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Hi! I’m hoping you all would have advice. I took up woodcarving during the spring lockdown. It seemed like a good front porch activity! So I ordered dry spoon blanks off Amazon and a cheap no-name hook knife. Borrowed my child’s Opinel pocket knife. I think I turned out some okay spoons for not knowing what I was doing!
Now I want to get better lol. The Opinel is dull and wobbly and tries to close on my hand. I ordered a Beavercraft (?) sloyd knife and it’s like trying to whittle with a butter knife! So thick and dull. I bought sharpening stones and honing oil. Made a mess of gray powder and glopped up the stones. Asked my preteen to try to sharpen as he’s more capable than I when it comes to tools. The knifes now seem duller and there feels like a burr on them. Then I watched videos that said no oil on stones. So not sure they’re still usable. Is there a more foolproof sharpening method?
I bought a small hatchet at Ace hardware and can’t chop the bark off a stick - either it’s dull or I don’t know how to handle it. Probably both. Should I buy a Robin Hood hatchet?
Basically I am wondering - if I’m using dry wood should I buy gauges or chisels instead? Do I need a vise? All this is being done at my kitchen table right now. I’d like to try green wood but have none. The chisels might work better?
I ordered a mora 120. Should be here in a week. I don’t want to ruin it so should I just buy a stropping setup and throw out the stones? And what exactly do I buy?
Is there a hook knife that’s better for harder woods?
I am a 52yo lady with active rheumatoid arthritis and my hands are screaming at me. And I’m pretty weak in general so that may also be part of the problem. There’s got to be an easier way.
For the ring you can remove it by using a screwdriver in the slot and opening it enough to slide over the river. Then just crush the ring you've just removed to close it till there's a gap of 2mm (protect the jaws of your pliers or vise with thick cardboard to avoid marks) place it in the right orientation, put it ring down on a kitchen cutting board on the table and push on the back of the knive with all your weight, it shall snap back in place extra tight, if too tight loosen it with your screwdriver (and be extra careful not to open the blade and slip when you place it back, there's actually a ER protocol for hands stabbed this way here 🤣)
Explaining sharpening takes ages... A friend was trying to learn it and asked my opinion on several YouTube vids, honestly most I've seen is crap. I mean complete bs! People just showing off something they don't understand! I can cut paper with a piece of rebar rubbed on cement or bricks...
I've only seen three that were interesting: I really enjoyed Burrfection's technique, but a newcomer has zero chance to succeed at his technique, it's a great technique but requires thousand of hours of practice.
Paul sellers have a few vids on sharpening that are perfect imo! But is more focused on planes and gouges...
Another one that gives a very good and easy to understand technique is Outdoors55. His technique isnt the best but he has a lot of videos where you can see it under different angles, he explains everything pretty well, and does it on a ton of different knives and stones...
For the practical side: identify your stones (just fetch your bill, basket, or go back to the place where you bought them) use the right laping material on it, and keep the same angle always.
All you really need is a 1k stone and a leather strop with polishing compound (just a piece of leather belt glued on a flat piece of hardwood is worth the fancy ones sold for 350$ really, you have absolutely no way to tell the difference unless you have thousand hours of carving behind you, and really, I have, the difference is small!). Keep the right angle, create a burr on the side of the edge opposed to the stone, as soon as you have a burr flip sides. Once you have a burr on the second side just do half a dozen of extra pass on each side, and do 10 passes on the strop on each side... Done! Sharper than a straight blade!
Ok I see a glass ceiling here: Sharpening!
It's a skill you must master before anything else when working with wood.
Opinels are perfect at carving, 5 years ago I've never heard of sloyd knives and was carving mostly with a number 8 and a couple of modified gouges. I'm french those are everywhere and come in a carbon steel that's just lovely ! I mean I've carved smoking pipes spoons cups tongues, citrus pressers spatulas, forks... for years with modified opinels, and still enjoy using them... Those were the french sloyd knife for decades!
For the closing on fingers thingie, those shall have a rotating thingie on which you can read "virobloc" to lock the blade in place.
Learn how to sharpen, practice again and again and again, and the tool brand won't really matter for a very long time whilst you develop the skills needed to use a specialty designed tool. If you bough oil stones use oil, if you bough Waterstones use water, if you bough dry ceramic or diamond stone use them with...window cleaner, it's not needed but helps a bit when you begin... There's only one key here, keep the factory angle of the blade, for a sloyd you want a flat of 8mm to 1 cm at the blade's largest going straight to the edge, no belly no second angle, that's darn laid on the stone!
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100-200 ish unlike what most videos claim is perfect to begin with you remove lots of material and can make a point where your two sides meet in a few seconds. And by lowering the pressure till noone (really you just slide your blade on the stone with no downward pressure at all!) You can achieve a really sharp and clean edge. It takes a little more stroping but I do start all my sharpenings on a 300 ish stone going up to whatever I need (13k on the coticle when needed, and xxxk when stroping). Keep me updated