Drawknife

I’ve spoilt myself rotten, I bought a brand new drawknife from woodjoy tools, the blade is 8″ long he didn’t have his usual one in stock but he said he does have one fresh from the blacksmith so I took it.  I won’t say how much I paid for it but all I can say the conversion rate was a killer.

After 3 weeks wait time it finally arrived and needed sharpening badly, I knew I was in for one hell of a ride.  I started this morning at 9 am sharp and finished at 7pm, yes you read that right 10 hours of solid sharpening.  My finger are sore but I did it, I told you it was blunt real blunt and there was a whole hunk of metal to go through.  If I ever wanted a belt sander this day would of been it.  All I needed was to get to the burr stage and the rest would of been over with quickly but being as blunt as it and working the entire bevel it took all day.  I could of just made a secondary bevel but that secondary bevel would of grown with successive sharpenings so I thought just do it right the first time and be done with it.

It’s sharp and I mean meanly sharp, when I did the thumbnail test it didn’t catch as it usually does but sliced it upon touch.  WOW I couldn’t believe I took it to such a level I honestly never sharpened anything to reach that level of sharpness before, my nail just touched it and sliced a layer off.  Call me insane 10 hours of sharpening talk about torture but just goes to show with dedication you can achieve anything.

I put it through a test drive and it just purred through the wood, now all I need to do is just practise with it to control my cuts.  To use it you skew the blade and take slicing cuts, but being so sharp whether I skewed it or not made no difference to the quality of the cut.  To take a deeper shave you tilt the blade down and up for a light cut, you can also work with it bevel down.

This is a wonderful addition to my array of tools and hopefully will see plenty of use.