My perfect General Carving Knife

Well, here we go again, another attempt at creating my ideal general carving knife. Just to recap, I love to design things and knives are one of my passions, so what better item to design eh? I like to carve while I'm out walking with the dog or with friends or both. I want a knife that is small enough to carry in my pocket but large enough to use. I've always had a bit of a thing for simplicity and functional perfection and so I like bare blades with not scales but I do understand that scales give a more comfortable grip.

This particular knife started out as a file and then I ground out this knife which I posted on Google+. Here is the post for those that didn't see it.

https://plus.google.com/+TrevorLeedham/posts/jiyrbUfyUTB 

I wasn't too happy with the knife in use, it's length was just a bit much and the amount of belly in the blade was wrong for me. So, what to do with it eh? Well, if you are me you just go back to the grindstone and reshape it to something better, (most of the time)

What I am looking for in a general use carving knife:

• Blade of no more than 2 -3 inches (50 -75mm).
• A straight back to the blade.
• Slight curve and upswept (puuko style or kwaiken)
• Thick blade, I like the feeling of rigidity.
• I love a really shallow grind on my knives, I don't use a blade as a screwdriver or crowbar and so I don't need a steep grind and can indulge myself in my love of exceptionally sharp and highly polished edges.
• I don't like heavily profiled grips as my grip on the knife changes constantly and so I prefer a neutral grip that can be used in a variety of ways. For this reason I don't like choils at all, to quote from "Knifenews" "Choils are ergonomic instructions: they obligate the user to hold the knife in a specific way. If your hands don’t fit the choil – tough luck! A knife without a choil can offer more ‘neutral’ ergonomics that allow for many different grips" (see reference 1 below) I actually find that a choil gets in the way when I'm carving and causes me problems, so I don't use them.
• Extremely polished edge, When I cut through wood I want to leave a clean surface, I don't like to use abrasives to finish my carvings and I like to leave the cut finish you get from a really exceptionally sharp blade.

This is the result.

The detail. 50mm (2 inch) blade, 22mm wide and 6mm thick. Overall the knife is 140mm (5 inches) long and fits just nicely in my small hand.

This knife feels lovely in the hand and is sharp enough to split hairs. The polished edge just slips through wood and it carves just fine. To protect both the edge and myself I've knocked up a wooden sheath for it which is rigged for either neck or pocket carry.

1. From <http://knifenews.com/choil-or-no-choil/>

Blog moving

I've decided to switch over to me Wordpress blog for day to day stuff. It's nothing personal to Blogger but I get a better editing app for my phone at wordpress than I do with blogger and it's easier for me to update on the move than with this one.

So this is my wordpress blog, I may copy over some of these posts so please prepare to be a little bored with some repeats, but I'll try to keep them to a minimum....

Thanks for reading, it means a lot to me

https://wordpress.com/posts/trevorleedham.wordpress.com

Religious icon or just a nice shape to carve??

I grew up going to church, it was part of family life and at one time was the whole focus of our family social life. Suffice it to say I know my way around the Anglican Church.

Anyway, in later years I realised that all of those little dissatisfactions added up into a fairly serious rejection of the dogma and hypochrisy of the whole "organised religion" thing.

I left, but I still retain a healthy respect for the sense of wellbeing and fellowship that many people derive from being a part of the church. I also find that many people take a great deal of comfort from some of the symbols and icons which are used by most Christian faiths.

Probably the most well known is the cross, odd for an instrument of torture and excruciatingly painfull death to be so revered and to give so much comfort....

Anyway I have, over the years carved a number of both crosses and crucifixes. All have been given as gifts and so have been carved the recipient in mind.

This is an exception to that, it wasn't carved for anyone and is currently just sitting in my finished box.
It's around 3inches long and carved from Yew.

Fergus

This little chap never did get a name so I guess it's up to Heather to name him.
He looks to me a little like a Fergus, but hey, he doesn't live with me anymore.
He is now living with Heather Hedger in her new pad.

Hector the House Mouse has a new home

Every home should have it's mouse and Hector has now gone to live with Ryan and Bryony Hedger. He's carved from apple and I loved carving him... now working on a couple of more house mice... watch this space..

  

Batch production or One-offs

It's funny,  but with any type of carving, such as spoon carving, caracature carving etc.. It is really easy to get sucked into a habit of carving lots of very similar things.
For carvers who sell their work on craft stalls or in shops this is often not just a good thing but positively necessary. A spoon carver for example needs to be able to carve a high volume of stuff in order to sell at a reasonable price. This demands practise and the discipline to stick with many versions of largely the same design, batch production.

I have a massive amount of respect for those people who find it easy to do this. I don't have the necessary attention span to carve multiples of one design, I get bored. Some might say that is a good thing as it adds to the sense of uniqueness of each piece. I suppose I would generally agree with that sentiment. Anyway my way works for me but it does mean that all of my carvings are one offs. That means they tend to take a bit longer though since they also do not tend to start from a pre-designed template.
I suppose also it means that almost all of my carvings are done with somebody in mind, sort of like personal commissions. The wood-turner mouse in my earlier post that I carved for my dad is a classic example of that. Sometimes I carve, just to try out a new idea or to try out a new knife to see how it performs.
Many of my "try-outs" end up with "The Babe", my darling Tracey. They may not have originally been meant for her but she has this knack of appropriating any prototype or first try-out. I recently did a little elephant for our friend Sheila who has a real thing about them. Before carving Sheila's I did a couple of really small ones to get a feel for the shape I wanted, it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where they ended up...

It's a really good job that Trace doesn't like knives or I'd never get to use any of my prototype blades.

Back in my comfort zone

I've recently gone back to carving the kind of things I love. Whimsical animals, well to be precise,                   
Mice.

Dad's little wood-turner mouse

Over the years I've done a lot of mice for various people. They are usually just whittles as I walk along, often out with friends or walking the dog. One mouse has sat on the mantle at my friends' Ron and Tina's for over ten years. I carved him whilst out cor a walk in their local woods near Barton Stacey where they live. He is a simple and rather rough little chap carved from sweet chestnut found in the woods.

Another is in boxwood and sits on Tom and Janet's kitchen window sill, again a walking the dog type whittle.

I did a much more involved mouse for my dad while he was still wood-turning and he used to display him on the "East Surrey Wood-turners" stall because a mouse was his trademark.

More recently I've tended to do mice when I'm really not in the mood to carve anything more demanding and just want some carving therapy.

Little "Valentine Mouse" (below) was a simple little Valentine's present for My Darling wife Trace.

Valentine Mouse

During a recent visit Ron and Tina mentioned again my little mouse and their daughter Heather mentioned that she would like one, which kind of got me to thinking. It takes me about three hours to do a fairly reasonable mouse and It might be kind of nice to leave a mouse with people I visit. I left "Harry the House Mouse" with the couple I stayed with last week and I've got another couple on the way. One for Ryan, (Ron's son) whose wedding I'm going to in a couple of weeks and another for Heather... 

I'm beginning to think that every house should have it's mouse....

This is "Felix, the fast mouse" who will be going to live with Heather in her new home soon..