A lot of customers bring me knives with broken handles to repair, and over the years I’ve repaired a lot of Henckels which tend to crack and lose entire chunks of material from the handle. Last November someone brought me 6 Henckels. All of them were badly cracked and in some places chunks of handle material had fallen out. I wrote a post about it with photos here.
The curved handle design made repairing them a little more challenging than usual, but I was able to come up with a way to do it, and the customer was happy with the results.
A couple of weeks ago another customer brought me 2 Henckels with the same handle design, both badly cracked with missing chunks. They had cracked and broken in just the same way as the ones I’d just repaired in November.
The design of this type of Henckels makes it particularly challenging to repair, but it can be done and it is worth it because Henckels are excellent knives.
For today’s blog I’d like to share the before and after photos of this project. One is a small paring knife and the other is a large 8 inch chef’s knife.
BEFORE:
Here is a photos of the Henckels chef knife before repair:
AFTER:
Here are some photos of the same knives with the handles repaired:
I don’t use plastics with my handle repairs. I typically use good quality hardwood and sometimes micarta. For this project I used padauk. This is a lovely red hardwood that finishes beautifully. I was very happy with how it turned out, and so was the customer.
A close-up of the same handles:
Good quality knives, especially the ‘two man’ Henckels, and are worth repairing. I never recommend throwing knives out. Steel is 100% recyclable and even cheaper knives should be kept, and repaired if necessary. If you really want to get rid of a knife, don’t throw it out. Donate it to your local Salvation Army.
Thanks for visiting my website today, and if you have any knives that need repairing or sharpening, feel free to drop me a line.
Have a great day!
