busted kitchen knife blades???? what to do...

[Brian Williams]

These are a couple of kitchen knives I have had and broke them. I just have the blades.
What can I do with them or what would you do with them
They are really thin

 

[lemaymiami]

Round file..

 

[JohnKSa]

I suppose if you wanted a project, you could take the top one and grind it so that it's a very short blade and use the rest of the blade as a sort of tang. Then put a handle on it.

I don't think you could do anything with the table knife blade.

I can't tell what the bottom one is. If it's not a table knife/butter knife blade, you could do the same sort of thing as with the top one.

If you don't mind my asking, how are you breaking the tang off of so many knives like that?

 

[StrawHat]

I thought you were going to show knives with busted tips or chunks missing from the edge of the blade. Whoever did that to the knives should learn how to use a knife!

If they insist you fix them, there are a couple of ways to do it. If you choose to use a grinder, a slow speed grinder is best. You probably don’t have one and good ones are not cheap. The same with belt sanders.

Of the two tools mentioned, I would suggest the belt sander, either a 1x42 or a 2x42 slow speed. Get a bucket of water. As you grind, go slow and keep your fingers near where you are grinding. As soon as you feel heat, the blade and your fingers go in the bucket. It will take a while to grind a proper tang.

I would charge more than all three knives are worth to fix one.

When my customers bring me things like that, I tell them to save the repair money and spend it on a new knife.

Kevin

 

[Brian Williams]

These are very very thin, extremely sharp and the handles were a black plastic. They snapped because of rust getting in the handle.
Also the Cambodian ladies here abuse knives. The right one was twisted in some frozen meat. That one with the round tip was very sharp.

 

[Mizar]

In every corner of the world ladies abuse kitchen knives... Just toss them in the garbage bin and buy new ones. Which also will be abused... For instance, my "better half" thinks that a good paring knife must also serve as a screwdriver, pry bar and a small hatchet, so she only gets cheap Fiskars or Tramontina.

 

[Mk-211]

Noooooooooooooo!

 

[hso]

Do you have access to a grinder?

 

[MarshallDodge]

Make something like a small pairing or trout knife out of them?

 

[epags]

These are a couple of kitchen knives I have had and broke them. I just have the blades.
What can I do with them or what would you do with them
They are really thin

In every corner of the world ladies abuse kitchen knives... Just toss them in the garbage bin and buy new ones. Which also will be abused... For instance, my "better half" thinks that a good paring knife must also serve as a screwdriver, pry bar and a small hatched, so she only gets cheap Fiskars or Tramontina.

Not everyone can/should just 'toss' things. My parents were Depression Era newly weds and (I don't know who was to blame) the kitchen knife broke. Rather than tossing it, dad had it braised (don't know if he did it or had it done by a friend since it was over 80 years ago). FWIW, I still have it in my kitchen and hope to pass it on to my adult children (good luck with that).
Maybe you can break the plastic handle of the first knife and recover the shank. Notice how thin my knife is and it still works......but not for twisting in frozen meat.

 

[Mizar]

Not everyone can/should just 'toss' things.

Been there, done that - my home country was under communist rule for 45 years, so I know what poverty looks like from first hand experience.

 

[ilbob]

In every corner of the world ladies abuse kitchen knives... Just toss them in the garbage bin and buy new ones. Which also will be abused... For instance, my "better half" thinks that a good paring knife must also serve as a screwdriver, pry bar and a small hatched, so she only gets cheap Fiskars or Tramontina.

Cheap fiskars and tramontina knives tend to be pretty good knives as cheap knives go. Why spend $500 on a knife when a $15 knife is serviceable?

 

[ms6852]

My imagination is lacking at my old age, only I can come up with is drill a hole put a leather string and wear it as a necklace. Unless you have a furnace and do some metal work do a san mai small knife with the blades.

 

[rust collector]

Perhaps a saw kerf in a suitable bit of cured/stabilized bamboo, with lots of epoxy/jbweld to secure it. Might even pour in some molten aluminum to help secure blade a la Rado knives. A decorative wrap of copper wire is always in good taste. Epoxy small coin on butt for good luck.

 

[goon]

I’d see if you can grind a bit of a new tang - try to get at least a half tang. Then drill out an appropriate size piece of antler and epoxy them in. If not that, put them on eBay as craft blade projects.

 

[theotherwaldo]

I use stuff like that to make shims and scrapers... .

 

[hso]

You can also take them to a welder and weld tangs on, but if the users are breaking them like this you'll end up with broken tangs again pretty quickly.

 

[Jim Watson]

I thought to put new scales on my Mother's old cheap thin butcher knife, but when I pried the old ones off, the tang was completely rusted through.

 

[silicosys4]

According to Wiki, Cattaraugus knives closed shop in 1963 and had a reputation for quality. So they aren't cheap steel like I had assumed. If I were hard up for steel I'd grind a half tang into each one and rivet some handles onto them.

 

[hso]

You can mount scales on them with a third of the knife as the tang. You'll want to anneal the back bit to put a pin in. The part of the blade you want to use to cut with can be put in water and you can torch anneal the would be tang. The water will prevent overheating of the cutting part. This will allow a hole for a pin to be drilled and then you can pin a handle in place.

 

[a_canadian]

I made a very battered (used as a splitting tool, hit a lot of times with hammers over 30 years) Opinel picnic knife into a mushroom knife for my mycologist son. The steel holds a decent edge. Some horse hair provides a brush to clean up edible finds on hikes. Many of worn out or broken knives can be similarly re-purposed into something like a hobby knife, a pocket folder for a kid, whatever.

 

[sparkyv]

This:

I use stuff like that to make shims and scrapers... .

 

[Brian Williams]

I was thinking to make a tang by grinding and either hot press them into some wood handles and maybe rivet them or epoxy them in place

 

[StrawHat]

Nothing to loose by trying.

Kevin

 

[JohnKSa]

Thinking more about it, given the thinness of the blades, it might be best to minimize the grinding and leave the tang as close to full width as possible to compensate for the lack of length. Just grind off enough to remove the edge on the edge side of the blade and then leave the rest. Then attach them to new wood handles with a couple of pins and epoxy. They might be stronger than the originals, albeit with significantly shorter blades.