A friend whose husband used to be a woodworker gave me a drawknife a few days ago. It was pretty cruddy - looked like it had been sitting for a long time. Had rust all over it. There were hammer marks on the top of the drawknife. I used a Dremel with a sanding disk to remove most of the marks.
I cleaned it up and sharpened it, which was a challenge. It's not easy to sharpen a drawknife. I tried Derek's technique of sharpening it on a 1725 RPM grinder but I didn't have as good of success as Derek did. I tried using a file but the steel was too hard and the file wouldn't cut very well. I finally used my DMT diamond plates, sort of like files and worked the edge. Once I went from Extra Coarse, to Coarse, to Fine, I switched to my water stones and used them just like the diamond plates. That is, I held the drawknife still and rubbed the plates and stones against the edge.
Holding the drawknife while you're doing that is a challenge but I worked out a good technique.
Anyway, here's a few "after" pictures. I should have taken a "before" picture but didn't.
Draw-Knife-01.jpg
Draw-Knife-02.jpg
The edge had some dings in it. I would have had to take a lot of metal off to get past the dings so I left them. Over time, they'll disappear as the edge is sharpened.
Draw-Knife-03.jpg
There's a logo on the drawknife but I couldn't figure out the name. Can anyone identify it?
Draw-Knife-04.jpg
I did some cutting with it - just as a test - and it works well, even with the dings.
Mike