 grit belt i'm gonna kick the speed way down on this 80 grit because you can burn it up so fast probably run it at about 50 power on your vfd and the first thing i'm going to be doing is uh is bringing that edge down a little bit thinner okay and i'm gonna do the same thing i did with the 36 i'm going to bring it down and then i'm going to slowly work my way up towards the spine okay and like i said i'm not going all the way flat with it yet but i'm just gonna get really close and as i get up to that to that 180 grit belt is when i'm finally going to finish off that top spot at least that's how i do it the main thing here is you're refining those 36 grit scratches down to an 80 grit scratch and getting that edge down just a little thinner go really slow with this step and these next steps take it really slow take your time dunk all the time like almost after every little pass keep it cool or else you're going to burn that edge and you're going to be mad so here we go let's get this 80 grit belt done [Music] okay so there is our 80 grit see right there i'm just i'm not quite to the top there you can see i brought it up a lot higher our edge thickness right now is about eight thousands okay so we're getting really thin even eight thousands too like i said keep it really even constantly watch this spot here to make sure both sides are looking really good and even and now we're going to slow it down even more probably at about 30 percent power ish with a fresh fresh crispy 120 grit belt and we're gonna get that edge really close to where we want it now uh bring it down to probably about three or four thousands or so with this one and uh yeah let's do it [Music] do [Music] all right well i just showed the 120 grit final kind of 120 grit progression now i'm not going to show any higher because it's totally up to you how you want to do it now if you're going to hand sand finish this blade take it as high as you want before hand sanding and just make sure on that final grit you're going really slow taking it nice and smooth and easy like you just saw me doing and and really focusing on specific spots on that edge making sure it's really even keep your thumb right up against it so as soon as it starts to get warm dunk it and use fresh belts so i'm doing a belt finish on this so i'm going to take it up to 240 and do my kind of secret belt finish uh process and but yeah hopefully you learned a little bit about how to kind of get started at grinding chef knives um right now the edge is almost at zero it's really hard to show super thin but uh yeah so hopefully you learned something from this video if you have any questions drop it in the comments below i'm not sure how well i covered that um and if you have any ideas for future videos drop it in the comments below i really appreciate that and uh yeah thanks for checking it out guys

Channel: GentryCustomKnives

Views: 20,847

Keywords: knife making, chef knife, knife grinding, 2x72, free hand grinding, free hand bevels, knife grinding tips, knife making tips, how to, maker, better bevels, culinary knife, santoku, fixed blade, chef, knife grinder, knives

Id: rXi-pEFtSZA

Length: 15min 11sec (911 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021