No matter if you’re a professional chef or a weekend warrior in the woods, you know how crucial it is to keep your knives in tip-top shape. If you want to avoid last-minute hassles, make sure your blades are always sharp. A dull blade may turn even the simplest operation into a time-consuming ordeal. So, you would probably want to know how much does knife sharpening cost?
Sharpening knives is a service that is reasonably priced. Your knife sharpening needs can be met for under $50 with do-it-yourself knife sharpening equipment. To compare, having your knives professionally sharpened will set you back between $75 and $100 two to three times each year. That depends on the baldes’ quality and quantity.
Keeping your knives in top condition all year doesn’t have to break the bank. How much you spend on knife sharpening is entirely in your hands. You have the option of taking your blades to a professional, sending them away to be sharpened by mail, or doing it yourself using a knife sharpening kit. Check here for methods that fit your budget!
Benefits of Regular Knife Sharpening
Maintaining a razor-sharp edge on your blades has a few useful side effects. This, first and foremost, ensures the safety of your knives at all times. A dull knife increases the risk of cutting yourself. As a corollary, your knives will always function better if you sharpen them frequently.
Having a sharp knife will help you save time and effort in the kitchen. This means less force is required while slicing. Moreover, a well-maintained knife will outlast one that hasn’t been sharpened in a long time. Keeping a sharp edge on your knives is important for their continued use, safety, and effectiveness.
Knife Sharpening Cost: Professional Local Sharpening
Professional sharpening costs $75 to $100 per visit, several times in a year, while a good do-it-yourself set can be purchased for under $50. How you have your knives sharpened will have the most impact on the final price you pay. Knife sharpening services come in three varieties:
- To get your knife sharpened by a pro, take it to a local knife shop.
- Submit an online form and send in your knives to be sharpened by experts.
- To save money and time, get a knife sharpening machine for home use.
🔪Local Sharpening Costs
The cost per knife in a professional store is consistent across locations. There will be a set fee of between $1 and $2 in each knife, based on the length of the blade. This fee may vary slightly depending on the store and the specific knife in question, but it is often in this range.
In contrast, expect to pay more if you require work beyond a simple sharpening.
- When a knife is bent, a repair cost of $5 to $10 is applied to the bill.
- Repairing a broken knife or blade tip by a professional can set you back between $5 and $20.
- Depending on the style of knife, you should expect to pay an additional $5 to $20 to have it repaired if it has been chipped.
- You can also ask for the bevel width below the knife’s primary edge to be narrowed by the sharpener to improve the knife’s strength and performance, a practice known as “thinning the blade.” The average price for this service is $10.
🔪Pros and Cons of Local Sharpening Services
There are typically several independently owned sharpening services in every given city. Using a local service provider provides advantages to the community as a whole.
Pros:
✅Reduce your delivery costs
It can get costly to ship products through the mail. Buying from a local shop eliminates the need to pay shipping costs.
✅Transportation is under your command
You may guarantee the safe arrival of your knives without worrying about them becoming lost or broken in transit.
✅Reduced waiting time
Because shipping and receiving are avoided in a local context, turnaround times can be reduced. Usually, you may have your knives back from a local shop in less than two days, rather than having to wait a whole week.
Cons:
❎Transporting
You’ll need to drop off the knives at the store and return them when you’re notified that they’re finished being sharpened. Accomplishing this can be challenging and inconvenient.
❎The cost of being late
If you don’t come to pick up your knives by the agreed-upon time, some stores may charge you a late fee. Finance costs might soon accumulate.
How Much Does Knife Sharpening Cost: Professional Online Sharpening
Online purchasing is becoming increasingly common and convenient. You may buy just about everything, from groceries to exercise programs to professional knife sharpening. By using this method, you can sharpen your knives quickly and easily with little work. In fact, several websites will send you a prepaid, pre-labeled box to return your knives in. The process is simplified, and time is saved compared to going to a knife store nearby.
🔪Online Sharpening Costs
There won’t be a huge price difference between using an online service and going to a physical store, with the following exceptions:
- In general, you may expect to pay between $1 and $2 per inch of blade.
- The average cost of shipping and sharpening for a set of knives is $14.75, assuming you get pre-labeled boxes.
