How to Sharpen Dog Clipper Blades [The Right Way!]

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As any dog owner knows, trimming your pup’s luscious locks are a regular necessity. Of course, the regularity of that necessity depends on your dog’s coat and lifestyle, but no matter the dog, an occasional trim is unavoidable. If you are the type to tackle this task at home, you may have found that over time, the trim may take a little longer, be a little more challenging to accomplish, or perhaps the cut isn’t as nice and even as it used to be. Upon inspection of your tools, it is likely that you found your clipper and its blades to be the problem. Well good new, this is an easy problem to remedy! In this article, I will discuss everything that you need to know about the task of sharpening those clippers in order to get them back up to snuff painlessly.

It’s worth mentioning that while the length of this post may suggest that clipper trimming is a lengthy and complicated task, it really isn’t! I just want to make sure that all of the details are included, and I have tried to answer any questions that you may have (or questions that I had when I was learning how to sharpen clippers). Hopefully, all of that detail will set you up to feel like a confident pro by the end of the whole process.

The major steps in the process have been highlighted; this way, once you are familiar with the details, you will likely be able to use just the headers as a very basic step by step in the future! Here’s the gist of it though, once you realize that your clippers are not behaving quite as nicely as they used to: setup your workspace, disassemble your clipper blades (without forgetting the order of assembly), clean the blades, as well as the head of the clipper, ready your sharpening surfaces (the whetstone), sharpen the blades, re-clean the blades in order to remove metallic shavings, oil and then reattach the blades to the clipper, and finally, check that the blades are working well.

Things You’ll Need

Large washcloth or towel – Your non-slip workspace, to define it and to make for an easier clean up.
Two small bowls – One will be used to hold the screws, and any other small parts of the clipper unit while the other will be used to to submerge the blades in the cleaning solution
Screwdriver – For removing the screws that hold the blades together on the head of the clipper
Small cleaning brush – For removing hair, dirt and debris from the blades and from the clipper head
Cleaning solution – For soaking the blades, often made specifically for blade cleaning by the same companies who make the clippers
Whetstone – The tool used to actually sharpen the blades against.

**You will need two different grits, one coarser (about 4000 grit) and one finer grit (about 8000 grit or a littler finer); this can be either one stone with two different grit sides, or two different stones, whatever you prefer.

**If your blades are ceramic, you will need to use a diamond sharpening stone instead of a whetstone

Small bucket or bowl of water, large enough to submerge the whetstone – To allow the whetstone to saturate with water
Small spray bottle of water – To wet and lubricate the surface of the whetstone for while sharpening
A small cloth or paper towel(s) – To dry the blades after cleaning
Oil – To lubricate the blades prior to reassembly

Workspace Setup

Before beginning the cleaning and sharpening process, it is imperative that you have an organized an open workspace. You shouldn’t need much room, but you don’t want to feel cluttered during this process. An unorganized or cluttered workspace can lead to the loss of the small parts of the clipper blade assembly.

Begin by laying down a small towel; this will define your workspace and also provide a surface on which there is a lot of traction so that small parts are less likely to roll away. Furthermore, since you will be using cleaner with the blades, and water with the whetstone, this setup will also help to contain liquid runoff and reduce the area to be cleaned once you are done.

Disassemble Clipper Blades

Before disassembling your clipper, first unplug it, or at least be sure that it is turned off. The blade assembly is most likely held onto the clipper head with a couple of small screws; so at this point, you’ll use the screwdriver to remove those screws and then remove blades from clipper.

**Two important notes:

Before taking the blade assembly completely apart and removing it from the clipper, you’ll want to take a mental note of how the blades are aligned and how all of the parts fit together. In order to save yourself any frustration when you are trying to put everything back together, you may even want to snap a quick picture of the assembly on your phone to make sure that you have a reference for when it comes time to put everything back together again.
Do not lose the screws or any other small parts in the assembly; put them in a safe place. I like to use a small, shallow bowl to contain any and all screws or small parts that come off of the blade assembly.

Now that the blade assembly has been removed from the clipper and the blade assembly taken apart, you should have two blades. One of these blades is the large, stationary, exterior blade, and the other is the smaller, reciprocating blade that sits inside, sandwiched between the large, exterior blade, and the clipper head itself. Before sharpening, both of these blades will need to be well cleaned so as to prevent any damage to the blades, or uneven sharpening.

Clean Blades and Clipper Head

One of the most important parts of the clipper blade sharpening process is to be sure that the blades are cleaned thoroughly, before and after sharpening. As previously discussed even the smallest amount of dirt or debris can have a big impact on the sharpness of the blades or, in this case, your ability to get the blades nicely and evenly sharpened.

