It is impossible to work with wood without having an assortment of knives available to trim, adjust or scrape your materials into shape. Knives are also used to smear wet glue or to scrape dried glue away. I have a set of knives like the ones above that I use for all of the above jobs and then some.
As you know from previous blogs I am not keen on throw away tools, so I also have a bunch of other knives that I resharpen rather than throw away. Recently I added a knife that I made to my shop tools.
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| left, trim knife, razor sharp right, hacking knife, heavy weight blade. |
Saying that I made the knife maybe miss leading. I made the handle, I bought the blade. You can see the hacking knife is not meant to be held in the hand for long and so the handle is not very useful. The knife on the left will be used to trim edges and clear tear out from hand cut wood, as well as remove glue and probably sharpen pencils. I made the handle from hard maple and I glued it to the metal blade and itself instead of going to the trouble of riveting it. I used Contact Cement, (follow the instructions, leave it to cure) and so have no expectation of the handle coming loose.
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| right- blade, comes pre sharpened, needs some honing. 2nd right- pencil sharpening knife, made by my father. 3rd from right- hacking knife left- new trim knife |
Many years ago my father made the pencil sharpening knife from one of these blade blanks. He cut the blade off short and then fitted an off center handle:
The handle is ideal for a right handed person to use. The knife doesn't really have any other particular use other than to sharpen pencils. Last spring my father passed away, that pencil sharping knife hangs out on my work bench and is used often and never with out personal feelings.
I have a passion for edge tools and bench knives are no exception.
P.S. Happy New Year.
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