- If you don’t have a label on hand, shipping will cost roughly $10.
- When you buy multiple knives from an online store, you usually get a discount. Some companies will also give you free shipping if you spend more than a certain amount on honing services (usually around $75).
Some sites even let you sign up for a recurring service so you can send in your knives for frequent sharpening at a reduced rate.
🔪Pros and Cons of Online Sharpening Services
Online knife sharpening, like many other businesses today, is gaining popularity for a variety of reasons. There are companies that provide the same high-quality service as a brick-and-mortar store but also let you ship your knives to them for repairs.
Pros:
✅Lack of Transportation
It will save you time and effort to not have to drop off the knives and then return to retrieve them after they have been serviced. They can be sent and delivered to your front door.
✅Quick and simple delivery
The service company will give you mail-order packaging that is already labeled so it is easy to send your knives. Some businesses that specialize in knife sharpening provide convenient and secure shipping kits for sending and returning your blades.
✅Get discounts by subscribing
Subscription services are provided by some online businesses; users sign up for them and receive their goods or services at regular intervals, typically once or twice a year. You can save money on this deal by prepaying for a full year of service.
Cons:
❎Transport expenses
Shipping fees are calculated according to the package’s actual weight. Costs might quickly add up when sending something as bulky as a set of knives.
❎Extended waiting time
Time spent shipping and receiving means your knives will not be returned until much later than they would be if you took them to a store in person.
❎Sending problems
It’s risky to send your knives through the mail to a specialist because they could get lost or broken.
❎Assistance to clients
Sometimes it’s harder to get in touch with an internet business than a local one. In other words, you may forget about driving over there to get answers to your questions in person.
At-Home DIY Knife Sharpening Sets
Surely you’re familiar with the adage, “If you want things done well, you’ve got to do it yourself.” If you feel this way about sharpening knives, it’s probably preferable to have a set for your home. An abundance of home-improvement kits can be found online. Some even feature an electric gadget that sharpens knives by sliding them back and forth across a revolving stone.
It’s also possible to get the task done with just a stone, a block, and some oil if you’re more of a traditionalist. In either case, there are a plethora of selections that should be able to meet the requirements of any shopper.
🔪Home Sharpening Set Costs
A kit may be more cost-effective unless you intend to establish a knife-honing enterprise or are a knife collector with hundreds of blades. This is due to the fact that the only upfront cost will be for the sharpening set. As it keeps functioning properly, which could be a couple of years or less.
As was previously said, there are several distinct categories of sharpening sets, each with its own price point:
Kits for Honing Electric Knives
For around $30 to $50, you can get an electric knife sharpener that will make maintaining your knife’s edge a breeze. You can get your knives razor sharp with the help of specialized tools like the Blade Keeper or the Narcissus Knife Sharpener which include rotating abrasive wheels. This is an excellent choice if you want a razor-sharp blade without the hassle of using a brick or the added expense of shipping.
Brick and Stone Construction Kit
Traditional stone and brick pairs have been utilized for years and cost around $20-$50. Providing you with complete control over the sharpening process, you can get a kit at any big-box retailer, hardware store, or even online. An easy-to-use kit, like the Sharp Pebble or the Whetstone Knife Sharpening Stone will help you achieve a razor’s edge at a fraction of the expense of a professional sharpening service. Master the art of sharpening knives with a stone.
Industrial Knife Grinder
Prices range from $200-$700, making these machines more expensive than other do-it-yourself solutions. However, they can help you save a lot of money over time. Even after the first few sets of knives are sharpened, a professional knife sharpening machine like the Tormek T-2 Pro will pay for itself in time and money saved over using an outside service.
🔪Pros and Cons of DIY Sharpening
Knives have been sharpened by families for millennia. You have complete say over the sharpening procedure, allowing you to get exactly the edge you want on your blades. While doing it yourself may require more work, it will save you time, money, and stress in the long run.
Pros:
✅Maintaining a constant presence
As part of a do-it-yourself kit, the sharpener will always be within reach.
✅The product is under your complete command
If you do it yourself, you get to choose the tool that does the sharpening. For each knife, you can select the optimal sharpening stone or other product.
