Bending a Mora carving knife.

[Lataxe]

Spoon carving is my current obsession, with many vids watched and books read. One vid source is Barn the Spoon, who has a vid showing how he bends a longer-bladed Mora carving knife into a shallow curve to better finish spoon bowls to a very smooth finish with knives alone (no sanding or scraping).

He bends the Mora knife blade by hitting it with a hammer as its held over the edge of his axe block, whilst mentioning that this risks breaking the blade. I bet!

Does anyone have a better suggestion about how a carbon steel 3 - 4 inch Mora (or any other 2 -3mm thick) knife blade might be slightly bent into a curve for carving inside shallow concave forms? (Preferably without involving any heating)?

Thanks for any advice (or warnings) you can give.

 

[Pattree]

Flatten the back of your hook knife to a crisp 90 and use that to finish your spoons. Why wreck a perfectly serviceable tool?

 

[Kepis]

Just buy a flatter curve spoon carving knife from Dave Budd, Ben Orford, etc etc etc

 

[Lataxe]

Anyone want to answer my question rather than suggest something else?

Meanwhile, does anyone know if there's a UK retailer selling a stock knife? I can only find such an implement for sale from foreign parts, which means all of the bureaucracy and additional costs involved when buying and importing from outside of the UK.

 

[Broch]

There is no sensible answer to your question - heat treated carbon steel does not take well to bending, it usually snaps. To do it without risk you would have to heat it, bend it, re-heat treat it and then re-handle it - more trouble than it's worth

 

[Stew]

I don’t really want to answer your question other than to buy a different knife!

Do you have a link to Barns video where he does this. I’m surprised that it’s what he has suggested.

You already have a view on how to do it though from Barn. He knows enough to know other ways and if he has settled on this one, perhaps it’s the best without heating it up. I would think a laminated mora would cope better.

As to the stock knife, I would speak to the like of Dave Budd, James Wood and Josh Burrell.

 

[Lataxe]

Thanks for the replies.

The Barn video in which he bends Mora knives is one of the dozens of vids on his spoon club members-only website. Unfortunately there's no record of which vids one has watched so I can't identify, with a quick look, that in which he recommends bending not just one but two Mora knives (a left and a right) to provide, effectively, two hook knives with very gradual curves indeed - useful (he demonstrates) for achieving a smooth finish to the least-curved parts of a spoon bowl without using a scraper or sandpaper.

I do have hook knives (6 in total) with various curvatures - but none with the very minimal curvature of these initially straight Mora knives given a very slight bend. In practice, I've been using small curved Crown scrapers - and these do seem to work well enough, especially if the bowl is also burnished (with an ebony burnisher) afterwards. Still, getting a smooth-knifed bowl with no further work would be pleasing .....

*********
I'll look up those fellows mentioned concerning the stock knife. The Ukrainian version (from Strongway Tools) of such a knife might be importable without hassle - but the info about customs-free amounts is obscure. Does the £135 limit amount before customs (and carrier processing charges) become due include the VAT or not? The HMRC website doesn't make it at all clear.

 

[TLM]

Some older Moras were three layer laminates with the hard layer in the middle. Those could easily be bent to various shapes because the soft outer layers did not prevent it. I do not know about the present ones but there is a chance that such layered design still exists.

 

[Lataxe]

As to the stock knife, I would speak to the like of Dave Budd, James Wood and Josh Burrell.

Thanks for those suggestions. The Dave Budd website seems to have many things I can't find elsewhere, including stock knives, at very reasonable prices. The other two have some good looking stuff but its all marked "sold out"; and much of it is very expensive compared to their peers. Presumably "sold out" means. "Made to order" only?

 

[plastic-ninja]

Thanks for those suggestions. The Dave Budd website seems to have many things I can't find elsewhere, including stock knives, at very reasonable prices. The other two have some good looking stuff but its all marked "sold out"; and much of it is very expensive compared to their peers. Presumably "sold out" means. "Made to order" only?

You can’t go far wrong with a blade from Dave Budd. I have several. All excellent.

 

[matarius777]

Thanks for the replies.

The Barn video in which he bends Mora knives is one of the dozens of vids on his spoon club members-only website. Unfortunately there's no record of which vids one has watched so I can't identify, with a quick look, that in which he recommends bending not just one but two Mora knives (a left and a right) to provide, effectively, two hook knives with very gradual curves indeed - useful (he demonstrates) for achieving a smooth finish to the least-curved parts of a spoon bowl without using a scraper or sandpaper.

I do have hook knives (6 in total) with various curvatures - but none with the very minimal curvature of these initially straight Mora knives given a very slight bend. In practice, I've been using small curved Crown scrapers - and these do seem to work well enough, especially if the bowl is also burnished (with an ebony burnisher) afterwards. Still, getting a smooth-knifed bowl with no further work would be pleasing .....

*********
I'll look up those fellows mentioned concerning the stock knife. The Ukrainian version (from Strongway Tools) of such a knife might be importable without hassle - but the info about customs-free amounts is obscure. Does the £135 limit amount before customs (and carrier processing charges) become due include the VAT or not? The HMRC website doesn't make it at all clear.

Maybe do it slowly using a former (I think that’s the right technical term)- something with the right curve that you can somehow slowly bend the blade over, possible in a large vice once you have the blade bent a bit so it would actually fit in the vice, or a G clamp contraption of some sort.