Unique blade sharpening service

Cookworks home food slicer blade (blunt!)How to sharpen a Cookworks food slicer blade

Being gadget-mad, we’ve enjoyed owning a home breadmaker since they first appeared on the UK market back in the 1980’s – a Japanese Funai-branded machine resembling Star Wars’s R2D2 (branded DAK Auto Bakery in the USA – this is the one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtZAkbl1mkk)

Since then we’ve found Panasonic breadmakers are the best, although recently we’ve suddenly had problems with bread not rising properly. Turns out it’s the yeast (too old) so a fresh pot of yeast did the trick and it's baking loaves better than ever.

Anyway, a small electric food slicer makes light work of slicing home-baked loaves and a Cookworks-brand machine has done the honours for a few years. However the blade became blunt to the point of being useless. After hunting high and low for replacement Cookworks blades (no such luck) I hit upon the idea of resharpening the existing one.

Decades ago, we would get a home visit every year from a passing Romany tinker who would sharpen all our knives and scissors on his treadle-powered grindstone. Sadly, those days have long gone but eventually I found a specialist online in the form of SharpKnives.co.uk, and I sent off an enquiry along with a photo of the offending blade, which is semi-serrated and has a nylon gearwheel riveted to it just to make matters worse.

The owner Robin Bailey replied impressively quickly and said that there’s very little that they can't sharpen. Running a mobile, local and national mail order service too, the quoted cost was just £7.50 plus postage, so I paid online and duly posted the Cookworks blade off to them.

What can I say? Communications were great, with Robin keeping me updated on progress and my blade was duly sharpened and turned round within 48 hours. It arrived back in a letterbox-friendly carton and – yikes – it sure is sharp again! After washing in soapy water it was fitted and doing its duty once again.

Robin also handles all types of knives, scissors, clipper blades, chainsaws, nippers, gardening and woodworking tools, podiatry and specialist blades.

It seems that Robin can sharpen almost anything – just check the list of categories on the home page at http://www.sharpknives.co.uk/. This blade-sharpening service has been invaluable with a very impressive level of personal service. If you need any type of blade sharpening, drop them a line and see what Robin can do for you.