Claims
- 1. A stop-bar for use in a knife sharpener to limit by direct contact the travel of an elongated knife blade edge with facets formed at a sharpening angle to a blade axis adjacent to each side of a cutting edge, said bar including a contact member having a strike face set at a predetermined angle to a vertical axis to provide a positive stop for the blade, said angle being of a magnitude to insure contact with a face of the edge facet or with a junction point between the facet and the blade, thus protecting the edge itself from damage as advancement of the blade is stopped by contact with said contact member, said contact member being mounted to a support member to form a two layer laminate, and said contact member being made of a hardened material to limit mechanical wear and damage to said support member by the blade as the blade contacts said contact member.
- 2. The stop-bar of claim 1, in combination with a sharpener, said sharpener being a multiple staged sharpener wherein said sharpening angle for the facets is different in successive sharpening stages, said stop-bar having more than one said strike face, each strike face set at a predetermined angle to the vertical, each said angle being of a magnitude to insure that contact with the strike face is made by the face of the facet or by the junction point between the facet and the blade, thus insuring that the edge created in one of said multiple stages is not damaged as advancement of the knife is stopped by the said stop-bar in a subsequent stage.
- 3. The stop-bar of claim 2 wherein said support member is a plastic member that is attachable to said sharpener by means of mating mechanical structures on said plastic member and said sharpener.
- 4. In a knife sharpener with at least one axially driven abrasive surfaced sharpening wheel, the improvement being in a manually actuated abrasive surfaced unit to clean or shape the surface of at least one said sharpening wheel when said abrasive surfaced unit is brought into contact with the abrasive surface of said sharpening wheel.
- 5. The knife sharpener of claim 4 wherein at least one of said sharpening wheels is flexible.
- 6. The knife sharpener of claim 4 where said sharpener contains at least two flexible wheels each with an abrasive coated surface in the shape of truncated cones, said manually actuated abrasive surfaces unit contains two abrasive surfaces each of which is located normally a small distance from said cone shaped surfaces such that when actuated can be caused to move selectively into contact with either of said abrasive coated surfaces of said flexible wheels in order to clean or shape said abrasive coated surfaces of said flexible wheels.
- 7. The knife sharpener of claim 6 where the two abrasive surfaces of said manually actuated abrasive surfaced unit are covered with diamond abrasives.
- 8. In a knife sharpener having at least one sharpening stage with an abrasive surface member mounted in said sharpening stage, said sharpening stage including a knife guide having a guide surface disposed at an angle to said abrasive surface of said member for orienting an elongated knife blade edge with facets formed at a sharpening angle to a blade axis adjacent to each side of a cutting edge, the improvement being in a stop-bar mounted in said sharpening stage to limit by direct contact a travel of the knife blade, said stop-bar having a strike face at a location which crosses a plane of said guide surface and set at a predetermined angle to a vertical axis to provide a positive stop for the blade, said angle being of a magnitude and said strike face being located with respect to said abrasive surface member and to said guide surface so as to insure contact of the blade with said stop-bar on the same side of the blade that is being sharpened by said abrasive surface member whereby while one portion of the facet is being sharpened another portion of the same facet is in contact with said stop-bar.
- 9. The sharpener of claim 8 wherein said strike face is made of a hardened material to minimize mechanical wear and damage to said stop-bar by the blade as the blade contacts said stop-bar.
- 10. The sharpener of claim 9 wherein said sharpener is a multiple staged sharpener having successive sharpening stages, said stop-bar having more than one said strike face, each strike face set at a predetermined angle to the vertical axis which may differ from the predetermined angle of the other of said strike faces in said successive sharpening stages, and said abrasive surface member being a rotatably mounted abrasive surface disk.
- 11. The sharpener of claim 9 wherein said strike face is mounted within a plastic member that is attached to a portion of said sharpener by means of mating mechanical structures on said plastic member and said portion of said sharpener.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION
This application is based upon provisional application Ser. No. 60/070,760 filed Jan. 8, 1998.
US Referenced Citations (14)