Drawknife recommendations

[Pat Zabinski]

I have occasional need to remove bark from logs and to rough shape logs for carving. I much prefer hand tools over power tools, and I am looking at drawknives to help. Does anyone have any experience with drawknives? If so, can you share any recommendations in terms of blade
and handle style?

From a blade perspective, I'm leaning towards a straight blade, because it will be easier to sharpen. However, I'm willing to sharpen a curved blade if it works better. Suggestions?

As for handles, there seems to be three primary types: straight outwards such that they are in-line with the blade; backwards such that they are 90 degrees from the blade, and angled. Any reason to choose one handle style over another?

Once I get blade and handle style figured out, is there anything else I should be concerned with?

Thanks!

[Neil Bosdet]

Hi Pat,

I don't have much experience with them but Lee Valley offers about 5 different versions with descriptions about each and their purpose and benefits. Here's a link to the ones that seemed best.

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=1&p=44502&cat=1,130,43332

[Mike K Wenzloff]

Yep, peeled a log or two...about 1977...

http://wenzloffandsons.com/temp/little_house/slides/house1a.jpg

The curved edge, even if slight, is a big help depending on the state of the bark and type of tree.

But they are not a big deal to sharpen. It's not like sharpening a plane or chisel. More like sharpening an axe. I use a flat file to remove damage and a round stone to hone with.

For what you are doing, I sharpen mine with a single bevel, but the bevel I would say is convex--it's not a flat perfect bevel. I use them for peeling bevel down. This allows more control, especially around raised areas where limbs were.

Take care, Mike

[Mike K Wenzloff]

Oh, the handles. All mine are angled out, a couple are bulb-type handles, the rest longer handles.

Take care, Mike

[Al Wasser]

Pat, if you are peeling logs - you didn't state a size - you might consider a spud. They work well on larger logs depending on how "tight" the bark is. A spud basically looks like a garden hoe that has the head straightened and the blade sharpened.
A drawknife works well also for bark removal if you can sit on the log, but the wife may not like what the pitch/saps do to the pants.
Both devices turn into work fast if you have many logs to peel

[Dave Anderson NH]

Two of my four drawknives have splayed or angled handles and the other two have handles perpendicular to the blade. I find they all work well. The caveat is that the closer the width of the object being worked is to the width of the drawknife blade, the more likely you are to skin your knuckles on the workpiece. With the roughly circular cross section of a log, either will work without knocking your knuckles.

[Steve Wargo]

I like my Pheil Carving draw knife a lot. But I usually only use it for doing small work.

[Don Boys]

Drew Langsner at County Workshops sells a knife that works great for chair building. It should also work fine for you. I strongly suggest you buy a leather guard at the same time. These blades can do a great deal of damage. You don't want to accidently come in contact with the blade. Roy Underhill got a cut requiring several stiches when he reached into a bag containing an unsheathed drawknife. Brian Boggs has a good dvd on their use (see Lie-Nielson).

Don Boys

[Doug Shepard]

I've got 3 drawknives collected from garage sales and one from eBay. I only use them occasionally for peeling bark off shorter pieces of wood (not full logs). One of the knives has adjustable handles that have notched detent positions and a wingnut to lock it in position. At first you'd think that was a nice idea. In practice I've found it a real PITA as the pressure of pulling on the handles can occasionally cause the thing to slip and skip to the next position. Avoid that type and stay with fixed position handles whatever you get.

[Pat Zabinski]

Thanks y'all for the advice and opinions. You've helped me narrow down my selection with a better understanding of what to consider.

[Bob Smalser]

Thanks y'all for the advice and opinions. You've helped me narrow down my selection with a better understanding of what to consider.

If you intend to do a lot of this, a bark spud is what loggers use out here:

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=1&p=20121&cat=1,41131,41140

http://www.leevalley.com/images/item/Woodworking/LogBuild/65U0510s1b.jpg

Trees fallen in early spring peel easily. Fall them in winter and you'll have a job on your hands peeling them with either spud or drawknife.

[Pat Zabinski]

Trees fallen in early spring peel easily. Fall them in winter and you'll have a job on your hands peeling them with either spud or drawknife.

I unfortunately get a mixture. When I choose to fall a tree, I typically do it in late-winter to early-spring when the ground is frozen yet it's warm enough to work. I've found the bark to come of reasonably well when it warms up when I use a hammer, crowbar, chisel, ... (not ideal tools for the job, but it's what I have around).

However, several trees fall throughout the year during storms, and I do what I can to salvage them. I had a walnut, red oak, and sugar maple come down this fall, and I won't get out there to harvest them for a few weeks. Based on past experience, I'm expecting the bark to hold fairly tight, and I was looking for a selection of better tools to make life a bit easier.

I like the idea of a bark spud; should help a lot in getting the majority of the bark off - particularly in the stubborn logs. My plan is to then follow it up with a drawknife to clean up where needed and to later rough-shape the log prior to carving. I will look locally for a bark spud and go to the web if unavailable here.

From the advice/opinions provided here, I've made some tentative decisions on the drawknife.

8 to 10 blade to get through thick bark
straight blade as a starter knife (curved blade is in the plans after I get use to the straight blade)
45-degree handles for comfort and grip are ideal, but 90-degree handles are good as wellI could not find a drawknife that I liked with 45-degree handles, so I'll try one with 90-degree handles. Looks like Sorby and Pfeil offer drawknifes that will work, have reasonable quality and are in my price range, so I'll likely try one of them.

Comments on my rationale/selection?

Again, thanks much for the help. It's been great.

[Bill Houghton]

All my drawknives have 90 degree handles, and I've found them fine.

Not discussed so far has been technique: when doing rough drawknife work, like hogging off wood or, probably, bark, short, choppy strokes with the knife tilted to take out much thickness but not much length work best for me (I even do what sounds like a karate "grunt" sometimes). When smoothing (which might include getting the last bits of bark off a log once the bulk of it is off), I work more gracefully, in a Zen-like float of the knife.

Recognizing what I'm trying to do seems to lead to how I do it. This is a rather intuitive tool, in my experience; and a neat one because of that.

[Roger Bell]

You can put a very keen edge on a drawknife in a hurry using several grit progression on a 1" belt sander using al ox or norizon belts. A keen edge really is not all that critical in de-barking operations, however.

I prefer a spud with a curved, rather than straight body shape and a narrower rather than a wider edge, especially for small diameter logs. The larger the log and the thicker the bark, and the drier the bark, the more useful a spud is over a knife, I think, but you may need both if you want all the inner bark off entirely. A knife is fine for thinner bark and juicer bark....and not so useful for very thick bark, such as mature D Fir. In these cases, I have often used a sawed off spade with a square-cut and ground edge.

[Bob Smalser]

... Looks like Sorby and Pfeil offer drawknifes ....

Good heavens.

Ebay and elsewhere have large old drawknives for a dime a dozen.....and Worth, Pexto, Greenlee, Jennings, Barton, Swan, Witherby and other well-known old brands are better quality, too.

You can buy one of each to try them out for a fraction of the price of new. I'd forget the 45-degree handle gimmick and just buy the largest one you can find set up like the old Worth at the bottom of my pic....14-18 inches isn't too big for your purpose:

http://pic20.picturetrail.com/VOL12/1104763/7081299/91882340.jpg

A quick search today for both "drawknife" and "draw knife" on Ebay shows almost 150 available. Sharpening and using any of them is no big deal...here's how:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=7528&highlight=drawknife