question for knife makers or metal workers ??

[Janne]

A good thread should not die to soon!

Norse carvers, and all Scandi carvers since, work hardwood wood wet.
Sami the same. The woods in Fenno Scandinavia used in the household were (are) beech, birch and alder in the south, Birch, Alder in the north.
Hard as a pig when dry.
I know only of one carving wood that was worked dry and seasoned. Birch burl for the drinking vessels. Had to be very slowly dried after boiling. Cracks once you had spent hours on the carving was not an option. Burls are rare in the forest.

Softwoods were harvested dried - on - the - root for when they wanted larger pieces like for skis, tables and window frames.

Barrel hoops high carbon? Only the God's know. Cheap iron they were made from.
Iron hoop top and bottom, wooden hoops inbetween.

I am sure you will create some highly interesting blades!

 

[Robson Valley]

I use bevel angles which fit the tool which fits the purpose in the job.
Among even my wood carving tools, everything from 6* up to 30* included bevel edge.
I'm not so sure that a fixed sharpener would be useful.

With just 4 exceptions, all of the other crooked knives that I use are derived from both new and used farrier's hoof knives.
Despite the sweep, it isn't hard to revise the bevels from 25* down to 12* for useful tools with good edge quality.

By the time of the European arrival in the Pacific Northwest, the explorers noted that the First Nations
were not only familiar with iron but that they were making tools and fish hooks from it.
Presumably, this was Asian rubbish delivered on the Japan Current. This has not stopped.

Most North American woods go from cheese to bone as they dry.
Basswood (Tilia sp = Linden) and conifers such as the cedars are the exceptions that I can think of.

 

[Janne]

True, Linden is nice.
A wood carvers wood in Central Europe. Been used for Millenia in religious carvings. Statues and such.
Takes exquisite fine detail without splitting.
Protected tree ( National tree) in Czech Republic I believe?

I hope I am not seen as nasty, but I hope the steel is discovered to be soft-ish, so that you can discover how nice it can be to have a blade that can be easy to sharpen and easy to get really sharp!

.

 

[petrochemicals]

I didnt want anyone to think I was being rude and ignoring the thread I started, I just imagined it had naturally run its course and "wound down" and was surprised to see more comments in the last few days....
I should have said, my idea is to cut out the shapes for some bent knives, and put a bevel to them, then bend them to the curve I know I want with pliers around a simple mandrel form, then harden and temper. I havent got the facility to do any forging at present

As for the suggestion about a TCT knife sharpener, I think the small teeth would be a bit fine and fiddley to customise. BUT what about using 2 cheap TCT router cutters (straight sided) You can get them an inch or more long, or 1/2 inch router bits 3 inches long. The 1/4 inch shanks could be handy to fit into some sort of adjustable mechanism? I dont mean revved up to 22,000 rpm either just manually pull the knife blade between the 2 cutters

It amazes me that native carvers used beaver teeth to carve bowls and other forms, and that they gladly used the iron bands off of ships barrels as a substitute source for blade material. Ahhh-but...were they HIGH CARBON iron bands???? LOL Do what you can with what you have...
But then cedar is soft to work with. I dont know if norse carvers worked the wood wet ot seasoned. I know the boat builders did

Almost certainly carbon steel as cast iron was the norm, low carbon steel for structures is a relatively new creation. Wrought iron is high enough in carbon to be problematic.

The tct can be made into knife sharpeners, just cut the blade off with them. There are videos on the interweb about doing just that