How do you dull down a new knife that is way too sharp?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “how to dull a knife“
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How do you dull down a new knife that is way too sharp?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “how to dull a knife“
About Alexa97
If you really want to do this, try cutting the back of a ceramic plate. The ceramic is way harder than the steel blade. It should only take a couple strokes at moderate pressure.
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A knife can never be too sharp. You will have better control over a sharp blade than a blunt blade, because you do not have to press so hard.
If you have a fresh tomato, try slicing it with your new knife putting no pressure on it at all. you will have nice even slices. Try it again with a blunt knife and you will have a squishy mess.
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Don’t . A dull knife is a lot more dangerous than a sharp one. They are more likely to slip when cutting and will cause more damage when they do.
Learn some proper knife skills and keep the knife out of reach of vulnerable hands and you will be much better off.
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There’s no such thing as way too sharp. This is like asking how to make your food taste worse because your food tastes way too good.
There are only other issues, such as the angle being too steep and the steel not being able to support it without being prone to microchipping. In which case you put a microbevel on it. Or you can set a new bevel but this will take a great deal more time and require the removal of more steel. Factory edges may be fragile, I’ve seen a couple of these. They typically stabilize after a few sharpenings. I theorize it’s because of the mechanical grinders often used.
If you really must dull it, and I don’t know why the hell you ever would, without causing any microchipping and other damage, a wood-backed strop is good. Strop at a more obtuse angle than the actual edge bevel while applying moderate force. This will wear away the apex somewhat and reduce sharpness. Strops are fairly gentle so this minimizes likelihood of damage.
Be aware that new knives are rarely even as sharp as they can be. I’ve never seen a perfect edge on a new knife unless a finishing sharpening service was used. This is typically an extra charge. I always sharpen my new knives because new out-of-the-box edges don’t show the knife’s full potential. Chances are your new knife has an edge that’s around 5/10 or 6/10 by my standards. Hardly exceptional, but can get the job done.
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Learn to use a sharp knife. That is the only knife whose performance can be predicted. A dull knife requires more effort to cut anything and how much effort is unpredictable. You are more likely to have an accident with a dull knife.
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Take it back to the shop and ask for a nice, safe, plastic one…
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slam it as hard as possible into something very hard and abrasive. Granite, cement, bone, etc. It’ll be dull in no time
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As much as I want to blindly agree with everyone else about keeping a sharp knife being safer, I will only point out that it’s true. Blunt knives do cause more emergency room accidents because people apply too much pressure to safely slice the food which causes a wobble in the direction of force which it turns in your hand can lead to a large number of stitches. Anyway, I digress.
If I assume you actually have some skill with a knife and put too fine an edge on or by mistake and it isn’t holding the edge you want it to for long enough then I will make the following suggestions.
Just put a micro bevel on it, this is in most cases a third angle, right at the very apex of the edge you deliberately soften the angles. You could do this with a steel, a strop or a fine polishing stone.
Lets say you put a 12 degree edge on each side with stones. and you keep rolling the edge on the materials you are cutting, here are two best ways to micro bevel in this situation.
The first is to convex the edge, gradually polishing the edge into a gentle curve, this puts more meat behind the edge and reduces rolling, if your flat grind was 12 degrees, try hitting it with 14, 16, 18 degrees, and spend proportional time on each one, so for the 14 degree spend 60 seconds each side, for the 16 degree 90 seconds and the 18 degree 120 seconds. Those time measurements will be different for all sorts of steels but you get the idea. This gently rounds the edge.
The other method is just sticking on a rough stropped angle. if you just up to too high an angle or too hard it will break off the microscopic edge, so do this gently in relation to the hardness of the steel. The steel behind the edge will still roll in some cases with this method which is why I feel convexing is your best bet as an emergency fix.
The best solution is really just to learn to find the angle that is the sweet spot for that specific knife. Some knives get chippy, some knives roll. It’s part and parcel of the process of using knives.
Also consider the possibility that you got a badly tempered knife, that happens sometimes too. There are certain knives you do expect to have and hold certain edge angles which just don’t. So a careful analysis of how you are using the knife and how it ranks with others experiences with the same brand is definitely something to look at to rule out that possibility.
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I would rather have a scary-sharp knife than a dull one.
More than once did I cut myself by accident, and all of these cases were from a dull knife.
Do not make a knife-edge dull, just treat the razor-sharp knife with respect, as it is good practice anyway.
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In the spirit of actually answering the question instead of pointing out that this isn’t a wise course of action…
Using a knife is the safest way to dull it in the way you probably want. You probably aren’t asking for a way to gouge and nick the blade and destroy it, you just want a knife that has some resistance you can feel against your material. I get that… it’s sometimes frustrating when a knife is so sharp that it’s gliding through the material and you can’t feel anything. This can make for inaccurate cuts, and I’ve had that issue using scalpels on foam.
If a knife is so sharp that it feels like nothing is happening, my brain tends to think nothing is happening.
In this situation, you can do two things…
Cut a bunch of material with the knife until it wears a little bit. Cardboard is great for this. Paper is quite a bit more abrasive than it seems and slicing through cardboard will wear your knife evenly without causing nicks or gouges. It’s so good at wearing a knife that I only cut boxes with a specific box cutter and I don’t touch them with any of my other knives, ever.
The other thing that some folks have hinted at is — just start using your knife correctly. Often, when you’re getting bad feel from a tool, it’s because you’re holding it wrong, and this is very true of knives. Applying the right amount of pressure and angle can be tricky, but once you get it right, you’ll enjoy a razor sharp knife a lot more.
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A knife which isn’t sharp is a dangerous knife. You want your knives as sharp as possible or you put yourself at risk of injury when using them. Don’t dull your knives.
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