Draw knives

[ESpy]

For amusement value the other day, I made myself a drawknife. Cut the tangs, ground an edge on, bent the tangs at heat (with the occasional tap to straighten them out), HT'd the beast and banged some file handles on. It is a bit rough & ready, but it functions.

Does anyone have any tips on using the thing, however??? The bevel on this is convex at the moment, going from about 20 degrees to 27, and seems to hold its edge quite well (3mm thick O1).

Just how much wood should I be trying to take off at once? Working ash, I seem to tend towards digging the blade in too far (bevel down), so I end up breaking out the grain.

[MartiniDave]

I've got a couple of very old draw knives that bellonged to my Father, both are convex on one side and flat on the other - the flat side being the workpiece side.
I always stand slightly to one side of the workpiece. You seem to get better results using quite bold cuts.

Hope the above helps.

Dave

[demographic]

For amusement value the other day, I made myself a drawknife. Cut the tangs, ground an edge on, bent the tangs at heat (with the occasional tap to straighten them out), HT'd the beast and banged some file handles on. It is a bit rough & ready, but it functions.

Does anyone have any tips on using the thing, however??? The bevel on this is convex at the moment, going from about 20 degrees to 27, and seems to hold its edge quite well (3mm thick O1).

Just how much wood should I be trying to take off at once? Working ash, I seem to tend towards digging the blade in too far (bevel down), so I end up breaking out the grain.

I know this is a bit of an old thread but the first job I had when I left school was for an archiatectural salvage company.

One thing we did was clean up old oak beams with drawknives.
Didn't go mad on them, just removed the woodworm and cleaned em up.

We tended to use the convex side towards the workpiece if we were cutting an internal radius and the flat bit to the worpiece for an external radius or flat bit.

Sometimes the grain tries to pull your blade in, even on flat sections so if it does just use the bevelled side against the workpiece so you have more control.

Seemed to work on 200 year old oak beams anyway :)

[Eric_Methven]

On green ash, work with the bevel side down and take off just what feels comfortable. If you feel you are having to drag the drawknife through the wood fiber, you are digging too deep. Use a slight rocking action in your wrists to control the depth of cut. and go for long even pulls when you want to remove a lot of wood, not too deep. You'll know when you've got it right. The wood will just peel off in great long curls. Remember to keep the tool sharp though.

Eric