Carving Knife from a Boning Knife

[mike swindell]

I was over ambitious and trying to start a knife sharpening business from home. I accumulated quite a selection of old forged steel knives from Chicago Cutlery, Ontario, etc. The boning knives I have a huge hollow grind as do most of the other knives I have. Should I send this out to get it ground flat ? I think it would take me a long time to thin out the blade. Help please ?
Mike

[Just Carving]

I could be wrong but a hollow ground knife could be used to carve wood as long as it's sharp. Strop and carve.

BobL

[joepaulbutler]

My folks own a small meat processing plant, so quite familiar with the knives you are talking about.

I would leave the concave shape there. Meat-cutting knives have a thicker spline. If you try to do a flat grind be sure to take a little of the spline off or you end up with an edge that is steep. maybe good for roughing out, but don't think it would make for the everyday carver.

I snapped the end off my Fdick boning knife. made the point into a detail knife & the other into a roughing-out blade. Have not used them much. the detail knife if I'm clearing an area that is going to take a little prying.

With the convex grind the knife is greeting wood with a thinner metal mass; consequently easier to make the cut.

Again just my 2¢ worth

[mike swindell]

Thanks for the reply, I sent an email to DallasDeege ? to see if he'd work on the boning knives. Cheers

[tbox61]

Thanks for the reply, I sent an email to DallasDeege ? to see if he'd work on the boning knives. Cheers

You will not be disappointed with Dallas' work on reworking a knife for you! I have had him rework 3 pocket knives into carvers and one Chicago Cutlery paring knife.

I turned the Chicago Cutlery knife into a bark carving companion. Paid .50 for it at a thrift store, and after Dallas reworked it, it works like a champ!

[Brian T]

Mike S., you wanted to see some home-brew crooked knives. These are for detail in cedar carvings up to 64" tall.

The top pair of left & right are Diamond (Taiwan) farrier's knife blades, surface mounted on handles of rosewood and mahogany. I needed a pair with pointed tips so I knocked off the factory handles and cutaway the hooked tips with the Dremel.

The middle one was a Ukal/Supervet double edged knife from France. It had a hooked tip and was meant for trimming the hooves of sheep and goats. Same surface mount technique.

The bottom pair were Mora An attaboy for Rick! left and right Equus hook knives. I cut off some of the hooked tips with a Dremel and opened the hook with a 7/16" chainsaw file that got used as a mandrel for the fine sand papers.

The handle sizes were another experiment, so were the tapers that you see. None of these would be much use for caricature, flat plane, holiday or chip carving styles at all. I'm very well aware of the shortcomings of carving conifer woods and western red cedar in particular. Don't have many pieces pop off any more.

HaidaC.jpg

[mike swindell]

Those knives look really nice, I found a hook knife on Ebay for $2.50 supposedly Swedish. I'll just play with the shape. I did just receive my Personna floor scraper blades, I haven't measured the thickness but they are flexible and friggin sharpe. Mike