Knife sharpening service,mail-in, Australia-wide.
Western chef knives, butcher kits, and Japanese blades. Whetstones, the right angles, and decades of bench experience. Restaurant kitchens, butchers, and home cooks across Australia.
Knife sharpening on whetstones,at the angle the maker chose.
Knife sharpening here means whetstones, not a belt grinder. Every knife is worked by hand through the grits at its original edge angle, deburred and stropped, then tested before it is packed. Western chef knives sit around 20 degrees a side, Japanese blades 12 to 15, and single-bevel yanagiba and usuba on one side only. The angle is set by the maker, and we keep it.
Stones matter because heat is the enemy of an edge. A fast belt or wheel can take the temper out of the last half-millimetre of steel with no visible sign; the knife feels sharp for a week and then dies. A whetstone removes only the metal needed and never gets the steel hot, so a knife sharpened this way comes back thinner behind the edge and stays sharp longer.
Andy McMaster has sharpened professionally for more than 30 years. Restaurant kitchens, butcher shops and home cooks post their knives from every state to the Gunning NSW workshop and get them back by Express Post 7 to 11 business days later.
Pay per knife,not per hour.
Chef's Knife
Professional kitchen knives of all sizes
Paring Knife
Small utility and paring knives
Bread Knife (serrated)
Serrated blades require specialist care
Butcher/Cleaver
Heavy-duty butcher knives and cleavers
Pocket Knife
Folding and utility pocket knives
Every knife in the block,priced per knife.
Paring knives
Small paring and bird's-beak knives, the cheapest knife on the list
Utility and pocket knives
Kitchen utility knives, folding and pocket knives, Victorinox-style blades
Chef, cook's and santoku knives
Wüsthof, Global, Zwilling, F. Dick, Sabatier and every other Western chef knife
Serrated bread and steak knives
Sharpened scallop by scallop with a tapered rod, teeth kept, never ground flat
Butcher, boning and cimeter knives
Boning, breaking, cimeter, skinning and trim knives for butcher shops and abattoir kits
Cleavers
Chinese cleavers and heavy butcher cleavers, edge restored without thinning the spine
Japanese gyuto, petty and santoku
Double-bevel Japanese knives at 12 to 15 degrees a side, quoted on length
Single-bevel yanagiba, usuba and deba
One-sided Japanese geometry preserved, ura kept flat; deba $20, yanagiba and usuba $25
Long slicers and specialty blades
Meat slicers, ham knives and unusual formats, quoted on length before you post
All prices plus GST. Japanese knives are quoted per blade on length and edge style, and anything unusual can be photographed through the contact form before you post. Fifteen percent comes off automatically on 50 or more knives, which most restaurant and butcher batches reach.
Knife Brands We Sharpen
German, French, Swiss and Japanese steel all behave differently on the stones. Carbon steel, stainless and hard Japanese alloys are each worked at the angle and grit progression that suits them.
Post your knives,we do the rest.
Mail-in only, no walk-in counter and no van. Total turnaround is 7 to 11 business days. Free Express Post return on orders over $200.
Start your order
Fill in the order form with what you are sending. Your itemised total, GST included, shows before you post. No account and no upfront payment; we call to confirm.
Pack and post
Sleeve each blade in cardboard and tape it, use a rigid box rather than a soft envelope, and put your name and order reference inside. Post with Australia Post to PO Box 69, Gunning NSW 2581; couriers cannot deliver to a PO Box.
We sharpen
Total turnaround is 7 to 11 business days. Each knife is worked through the whetstone grits at its original angle, deburred, stropped and tested.
Express return
Sharpened knives go back by Express Post, edges sleeved. Free on orders over $200; under $200, return postage is charged at cost and confirmed on the call.
Full packing guide and timings on the how it works page.
A Sharp Knife is a Safe Knife
It sounds counterintuitive, but dull knives cause more injuries than sharp ones. A dull blade requires more pressure, leading to slips and loss of control.
Whether you're running a commercial kitchen or preparing meals at home, properly sharpened knives make prep work faster, safer, and more enjoyable.
- Less pressure needed, better control
- Cleaner cuts preserve food quality
- Reduced hand and wrist fatigue
Almost no knifeis past saving.
At $10 to $20 a knife, sharpening costs a fraction of replacement for anything above a supermarket blade, and a knife sharpened on stones loses so little steel that it will take decades of services. The knives that genuinely cannot be saved are rare.
Send it for sharpening if it
- Squashes a tomato instead of biting in
- Has a rolled edge a honing rod no longer straightens
- Has chips, a broken tip or a dinged heel
- Has gone a year or more since the last proper sharpen
Retire it if it has
- Been ground so far the edge sits in the thick spine
- A tip snapped back past the belly of the blade
- A crack, or steel blued by an overheated grinder
- A loose or split handle that cannot be re-pinned
Every knife is assessed on arrival and anything uneconomic is flagged before it is charged. The 2026 price guide, how much knife sharpening costs in Australia, compares mail-in, mobile, market and knife-shop sharpeners, and caring for Japanese kitchen knives covers keeping a hard steel edge between services.
Mail-in service toevery Aussie capital.
Knife sharpening from every state. Kitchens, butchers and home cooks in NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, ACT and NT post to the same PO Box and pay the same per-knife price, with Express Post making Gunning one to two days from most capitals. See every location we serve.
Read moreFrom the workshop blog
Knife Sharpening FAQs
Common questions from chefs, butchers, and home cooks.
Ready for Safer Prep?
Post your knives today. Work faster and safer with professionally sharpened edges.
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