All About Head Knives + Japanese Skiving Knives

[@M.Melnick]

Thanks for posting this, I picked up a lot and resolved many questions I didn't know I had. One thing that was really helpful was that the rails on French skivers maybe too long. I bought one and immediately files the rails down before seeing this. Now I know I was not crazy to do it that way.

[@framerguy]

I usually miss the streaming of these online "workshops" but I wanted to add a few hints regarding the learning of sharpening and honing of an edged tool. When I started to learn sharpening, as a teen, 70 yrs. ago, I could dull a butter knife trying to get an edge on it!! And I thought that "honing" was the name of a harmonica! The BEST way to learn is NOT simply watching someone ELSE do it, YOU have to pick up a blade, be it a plane iron, wood chisel, leather round knife, or any other edged tool from a splitting axe to a scalpel and PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE, and then take that number multiplied by 1000 repetitions! In other words, pick a random number and start practicing until you reach that number multiplied by 1000 times you practiced and THEN you may have reached some level for which you can take almost any dull item and make it sharp again! I am still practicing, after over 70 years and I STILL have days when I either find some little movement or holding position with a hand tool which brings it to a fraction of a degree SHARPER than the last time I sharpened it. There is NO substitute for practice if you want to learn how to properly sharpen an edged tool with which you make your living! Sure, I still watch videos on sharpening, that's how I came upon writing this message, and I DID learn one thing which, up until Denny covered it, the simple process had not entered my mind whatsoever. When I watched him take one of those inexpensive "safety" skivers and HONE the single edged injector "razor" blade, still installed in its handle, until the entire flat portion of the handle AND the blade edge shined like a "diamond in a goat's butt", was cutting like a custom forged $300 Skiving knife in a matter of seconds! What a "WELL, DUH!" moment that was for me! Sometimes simple IS really BETTER! Oh, it most likely will need twice the honing that a well-made skiver will need but what's a few extra seconds on a honing board, to rejuvenate the cutting edge, compared to maybe 10 minutes of more intense work to bring a skiving blade's edge back to proper operating conditions? I had bought a set of 3 "French" bevelers some years ago and I could NOT get them to do a starting cut in the center of a path of leather for which I needed to have a shallow trough for a single layer knife sheath to bend over to match both sides together, [as opposed to a "pancake" style sheath]. As much as I tried, I could NOT figure out how to get that skiver to cut that breakover path in that piece of veg. tan leather! So, I got down close, with a 10X magnifier and I watched as I slowly tried to push that blade down into the leather to start the plunge cut for the needed thinner leather for that sheath to look right. I suddenly discovered the cause of the problem, and I knew immediately how to fix it! As Denny noted with his French skiver, the dull "ears" of the blade were interfering with the sharp part of the blade, so it became a very sharp flat blade with 2 very DULL shoulders on either side of the blade!! I took a small, tapered bastard file, used for filing chainsaw chain teeth, and I carefully filed down both outside edges tapering them back and toward the apex of where they met the cutting edge of the blade itself, and presto, it worked like a charm. I had to finish up the angle and the final honing of both sides and the center of the blade, where they met, but it was one simple step overlooked by that manufacturer in the design of those skiving blades and rendering them useless for the type of work they were designed to do. I could bore y'all with another wordy list of "do's" and "don't's" but I will simply close by saying something that my dad used to tell me, "Son, there are absolutely NO shortcuts to reaching anything NEAR to that pinnacle we all call "PERFECTION"! My dad was a simple but very wise man.

[@CS-vg1dt]

Sharpening is a skill of it’s own. No blade comes from any manufacturer sharp enough for leatherwork. Most people that say they can’t sharpen a blade don’t spend enough time on their blade.

[@noquedaniuno]

I will just add that stropping a couple of times before doing a cut will save a lot of future work. Just a couple of passes and you will have a "better than new blade" every time.

[@oldschooljack3479]

I love going to SLC... But it's a hot Son-of-a-Diddly in that place during the warm months.

[@elund408]

So buy a knife practice with it, learn to sharpen it, strop it often. You can't buy skill.

[@robertjerome1889]

NO NOISE HERE..