Drawknife sharpening

[Stephen M]

I recently purchased my first drawknife, a 9" curved-edge model made by two-cherries.

far I am generally pleased with it, but it's not nearly as sharp as it could/should be.

I have not invested a whole lot of time in sharpening this thing...yet. I have a few questions:

1. Should the back be lapped dead-flat like a chisel?
2. should I coble together an elivated holder for my waterstone so that I can bring the knife to the stone (when dressing the underside of the knife) Or should I bring the stone to the knife?

I find this to be a really awkward thing to sharpen; any hints would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Steve

[CW]

[Tim and Steph]

They are very, very awkward to sharpen. For mine, I built a jig that holds the knife, and also serves as a guide to angle the stone properly. Ideally, I guess it'd have some kinda rollers or something for the stone to ride on, but I just eyeball it. It's very crude - I just took a hunk of tubafour, traced the shape of the drawknife on it, and cut a groove with a angled bottom. The knife sits in there, beveled side up, and the edge is at the correct angle to the stone if the whole rig is level. It's not perfect, but for version 1.0 it works well enough.

[CW]

[Michael]

You don't want to let the drawknife slip when you are pulling it toward you. That's what happened to my half-brother.

M.

[bridgerfafc]

what happened to the other half of him?

[George]

Waste of time to lap the back any more than needed to remove the wire edge. It's anything _but_ a precision instrument.

Forget the waterstone and get a nice India scythe stone. That's how they were generally sharpened. Final hone on a nice ceramic for me. Stone to the metal for the first, metal over stone to finish. The "jig" for the first is a vise holding the metal, for second, same vise holding the stone. Trying to hand-hold is a certain cut.

Now that I have a 320 diamond stone, I might just do it on that next time. A little bit of sawtooth is no drawback, may be an asset when the knife is drawn across the work as it shaves .

[Stephen M]

Thanks, all.

I tried this approach and it worked pretty well for me. I got shaving arm hair which is bood enough for me.

-Steve

[Mike Marlow]

I'll bet he was the half-assed one.