✅Shipping costs are ignored
So forget about the cost and hassle of mailing your knives to someone else.
✅Services are free of charge
Every single task is completed by your own fair hands. With that, worrying about service payments to third parties would have no place.
✅Without delivery or collection
You don’t have to waste time traveling to and from the store to sharpen your knives; you can do it right at home.
Cons:
❎Time-consuming
It can take anything from 10 to 15 minutes to sharpen one knife. If you don’t have the skill, fixing numerous blades at once could take all night.
❎Method
Sharpening a knife properly requires skill and experience or you risk damaging your blade. Finding the excellent quality sharpening materials for your knives also matters.
❎No Guarantees
You’ll have to foot the bill for repairs or a new knife if you damage it while sharpening it.
❎Practice regular sharpening
Because the professional equipment is so much more advanced than what you have at home, you can expect far better outcomes from the pros. However, this will require you to sharpen your blades more frequently.
Knife-Sharpening Method: Which Is More Cost-Effective?
Knife sharpening is an inexpensive skill that pays for itself quickly. A sharpening stone is a standard and widely recommended approach. This handy implement may be used on both rough and smooth surfaces. Its coarse side is used to carve out the new edge, and the fine side is used for polishing. Using a honing rod is another option that works well and is worth the money. You can readjust the blade using this steel rod.
Rather than actually sharpening the blade, it keeps it in good shape. The final solution worth considering is investing in a knife sharpener. Despite their high price tag, these devices are reliable and productive. If you’d base your costing on that, you may think of the cost of knife sharpening.
Cost of Knife Sharpening Cost: Factors to Consider
The price of having your knives sharpened depends on several variables. Important considerations include knife type, knife quantity, and sharpening service. The knife sharpening cost depends on what kinds of blades you have.
However, not all knives are equally challenging to hone. It’s more challenging, for instance, to sharpen a serrated knife than a non-serrated knife. Therefore, the price of sharpening a serrated knife is typically higher than that of a non-serrated knife.
The number of knives that need to be sharpened is another factor that will affect the final cost. The price per knife rises as the number of knives sharpened increases. Knife sharpening costs can differ depending on where you take your blades.
Larger chain stores usually charge more per knife than smaller shops and services because they have to pay more for their location and marketing. However, you may be able to find a more affordable per-knife rate with a smaller company that focuses solely on knife sharpening.
Other Factors for Consideration for Knife Sharpening Cost
The following may be of interest to you, along with the variables influencing price:
- Make sure the person you hire to sharpen your knives has experience, training, and/or certification in the art of knife maintenance and sharpening.
- If they have some sort of satisfaction or warranty policy, it’s a good sign that they’re confident in their work and want to make sure you’re satisfied with the results.
- Check out the company’s rating in the yellow pages or a local directory, as well as any customer reviews they may have received.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Would it be beneficial to get your knives sharpened by a professional?
Depending on how often you use them, you should only need to sharpen your knives every few months, and I recommend having them professionally sharpened once every year or two.
Q: Do you sharpen a knife better wet or dry?
Even though you can use a natural stone dry, it’s better to utilize it wet to get the best results. The use of water, honing oil based on water, or honing oil based on petroleum keeps the stone’s pores clear, reduces friction heat, and makes for a more efficient sharpening process.
Q: When sharpening a knife, how many strokes are required?
Get it just right, whether you’re using a Japanese knife with a blade angle of around 15 degrees or a German or French knife with a blade angle of about 20 degrees. Then, using a slow, away-from-you swiping motion, hone the blade on both sides a total of five times.
Final Thoughts
The price of knife sharpening can range from as low as $50 for a do-it-yourself sharpening set to several hundred dollars for professional services. Depending on the knife type, the number of knives, and the method used, how much time and money do you invest in keeping your knives razor sharp is, in the end, it is a matter of personal choice and means.
We suggest the traditional stone and block method. But, doing it yourself saves you money and takes away the hassle of choosing between expensive expert services. When you mail in a request, there are no problems like slow responses, lost mail, long wait times, inconvenient hours, or poor work. We hope that this will help you decide which knife sharpening method would you choose that would also fit in your budget.