How To Sharpen Wood Carving Knife
The frequency of sharpening your wood carving tools depends on the quality of the steel the density of wood you are carving and of course how much you use the tool.
How to sharpen wood carving knife. The motion should feel as though you are trying to slice a. If you break chip or round the blade you will need to re-sharpen. If your carving blade is three quarters of and inch in width or more lay your blade flat on the sharpening surface and raise the spine of the blade until you can fit the edge of a nickel under it.
When sharpening your whittling and wood carving knives you will want to target an edge angle between 12 degrees and 20 degrees inclusive. The 3 most common sharpening tools you can use to sharpen your whittling and wood carving knives are a sharpening stone sand paper and a leather strop with polishing compound. Dont wait until it is noticeably hard to carve.
Run your chisel gouge or any other wood carving tool up and down the leather around 22 times having the edge at a 10 angle and applying the right pressure. One of the secrets to sharpening is to do it often. You will be wasting metal needlessly.
Lay the blade of the tool close to flat on the other hand at a slight angle on the stone. On average you should hone your wood carving tools every 30 minutes when using them and sharpen them at least once every 2 hours. After that you should push the tool away from you.
Method One Push Away For this method you will want to lay the blade of your carving knife almost flat on a sharpening stone and push it away from you. The general advice is to stroke the blade over the sharpening tool surface stone strop many times in the direction towards the cutting edge. Strop more sharpen less.
Take a break every hour or so to give the blade a few strokes with the strop with rouge rubbed onto it. How sharp should a whittling knife be. This will complete the leather sharpening.
