Sunday 24 January 2010

Knife Sharpening

Jon has been busy carving recently so has needed to do lots of this!

First he soaks the Japanese whetstones in water.

knife sharpeningUsing the rougher side first, he sweeps the blade 10 strokes up and 10 strokes down, and then 10 strokes alternate.

Japanese whetstonesThen he wipes the blade to remove the larger particles from the bevel.

spoon carving
He repeats the sharpening process using the finer side of the whetstone until he is happy that the knife is sharp.

Devon DartmoorThen he wipes the blade again before stropping. He strops to break the very fine foil edge off the blade that has formed during the sharpening process.

He uses a leather strop - an old leather belt.

devon spoon carving
And when this is all done, the blade is sharp enough to shave with...

spoon carving first steps...and he can return to his carving work.

Carving a Dragon Kuksa.

Carving a Dragon Kuksa.  I have been carving Kuksa from green Birch for 15 years or so, I’m self taught. From the beginning, I limited mysel...