Please forgive me this rant. But I need a few words of encouragement, because Im ready to throw all of this in the trash - knives, wood and all.
Ive been at chip carving a couple weeks. I bought a Pfeil knife, some basswood and Barton's book. I prepped the knife to look just like the profile in Bartons book, then sharpened/polished. It cut well. I've since done 6-7 practice panels and had good results. I was ready to try a harder practice pattern that had more diagonal cutting. Since I was going cross grain more in this pattern, I wanted to make sure my knife was really sharp. That's where the trouble started.
I noticed the tip had worn at an angle to the rest of the blade. So I got out my stones and worked the blade to straighten the tip. That took more than an hour. Then I sharpened it back to scalpel sharp. I cut 3 triangles and the blade got 2 big nicks. Then I noticed the tip is bent. I was being careful and following Barton's advice NOT to pry out chips. So my guess is that I thinned the blade too much while reworking it and so there wasnt enough metal to stand up to the use.
I am a hand tool user. I know well that "sharp solves all manner of problems." And I remember how much effort it took to learn to sharpen my planes and chisels. I eventually bought a grinder to speed up the repair of plane irons and chisels. For carving knives, Barton says NOT to use power sharpening. But I cant bear the idea of buying a new (unbent) knife and spending 2 hours working it on my stones to get it in shape.
Im so frustrated I just want to box this carving crap all up and put it away forever.
And I was really enjoying chip carving, so that's a shame.
Rant off. Thanks for listening.
Edit: Oddly enough, the nicked, bent blade still cuts well - for now.
Edit #2: I removed the nicks, resharpened and went back to work. The tip is slightly bent. Sigh.
Fred
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