Friday, February 27, 2009

Making spoon carving knives

A few years ago I had made knives with my students and one that I had made turned out to be particularly good for carving the bowls for spoons. I had tried to interest a tool manufacturer in making some, but that came to naught, so I am making my own for use in teaching. You will see the simple steps in the photos below:



Now they are in the oven being tempered. Four hundred degrees for 25 minutes, then cooled to room temperature. After that, walnut handles will be added. My thanks to Larry Williams, Clark and Williams Planemakers. Larry gave me hints on hardening and tempering steel and provided scrap steel from making plane irons for use in making these knives.

10 comments:

  1. Hi, I am wondering if you could share some more details about making these knives. I love to carve spoons and am very interested in making my own spoon carving knives. Details such as type of metal used and how you sharpen the blade, etc would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for considering my request. Craig

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  2. Craig, Have you visited my google knol on making the knife?

    http://knol.google.com/k/doug-stowe/how-to-make-a-spoon-carving-knife#

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  3. Doug, No I did not, thanks for the response. I will check it out right away. I am really glad I stumbled onto your blog, Thanks, Craig

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  4. Doug, I checked out the knol, awesome! Thanks so much for sharing this with us aspiring knife makers. Craig

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  5. Hello, I came a cross your knol and saw you made a bunch of your curved knives. Do you by chance sell these? I didn't see any on your etsy store, so I thought I'd check out your blog and ask.

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  6. Thomas, I've not made those for sale.

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  7. Doug,

    I am really interested in your technique for making these knives. Unfortunately KNOL is dead. Do you have this information somewhere else?

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  8. Neal, try this link:

    http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol27/?pg=125&pm=2&u1=friend#pg125

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  9. Doug, what sharpener would you recommend for sharpening woodworking tools in general? Obviously it would be slightly different for a specialty knife like a spoon carver, but do you have any favorite sharpeners for fine woodworking tools? Thanks!

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  10. James, I normally use oil stones to keep the secondary bevel sharp on chisels and planes.

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