How to regrind a damaged knife

A couple of months ago a regular customer asked me to try to repair a damaged
Buck sheath knife. I decided it would be an excellent opportunity to do a basic how
to on regrinding a damaged blade.


Here we start with the damaged knife. Please note that huge chip that had
been knocked out of the blade.



The first step is to mark out a rough area to allow for correcting the damage
by changing the blade pattern slightly. In this case, turning a damaged straight
point in a recurve pattern. A Sharpie works just fine since it is will stand up to
grinding and water.



There are several ways you can remove excess steel from a tempered knife blade.
If you have the time and patience you could use a half round file, I prefer something
a little faster though. In this case a bench grinder with a medium grit stone for
course stock removal and a belt sander for fine tuning. The key to a regrind is to
keep the blade as cool as possible during the regrinding process to avoid burning
the temper out of the blade. This can be easily done by frequently dipping the
blade in water during grinding and using light pressure on the grind stone and belt
sander, you want to let them slowly remove material not see how many sparks
you can produce.



Now the blade's new pattern is more well defined but it still needs a bit more
fine tuning to get it right. From the picture below you can see darker patches
from stains on the blade. These were removed using a loose soft buff and red
rouge polishing compound to avoid losing too much of the blade's original
factory finish.



Now the regrinding is complete all there is left is to do the final clean up and
sharpen the blade. Cleaning it up is just a matter of washing it in warn soapy
water to remove the last of polishing compound and any left over fine grinder
grit on the handle. If the blade is carbon steel make sure that it is completely
dried and lightly oiled to prevent rusting.



Finally, the finished knife and it's new custom made sheath. The sheath was
a special request for this project since the knife came into my customer's possession
minus it's original sheath.



~Fin~