Ready Your Sharpening Surfaces

Whetstones can be purchased quite affordably at most hardware stores, or online, and when only being used occasionally to sharpen clipper blades, they should, in most cases, last a lifetime. They do require water to sharpen blades; therefore, before sharpening the blades, you will want to make sure that the stone is well saturated. To do this, simply soak the stone until it appears nearly saturated. I am assuming here that you are using one double-sided stone for sharpening. but if you have multiple stones, please make sure that they are all nearly saturated. You should then use your little spray bottle of water. When sprayed onto the stone, if the water absorbs immediately, your stone is not yet saturated enough; so, either soak it longer, or continue to mist it with the spray bottle until it no longer absorbs immediately. If, on the other hand, the sprayed water just gently pools on the surface, the stone is adequately wetted.

There are a few notes to consider when setting up your sharpening space. First of all, it is important to make sure that your whetstone is secured and won’t move during sharpening; this should not be an issue for you since you will be working on the towel that you put down earlier as your workspace, but please just check that the whetstone is in a position where it will not slide. It is also important that the stone is wide enough to comfortably accommodate your clipper blade; again, as long as you are not using an exceptionally small whetstone, this shouldn’t be a problem, as a standard whetstone should be adequately sized.

Sharpen the Blades

Finally, you have arrived at the part you’ve been waiting for: sharpening the blades! Coincidentally, this might actually be the fastest part of the process, once you’ve got it down. You will be sharpening flat sides of both blades by keeping them flat while sharpening, and running them side to side on, first, the coarse whetstone and then, later, the finer stone. You will do two sets for each blade, on both coarseness of stone. Don’t worry, I’ll explain!

You will begin with the coarse stone, and let’s start with the larger, exterior blade. Once you are sure there there is a very thin, glossy layer of water at the surface of the stone, lay the blade down flat on the whetstone so that the blade teeth are facing one of the long sides of the stone. The surface touching the stone should be the surface that faces the clipper head, not the surface you see when looking at the clipper when it is all assembled. Then, with only gentle-to-moderate pressure (not hard pressure!), slide the blade back and forth on the stone until the old edge has been worn down, or about 10 times at most. If or when the stone starts to become dry, just spritz it again with the water bottle until there is a nice light gloss to the surface again. Then rotate the blade 180 degrees so that the teeth are now facing the other long side (do not flip the blade over!); the flat, inner surface should still be the one touching the stone. Then once again, as long as there is still an adequate water gloss to the stone, run the blade back and forth the length of the coarse stone for another set of about 10.

Now, put aside the larger blade for the moment, and repeat this exact same process with the smaller, inner blade. As with the larger blade, the teeth should be facing the wide edges of the stone, and the blade surface touching the stone should be the flat one, the one that faces outward, to the larger blade when assembled.

Once both blades are sharpened on the coarse stone, repeat the process for both blades on the appropriately wetted finer grit stone.

**The most important parts of sharpening are:

Make sure that the blades are thoroughly cleaned in advance.
The blades need to remain flat while being sharpened.
Both blades should be sharpened perpendicular to the teeth, that is side to side, not front to back.
The blades should be sharpened with gentle-moderate pressure, not heavy pressure!
Always sharpen on the coarser grits first and move up to the finer grits.

Once you get a feel for it, it should only take about two to five minutes to sharpen the blades.

Re-Clean Blades After Sharpening

Now that both blades have been sharpened to your liking, you’ll want to quickly re-clean them in order to remove any metal shavings that were created in the process of sharpening, as well as any residual dirt. Once again, place them in that small bowl of cleaner and allow them to sit for about 20-30 seconds. Once the blades appear clean, remove them from the cleaning solution, rinse briefly with water to remove the solution and dry gently with a small cloth.

**Any water left behind can easily lead to rust; so be sure to dry the blades thoroughly.

Oil and Reassemble the Blades and Clipper

Before reassembling the clipper, you’ll want to be sure to lightly oil the blades. You don’t need much oil at all, but skipping this step will cause your blades to deteriorate faster and to put more strain on the clippers in general. As mentioned, you don’t need much but just enough to lubricate the blades and allow them to work without heating up. Apply three drops across the inside flat surface of the large blade, just under the teeth, and then just below that, place a drop or two in the groove that seats the smaller blade. All of the oil should be on the inside of the larger blade so that the two blades work together efficiently. Again, the application of oil is a very important part of this process; it allows the clippers to work efficiently and to not overheat, thereby significantly extending the life of both the blades and the clippers!

The blades can now be reattached to the clippers. Retrieve the screws which you previously removed. Line the blades back up with each other and with the clipper, as they originally were before being taken apart, and secure them in place with the screws and screwdriver. This part can be a little tricky; so just be sure to take the time to get the blades properly lined up.. and be careful, as the blades are quite a bit sharper now!

Check Your Work

Finally, your last step is to check the clippers – make sure to give them a test drive and confirm that they are working as they should be.

After that, pat yourself on the back and feel proud of the new skill that you just learned!! Next time will be much faster and probably much easier. Once you’ve got it down, this whole process should only take a few minutes, and the more times you do this the easier it will be!