Question 1: Is it possible to sharpen hobby knife blades? Would I want to?
Number 11 blades are cheap (and better quality) in bulk but I save the used ones anyway. It seems wasteful to throw them away, especially if there is some easy way to sharpen them back up. Hobby knife blades with other shapes are also super useful. For example, it would be great to keep the chisel blade really sharp. Is sharpening hobby knife blades a thing?
Question 2: Does a tool exist for removing a very small detail, like a bolt head, without creating unwanted cuts in nearby features?
This comes up often. I want to remove something like a bolt head. If I use a Number 11 blade, it tends to dig in or damage surrounding detail. A chisel head blade would work better, but hobby knife chisel head blades are way too wide. The ideal tool could come in at a very shallow angle with a very narrow, straight blade. There are chisel shaped scribing tools that meet these criteria, but I am not sure if they are sharp enough. Is there a tool for very fine feature removal work?
Yea, don’t do that. It’s a small and brittle blade. It could shatter depending on how you attempt to sharpen it. I don’t think a knife sharpener would do it either, just too small. You can get 100 X-acto blades for 23.47 on Amazon. There are cheaper ones, but youll regret it. The time to attempt to sharpen is not worth it. You can also repurpose the blades for sprue cutting or applying super glue. On your second question, you could try a chisel blade. Don’t try to remove it in one swipe. Thats when you have a chance to dig in. Remove a little at a time and sand it flush with a fine sanding pad. Hope this helps.
Back in the 2000s, I purchased 100 Number 11 blades off eBay for, like, $10 US. They are way way way better than the blades sold by X-acto. Since I took a 13 year break from model stuffs, I am still working through those old blades but my supply is running low.
It just seems wasteful to throw out a perfectly good blade that just needs a small amount of sharpening. I watched some videos on YouTube of people sharpening very expensive kitchen knives and swords and stuff. It’s pretty neat. They really get into it, to the point of behaving like anime characters. “Using my super secret magic blade sharpening technique, I will create the most sharp kitchen knife ever, and cut the most perfect tomatoes in the entire world!” Anime shows are bonkers.
@TopSmith Yeah! Those are exactly the ones I use, but they are too wide for something like removing rivets from inside the rim of a road wheel. They are also dull. I thought about grinding them but have no tool for that sort of thing.
Edit: It turns out there are hobby knife sharpening videos on YouTube. I was searching for the wrong thing. One guy built a sanding block and sharpens his blades on that. I will give it a try because sanding blocks have other uses.
So I had a cheap one shatter on me cutting threw something, and of coarse tips breaking off the X-acto blades. I actually use the Z blade from X-acto. I have been using those for a few years and really like them. They also last longer. They are more expensive though, $32.18 for 100 blades. But as they saying goes, a dull knife is more dangerous then a sharp one.
I have a 1mm and 2mm square point and they are very handy for what you’re needing, they have proven to be invaluable in my builds, wish I had gotten them years ago.
I circumvent the issue with dulling blades by only using knife blades when it is absolutely necessary.
Never scrape mould seams. Use files or sanding sticks instead.
Never cut sprues. Use side cutters or jig-saw if it is hard to get at otherwise.
My cuts happened when I was using a blade the wrong way,
usually it involved too much force.
By switching to side cutters and files/sandpapers I think I have saved enough on band-aids and bandages to buy a whole kit …
there are several (as mentioned above) chisel sets available online. find a company you trust, and buy theirs. like #11 blades, the pennies saved are not a value.
i coiled some solder and put it in the handle to give it some heft. i’m happy with the compromise in quality vs cost. obviously not in the Mr Hobby class, but i’m okay with it.
One needs to let go of the concept of “waste” when dealing with expendable items. Scrap them and move on.
That being said, I do keep my used blades, but only as hardened tool steel stock. I have ground and re-shaped several of them into scrapers and scribers of various shapes, not knife blades.
Ouch. That looks like my finger the time I had to resort to CA to keep from bleeding out. I have an almost identical scar, with smaller ones as its mates.
Indeed. Standard practice at my house. I needed a narrower blade for this:
I keep all of the different sizes as they’ll be used again for future builds of the same k.
I switched to scalpel blades, which are very sharp, but do dull relatively easily. I also sharpen Excell and X-acto blades as needed. I use a very fine diamond stone, a ceramic stone, and finally an Arkasas Black Surgical Stone. This last I bought from Brownell’s, but I don’t know if they still carry them.
So…it turns out sharpening hobby knife blades is easy and fast!
Cooking show experts recommend a 1000 grit sharpening stone for giving a normal kitchen knife a decent edge. There is a lot of lore associated with knife sharpening, but that is the core step in the sharpening process.
Using plain Jane 1000 grit wet/dry sandpaper laid on my cutting board, I can put a useful edge on a Number 11 blade in 60 seconds or less. It is very easy and fairly quick. Using progressively finer grit sandpapers, it is possible to put a super sharp edge on a hobby knife but this takes more time, of course.
Only light pressure is required. Only slow movements are required. This is not a job for the Hulk.
A box of 150 decent quality, Number 11 blades costs about $10 US. I get that. However, for a tree hugger like me (I have never hugged a tree), this really is an easy way to massively extend the like of hobby knife blades.
Still working on the chisel thing but I did sharpen my hobby knife chisel blades. They cut way better now.
Nothing cuts like a new blade. My hobby time is precious enough, and I have so many models to build, that knife sharpening is not in my schedule. New blades are a small expenditure on the expendables list.
The blades I sharpened with 4000 grit wet/dry sandpaper are as sharp or sharper than new ones but that definitely takes more effort. A minute here and there does not bother me. If I wanted more time for building models, I would spend less time on Armorama, browsing model shops, reading tank articles on the internet, reading model reviews, and looking up stuff on ScaleMates. Haha! Occasionally sharpening a knife blade is almost nothing.
Just writing this response consumed as much time as sharpening up about 15 blades (at 60 seconds each).
For now, I am finding that a few swipes on 1000 grit wet/dry sandpaper keep my dedicated cutting knife in a good place. Sharpening has proven especially helpful for oddball blades, since I only have a few of each.
Anyway, I had a question, found the answer through experimentation, and am sharing my results. Each person must decide what is right for him or her.
