Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: woodswalker on December 30, 2013, 11:43:12 pm
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Well I have my hickory seasoned enough to do something with. But before I can do that I need to get myself a draw knife. Would like to get a good used one but have no idea what is a fair price or a good brand. Any help would be appreciated.
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Check out flea markets of "antique" shops. You can usually get a good old model for $10 to $20, and way better than a new one for the same money. Try asking on our Trading Post and have something ready to trade.
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I got a perfect old drawknife for $20 at an antique store. I see them on Craigslist sometimes also.
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I find them at auctions sometimes too. Worth watching if you are in a rural area. Sometimes they are bundled along with other old woodworking tools...
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A easy way to find them is on ebay and you just look for rounded knife, blade with out dings, etc. And you will eventually find one. Hope this helps!
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If you can, get the largest drawknife you can afford. I bought a small 8-incher, and it really doesnt have the heft to power through large staves, I wish I had gotten a larger one
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If you can, get the largest drawknife you can afford. I bought a small 8-incher, and it really doesnt have the heft to power through large staves, I wish I had gotten a larger one
I second that. A big draw knife can do heavy and light work, but a small one is really only good for light work.
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I got a new one from menards it has worked perfect for over a year now and will probably work perfect forever for 25$ don't see why some guys are against new draw knifes
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Found mine on ebay for $18.
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Check out flea markets of "antique" shops. You can usually get a good old model for $10 to $20, and way better than a new one for the same money. Try asking on our Trading Post and have something ready to trade.
1+ that's where I found mine and there were 2 more I should have bought at that time also.
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My draw knife is near a 100 years old and my price and joy.
I have had a play with a few new ones but they all seem heavy and cumbersome.
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I got some cool spokeshaves at a car boot sale. love them
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get an old one from antique stores.30 bucks or less.they are way better than new ones.i use Keen cutter brand.they have very good steel.mine is from 1930..draw knives have soft steel in between hard steel,so you need to see how much ware is on the blade.you can only sharpen so much.old ones are good ones as long as they have a little life in them.hope this helps.
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The draw knife I use I inherited from my father. I never saw him use it. He was a woodworker but not of that ilk.
I wish I knew why he had it and where he got it.
I have so many questions I wanted to ask my Dad. I still have so much to learn from him eeven though I learned so much.
I bought an old draw knife when I was coming home from a shoot. It is really nice. The handles are tipped with brass. It needed some TLC from me which it got happily.
I wonder how the previous owner used it and how.
My Dad's knife is special to me.
I'm sure the new ones are fine but when I pick up an old knife I'm picking up a bit of history.
I like the old ones.
Jawge
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I wish I knew why he had it and where he got it.
Maybe from his dad like a couple of my things.
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I had such a hard time finding them until I went to a big antique warehouse, there were hundreds!. Up until then I only saw them at lee valley for wwwaaay too much money
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I got my waaaaaay too expensive one from Lee Valley, the forged Austrian one. And it came sharp as heck, since then it has been honed repeatedly to a shaving edge.
Prior to that I had one of those cheapies from Menards. The cutting edge would literally roll over like it was made of cheap tinfoil. I could not keep the edge for love nor money. It resides deep in the brush up on a hillside nowadays.
I am happy with the waaaay too expensive one after dealing with one that just wouldn't work. I would have happily spent 1/5 the money on one from a flea market, but in two years I hadn't seen a single one!
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I have seen them in antique shops myself. Just check and make sure they aren't dinged up or chipped on the edge, I have seen some badly neglected ones at antique shops that were marked 40 to 50 bucks and were in pitiful shape. I wound up buying mine new at a local woodworker's supply store. It is a "Two Cherries" brand from Germany and it works really well for me. Has a straight 9" blade. My other one I picked up at a garage sale for I think 10 bucks. It's made by "PEXTO" (stamp on blade) and has a 10" curved blade. It was and still is dull but does not have any dings or chips in the blade. It does not pull wood as well as the new one, but I think that is because of it's dullness. I read somewhere in TBB that dull ones work better, but I tried this one out last night and it must be really dull cause it was like using a butter knife to chase a ring on osage.
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@JW - I missed that Austrian one last time I checked! Definately not wwwaaaayyy to expensive. :) Maybe I just looked at the Gransfors one and was blown away. When I was looking before, seems the only one I could find in my price range was "the all purpose pushknife" and I wasn't really happy with it, cause it's not a drawknife. They seem to have more draw knife options now than I remember back when I was looking for one.
