Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Made a set of carving knives... *LINK*
John Aniano, somewhere in NJ...
>Hello All,
I was asked by a friend to make a set of bowmaker's carving knives as a gift. As I began making them, I thought to take pictures of the process to show the gift's recipient, and made up this web page that documents the process of making the two knives.
Hope this is of interest,
Neat work
Jim Reed @ Tallahassee
>
Fabulous gift...
john jesseph
>I assume these would find most use shaping the tip/head of the bow? They look beautiful, nicely shaped blades- the recipient will make grateful and great use of them, I'm sure. Maybe shop knives and specialty knives should get more bandwidth here.
Bamboo leaf knife, too! *LINK*
Wiley Horne--Glendora, CA
>Hi John,
Those are mighty tempting, if'n you're game to make more of them.
But I want to call attention to the 'bamboo leaf knife' that you make, of which an image is attached. I hope it is clear from the photo that this knife (made from a file and an unwilling lizard) has a curved blade. That blade will reach into an interior corner like nothing else, and scrape it clean. Especially when there are convex curves descending into a pocket. The curved blade can be angled so that you can get a knife point all the way to the bottom of the pocket, plus scrape the curve clean. The knife is like a variable sweep gouge in that respect but is actually used as a scraper.
All these words don't make a picture, so I included a photo in the attached link. I used the knife to scrape out the interior surfaces of the pulls on that chiffonier in the picture. Highly recommended tool.
Very nice John!
Paul in NJ
>
Very nice
Frank D. in Montreal
>They look great. I've made a few knives using the same technique, it's nice to have a tutorial like that available too. Thanks for showing us.
Nice knives...
Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA
>They look real good John. Thanks for putting together the "how to" also. Looks like a fun project.
Re: Made a set of carving knives...
William Duffield, on the Cohansey
>Very nice, John, thanks for the very useful tutorial, and also for (perhaps inadvertently) answering my question in another post on the origin of my W Butcher EOBM chisel.
Have you considered starting with a wider, thinner piece of tiger maple and book matching the two sides of the handle? Some people like that effect, but others find it very distracting.
I find lots of curly maple at the Orange Borg. I've collected so much of it that way that most of the time I go in there, I don't even look, or if I do, I put all but the most spectacular pieces of it back in the stack. I've also found curly oak in the same department, but that's a lot less common, and a bit more difficult to find projects for.
