Drawknife Daily Maintenance

a quick tune up during use

I’m in the middle of a heavy teaching schedule, with chair classes happening once or twice a month at this point. Which means I see a bunch of different drawknives in all sorts of conditions brought in by students. My goal, both in class and during private work, is to get those knives sharp and back into action quickly. A few brought along their Drawsharp…nice to see students putting those to use during our days together. The free-hand process I share here is something I do 4-6 times a day when working a full day on shavehorse.

Those longer days on the shavehorse require drawknife maintenance. It’s not because I can see dullness (I seldom see the flat, thin white line reflecting light on the edge of the knife like I can with my chisels). Nor can I necessarily feel a change in the cutting edge…the shift from sharp to “not-as-sharp” happens too gradually for me to notice while at work. A dull tool will not take a thin shaving, requires extra physical force to pull through the cut, and leaves tearout on challenging materials. It’s my goal to avoid these things - to reduce physical fatigue while improving quality - during the hours on the shavehorse. And it serves the secondary benefit of getting me off the horse to stretch and move around before another session of chair part making. The drawknife needs tuning after every hour or so of work ...whether I can tell a difference or not. (Another reason, possibly the main reason, I sharpen this frequently is because working green wood with a razor sharp knife is one of the most pleasing aspects of my work. It is a highlight of green woodworking. One of its joys. Sharpening is vital to this experience.)

This is best shared in a video. The entire process takes 3-4 minutes.

Years ago, Brian Boggs shared a story on sharpening while teaching at NBSS. I will get a detail or two wrong here, but this idea has stuck with me and helped shape my ideas around sharp and dull.

From my (fading) memory; during a chairmaking class, Brian shared an analogy comparing the process of sharpening to a classical guitarist tuning their instrument. For the musician, there is not “in-tune” or “completely out-of-tune.” Things never fall completely out of tune. The musican makes small changes and adjustments between each piece, always keeping the guitar at or near its peek abilities. That’s how Brian thinks of sharpening. A tool never gets to a “dull” state because he’s continuously making adjustments to it during use.

That changed my thinking on edge tools. Sharpening as an integral part of woodworking….not something done outside of the woodworking. It’s a vital part of the process.