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I've got two. The first one I bought on ebay for nine bucks, free shipping! The second I got for five bucks at a garage sale. Dale
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I got my waaaaaay too expensive one from Lee Valley, the forged Austrian one. And it came sharp as heck, since then it has been honed repeatedly to a shaving edge.
Prior to that I had one of those cheapies from Menards. The cutting edge would literally roll over like it was made of cheap tinfoil. I could not keep the edge for love nor money. It resides deep in the brush up on a hillside nowadays.
I am happy with the waaaay too expensive one after dealing with one that just wouldn't work. I would have happily spent 1/5 the money on one from a flea market, but in two years I hadn't seen a single one!
My cheapy from menards works very good
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tried out a couple that a friend has. liked the curved one the best, but so did he, and the straight one he gave me never saw much use. never seen a curved one at a yardsale, but I finally purchased a curved one from the hardware store. Came from the same pile that JW's did, and was waaay to soft to hold an edge. finally got pissed at it staring at me with a new $50 price tag, so I grabbed the torch and hardened it, retempered to straw color, and it now sharpens up fine and I can roll the edge with the same effort as a cabinet scraper. with all the work I got in it, I should have just found an old leaf spring and saved me the $50. If you can build a bow, than a drawknife is an ez metal project.
Picked up the straight one to try again yesterday while reducing a stave, and put it right back down again. Gotta be curved -for me anyway. May be there's a reason you see so many straight ones at the antique stores, although I cant believe that the drawknife gets much attention in the typical tool box in todays age of power tools. I have been sawing, planing and grinding wood with electricity for 40 years in trade related ways, and appreciate the lack of dust and noise that comes with hand tools.
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Did they just use better steal back then? And why do they use garbage steal nowadays most of the time? Is it just about cutting costs/profit, etc? I made some trade points out of a newer craftsman handsaw recently and I can't get them to hold an edge for crap, I tried heat treating and quenching in oil, but still to no avail. I can't even get them to where they feel sharp to the touch, it is weird.
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First generation steel TMK. After it gets recycled 10 times over it loses its qualities. Another reason old sawmill saw blade broad heads and knives are so mean, a lot are first generation steel blades.
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I have an assortment of drawknives that I have picked up over the years at anteek shops or inherited. As a history "geek/nerd" I just feel more in touch with the past when using the old tools that I own...
YMMV
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i would imagine that a lot of the poor quality with cheap tools, comes from bad workmanship as much as anything else. the hardening and tempering operations are probably automated half-assed and followed with lax no quality control. The raw materiel cost differences between acceptable steel and good quality steel is small compared to the labor involved to have a skilled craftsman properly harden and temper each tool individually,
TMK
You can use the "spark test" to see if the steel you have is up to the job. (It should have been for the craftman handsaw to trade point usage unless the saw did not hold an edge). With the draw knife mentioned above, I had to harden it a second time after we did not get it hot enough (or maybe not for long enough) on the first try. Your heat treating and quenching with the oil bath may not have been the preferred method for the steel that the saw was made of. It should come out of the hardening quench harder than needed, so that you can hardly touch it with a file. Tempering is a separate operation to draw out some of the hardness so that it can be sharpened a little more easily and not be so brittle that it snaps like glass. A steel arrow head should be tempered softer than a drawknife as they need to bend ( toughness) when they take a hit, and be easy to touch up with hand sharpeners in the field. I'll bet with a little experimentation and another try, you can salvage the work it took to cut out those trade points and have some nice points
willie
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First generation steel TMK. After it gets recycled 10 times over it loses its qualities. Another reason old sawmill saw blade broad heads and knives are so mean, a lot are first generation steel blades.
imho there is a lot of truth to that.
fwiw there is to much emphasis put on using space age coatings and elements (a lot of $ being made)
when good simple carbon steel and proper heat treat and temper are where its at.
(quote from a renowned bladesmith)
jesus Christ himself can send a bar of steel from heaven but it,s only as good as the treatment it receives here on earth.
Kevin
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Thanks yall. I didn't know none of that. Maybe i'll try heatin it again.
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Just make sure you get the whole thing the same shade of red and then quench it all at once or you'll end up with hard and soft spots. So you need a long fire and a long trough of oil. I found it was better to do it at dusk so you can see the color better. A dim shop would work as well.
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I have an ancient one with folding handles I got from some long forgotten source and an Arno I just bought. 3Rivers sell the Arno for $70, Amazon has them for $56, and I found one on eBay for $35, shipped. Nice. The Arno has an offset handle and a thick double-bevel blade that makes it really easy to control the depth of cut. I can hog out big chunks or take a thin shaving by varying the tilt of the blade. It's much faster than my 9" bandsaw at roughing out and tapering boards.