home remedy to resharpen blades.

[enigma]

i have so many used blades that would be good for cutting again if they were just resharpened.

i have heard of wives tales that you can resharpen razors running them on bluejeans (canvas) any one know the truth to this. or other possible way for resharpening...

dont wish to consider methods unless they can resharpen to like new condition.
otherwise i would just purchase some new ones...

finances are tight and i am looking to save some pennies to save up for the newepson ecotank printer.

yeay 2 years of printing...

[KCStephens]

This old thread has some info that you may find helpful.
#11 blade quality issues, a rant.

[enigma]

KCStephens thank you.

[SCEtoAUX]

Try using a fingernail buffing block to dress up the cutting edge. They are very inexpensive.

Here is a post by KCStephens on using buffing compound to dress up the cutting edge.
#11 blade quality issues, a rant.

[otherDoc]

I do it all the time with No 11's and rotary wheels. I use a fairly cheep diamond stone set, but usually just use the coarse one. I used to use the regular sharpening stones and they also worked fine. You have to be careful with the angle that you hold the blades. I love to sharpen stuff. Scissors too. They work tons better if done on a scissors sharpener. Once you develop your technique, you can resharpen any blade, as good as new, some better than new.
David (Doc)

[enigma]

came acros a article using leather to sharpen the blades

worth a read.

Forever-Sharp Hobby Blade | Flite Test

[elliott]

Excellent article Tappi. Thanks for the link.

[Miles Linnabery]

Dear enigma:
See if any of your friends are wood workers, Wood carvers or wood turners, All of these should have fine sand paper 1000 grit or 2000 grit you only need a piece 1" wide by 4 or 5 inches long glue to a paint stick and then rub red jewelers ruse on the other side sharpen on the sand paper and polish blade on the other side.
Enjoy,
Miles
You can only sharpen through about 1/8th of an inch of the blade before you run out of the tempered area and the blade will not hold an edge and I do not think that it is worth while to try to retemper the blade.

[Diderick A. den Bakker]

Google for honing stones, sharpening stones, whetstones. Do not spend more than 5 to 10 USD. Any (old fashioned) hardware store will have them. One will last you the rest of your modelling life.

Older readers may remember their father or grandfather shaving with the old fashioned straight razor. The very thin blade had to be 'honed' very frequently using a leather strop. I don't think that method will work very well on our heavier exacto type knives.

Using a surgical knife is a good idea: the blades are very much cheaper than exacto knives. They are also thinner - so not really suitable to cut thicker card, but excellent for normal modelling paper. Google for surgical knives / scalpels.

[ridetheory]

I use two things -- a pocket knife sharpener from Case, and a strop made from a scrap of leather glued to a flat bit of plastic.

The knife sharpener has four ceramic rods: two in an "X" shape, and two parallel. I run the blade through the X a couple times, and then possibly in the groove between the parallel rods if I think the tip needs a little touch-up.

Then I strop it back and forth a couple times along the leather. The stropping is important because it takes any little burrs and off the edges. and smooths out any other irregularities.

In my travel kit, I have a TINY version of the pocket ceramic sharpening tool, which I cut down with a Dremel tool to make it even smaller. It works well enough.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wgb4CMDqB...0/100_6149.JPG

Eventually, the tips wear down to a tiny curve, and I throw them out, but with this really simple rig, I'm able to extend the life of the blades about 5 times... which is GOOD ENOUGH! I'm not particularly interested in pursuing the hobby of sharpening knives, I just want to use my blades a bit longer than usual.