Knife Angle Block

Background:

I was gifted a Rolling Sharpener by some friends recently.  It comes with its own angle block with 15 and 20 degree ‘settings’ (per side).  This leaves one with a knife edge that has an included angle of either 30 degrees (15 + 15) or 40 degrees (20 + 20).  This is a bit coarse for some of the knives in my kitchen (not all).

My knife sharpening (rough) guide:

A rough guide for the knives around my house includes (copy and paste from my ‘notes’ app):

• DPS = degrees per side (half of included angle)
• Lower Quality = 14-15 DPS (28-30deg included angle)
• Mainstream = 12 DPS
• High Quality = 10 DPS
• Bush/Hunting knives = 14-15 DPS
• Large camp knives = 15-20 DPS (wood chopping)
• For cutting abrasive materials like cardboard and only requiring working sharpness - micro bevelling may work well.  Sharpen to 8 to 10 DPS and then put a microbevel in at 15-20 DPS to improve edge stability.
• Misen Chef knife is supplied with a 15 deg (incl) edge viz. 7.5 DPS

The knife block supplied with the rolling sharpener is therefore aimed at lower quality knives and things like machetes/large camp knives or lawn mower blades???

Design:

Having a spare hour or so I decided to model up a knife angle block that would hold knives at finer angles than the 15 and 20 degrees that came with the rolling sharpener.  The four side angles I chose are loosely based on the above guidelines (14, 12, 10 and 7.5 degrees).

Onshape design:

I modelled the knife block in onshape and have made the design parametric in nature.  If you'd like a different sized block, or a block with different angles, you can copy the onshape design and change the values of the various variables and the design will automatically update for you.  The design can be found at:

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/7da6c5b4a09aebc4f5632e66/w/9d7145d92533ccda32016a77/e/98c13451be0e86360ff4d80b

The above design may be copied into your own onshape account (free option avaialble) and you can play with the various design variables to your heart's desire.

Versions (Inset or Raised Text):

I have a dual extruder printer.  I designed the knife block to be printed ‘face down’ and the text is ‘inset’ into the top of the knife block.  Easy peasy when you have a dual extruder setup.  Not everyone does.

For single-extruder printers, I produced a ‘raised text’ design.  That means you can either pause the print at the appropriate layer (above 25mm in my deign) and change filament colours - or you could simply not bother and print it in all the same colour filament and it will work just fine :-)

Extra Materials:

I designed the knife block to use 10 x 3mm Neodymium magnets for holding your knives steady.  You'll need eight of those magnets and eight drops of superglue to glue them into place.  The Neodymium magnets are a reasonably loose fit - so glue will be essential.

Print Settings:

I printed mine in ASA because I had blue and orange ASA in my printer at the time and I'm exceedingly lazy.  I wish I hadn't done that now.  The pictured print is okay and will function perfectly well - but it probably would've been better in PLA to be honest.  The ASA warped a bit and lifted at the corners as it tends to do on ‘not small’ prints.

Suggested settings:

• Material: PLA or PETG.  Only use ASA if you are a masochist.
• Perimeters: 3 will do but I shan't judge you if you use less or more than that.
• Infill: 20 or 25% Cubic infill (my favourite).  However this isn't a substantial ‘load bearing’ item and pretty much 15 to 25% of you personal favourite infill will be good as gold.
• Orientation: For those with dual extruders and want print with the ‘inset text’ like my print - ensure you have the model oriented with the text side down on the plate.  For those who would rather the raised text option - print the model with the raised text up (towards the sky). I  was careful exporting the various STEP, 3MF and STL files and they should all be in the correct orientation straight from download for printing - but just carry out that check once you've loaded it into your slicer.