Home made small knife rest

Several years ago i made this small knife rest, a variant based on the original design by Tormek forum member Herman Trivillino.

Mine is being used for reprofiling/sharpening various blade shapes & sizes (flat ground is ideal, but saber ground is also possible), from the small blades in Victorinox knives up to expensive professional gyuto's with 210 mm blades.

A possible problem is that you would have to make such a knife rest yourself, as Tormek still doesn't offer something comparable.

I used a piece of Torlock cut from a Tormek SVD-110 tool rest (which remains functional afterwards btw), a few pieces of scrap aluminium & some metal screws.

A very important aspect is getting that piece of Torlock as square as possible, for which i used files and a micrometer.

With access to a precision milling machine it would be a piece of cake.

On top is a piece of 0.3 mm thin fiber-reinforced PTFE tape, which works very well for moving the blade across the platform and also to avoid scratches while doing that (up to a point)

For more blade protection i use plastic packing tape on the blade surface as well.

When used in conjunction with just enough water in the trough so that it doesn't splash the platform the tape lasts quite a while before i have to replace it with a new piece.

The lowest angle i can grind to is ~20 degrees inclusive.

Tormek SVD110 Tool Rest:

This user Spyderco Resilience was sharpened a while ago on the small knife rest.

In the pics there is still a bit of burring at the heel, which is also the tricky part to sharpen on this model with the small platform jig, because of the non-existing ricasso at that point in combination with the slightly protruding handle.

I had to use the edge of the stone (an SB-250 Blackstone) to get there at all, and as you can see it's not visually perfect.

After sharpening the edge was deburred freehand on the Tormek leather wheel.

The new edge measured an almost exact 30 degrees inclusive and the apex was keen enough to whittle one of my chest hairs from root-to-tip at 3 centimeters from the point of holding.

I later heard that the owner of the knife had to go to the hospital emergency room twice (!) for cutting himself rather badly with it.

In this YouTube clip inventor Herman Trivilino showcases his original small knife rest/jig/platform.

As you can see Herman uses half of the Tormek scissor jig SVX-150 as a base to attach a steel plate.

A while ago i did this user Spyderco PM2 in S30V steel on the Tormek SB-250 Blackstone using the small knife rest, then deburred on my homemade MDF wheel (actually a rim over the leather wheel), which is coated with 1.0 micron diamond paste.

The new edge measures ~30 degrees inclusive.

Also did this user Benchmade Mini-Griptilian in 20CV steel the same way on the small knife rest, and the new edge also measures ~30 degrees inclusive.

A friend of mine regularly carries this Chinese made Bastinelli Piccolomako clone in well hardened D2 steel with G10 grip panels, both upside down vertically or horizontally using a very simple electrical wire constuction.

He also owns the real Bastinelli model, but considers it to expensive to actually carry & use.

Very useful & unobtrusive small SD knives (certainly for the money: ~25 Euro), but the factory edges on these clones can be quite bad, so i recently resharpened this one on the Tormek using the small knife rest.