Where can I get one…???..
Hey Paul - highland woodworking sells one with a 12 inch blade for 56 bucks… item #129707 in their catalog
they also sell a nice line of swedish throwing axes (if your lineup is getting too crowded, ha ha!)
Did you try Garrett Wade? I got a nice set from them, flat, concave and convex, available singly or in a set.
To my memory, the length is right about right, though I’d be glad to go out to the shed and measure if you need to know for sure.
Lehman’s (the supplier specializing in Amish stuff) has a curved drawknife with a blade that’s 15".
Very fair prices from both sources. garretwade.com or Lehmans.com
If you see Larry Fuller, tell him to give Jim’s greatgrandfathers drawknife to you, you would put it to work, bastard “borrowed” it about 3 years ago
That would be funny if I didn’t know how much those old tools mean to you…
Paul, I have an oooooold drawknife that I found in a ‘‘unit clean-out’’ at the place where I shape. I keep it around to remember how far we’ve come…
I guess you want to go all the way back, which is pretty cool in itself.
“I guess you want to go all the way back, which is pretty cool in itself.”
I’m interested in continuing a tradition…**
**
Aloha Paul,
Don’t know what you’re working on, but I’m sure you will agree with me that the more years you spend working wood with power tools, the more I look for ways to do more tasks by hand with as many hand tools as possible. There is just something about the peace without all the whining noise and dust. I’ve been blessed over the past 35 years to spend some time with old masters, some from Europe, who all learned their craft the old school way…traditional ways of joinery etc…hand cut dovetails, joints,… The older I get the less I care so much about hurryig to the finish line on projects. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the joy of the whole deal is in the journey. Good luck with your drawnkife. I think I’ll go out and blow the dust off mine just to think about it.
Oh by way, you’ll appreciate this, I recently found a guy selling a clear hart old growth redwood plank (milled over 100 years ago). It’s 8" thick x 4 ft. wide x nearly 17 ft. long. Man I can just visualize the solid plank early Hawaiiam boards to be made from that! Maybe you should get your stand up paddle out and ride / float it over here to Maui and we’ll make some boards.
Richard
Aloha Mr. Richard Mc-San – I’m used to the machine tools, but use hand tools from time to time. I’ve never used a draw knife, and only have seen curved ones. The uses that I have seen were to skim bark and pith off of raw lumber. In some of the old footage of Greg Noll’s, I watched them turn their rails, but not much else. Could you explain some of its use to use? Glad to here that you are still out there.
==ep
Aloha Mr. Richard Mc-San – I’m used to the machine tools, but use hand tools from time to time. I’ve never used a draw knife, and only have seen curved ones. The uses that I have seen were to skim bark and pith off of raw lumber. In some of the old footage of Greg Noll’s, I watched them turn their rails, but not much else. Could you explain some of its use to us? Glad to here that you are still out there.
==ep
my friend and advisor
20 years passed away
gave me a draw knife.
I looked at it in wonder
for a few years.I let it sit
for a few more years.
I had it sharpened
and looked at it
and klunked it on a
piece of wood a coupla
times then put it in a tool shelf
took it out a few years later
cleaned off the corrosion
put it in with tje skill 100
for a few more years
then wood ogre was
helping me with the balsa project
and he used one to bark the log
and I felt the light bulb go on.
then week or so ago I was
squaring up the rough cut
sticks to get em ready for
the band saw
and the light came back on…
I dug the draw knife out
cleaned off some wax on the handle and shined it up with a wire wheel
and used the damn thing and it was good…the balsa was just the right timber
to encourage my poor yet growing technique,I felt down right empowered.
It is now in my lexicon,old dogs can learn old tricks…sometimes a little slow
but learning never stops.I just thought I could go out and rough a timber
of that balsa…
and not wake the neighboorhood up with the noise of a power tool …
…ambrose…
while I was ruminating along in the begining of this threa
with the garret wade ilk I saw the smithy
makin paulo a draw knife
in a little hamlet
in australia
outa an ol’ leaf spring
or some such…
or perhaps in an odd tool box at an antique store south o’ byron
ir would thet be arround the corner from coopers shop in coffs harbor
ne’r been there but I have an alive dream circut…
your draw knife is out there…mebe it’s that place on the rise down the road toward town
with all the old stuff out front and nothing but pine trees standing for a mile either side
Aloha MasterEpac,
The drawknife is a traditional tool that is used mainly for stripping bark. Smaller sizes (straight blade and curved) can be used for shaping hollows in bowls, chair seats, rough turning the corners of a post prior to turning on a lathe, or flattening the background of large carvings. In the old days they would use an adze to rough hewn a log into planks or lumber and the drawknife would be used next to hit off the rises and ridges prior to using the scrub plane to surface the board. Mainly a hogging out type tool, but the small or even very small sizes could be used for a tad more precision work. The one below might even work great to shape concaves on vintage style wood plank surfboards. In summary, they’re not used much anymore except by loggers and cabin builders, etc., but they remind us of a simpler past where real men used real tools and chicks digged it! Maybe not. Enjoy the ride!
Richard
Hey Paul
You might try : http://www.traditionalwoodworker.com
Lots of nice stuff to want in that catalog too. By the way, thanks for making all those beautiful boards over the years. Very inspirational.
Richard, sorry to sound like a total tool geek but what you have pictured is an “inshave”. I think they were also called “coopers shaves”. They were used for smoothing out the inside of wooden barrels which is what a “cooper” made.
Aloha spud,
Good catch on the “inshave”. You must be a logger or just very knowledgeable of such. Another tool within the broad classification of “drawknives” is a SCORP. As you probably know better than I, the scorp is a modification of the inshave. Where the inshave is slightly squared off in its “U- shape”, the scorp is completely round. They come with the traditional two handles like the standard drawknives or the scorp blade is completely round with only one handle. As a furniture maker and wood surfboard maker, I don’t use them, though I used drawknives building a log cabin in Colorado 35 years ago, and have known coopers and other logger types who used all these tools and others. When I was starting out in woodworking I used to pester them to learn all I could. Those guys are all gone now along with their nearly forgotten trades. Like you and others here on Sway I’m also a wood tool freak.
Richard
The drawknife is a traditional tool that is used mainly for stripping bark. Smaller sizes (straight blade and curved) can be used for shaping hollows in bowls, chair seats, rough turning the corners of a post prior to turning on a lathe, or flattening the background of large carvings. In the old days they would use an adze to rough hewn a log into planks or lumber and the drawknife would be used next to hit off the rises and ridges prior to using the scrub plane to surface the board. In summary, they’re not used much anymore except by loggers and cabin builders, etc., but they remind us of a simpler past where real men used real tools and chicks digged it! Maybe not. Enjoy the ride!
Richard
Aloha Mr. Richard Mc - San
Ah, chair seats. That’s where I remember Thomas Mosier useing one in the old black and white “Fine Woodworking” issue from the hippy woodworking days, before the CNC conversion. Thank;s for the info. I just read about Ambrose taking the reins over on the Eastside. Thanks!
Off the grid,
aloha
==ep
[/quote]
Paul, try Highland woodworking in Georgia(?) they have a lot of draw knives with fair prices. If you want an antique tool try googling rosie, or roses antique tools. They have lots of stuff.
Mike
Can you tell us how far that is ?
W
Pauls gettin u nu draw knife ( why 13 inch? ) That boy up tu sumpin!! Ambrose is turnin tricks wit a draw knife on the east side. Maybe this is the next fad ! Wood_Ogre gots wood and tools. gona make sumpin 2 !! Skorp- inshave- draw knife. Some where round here I got 1 bark spud and frow too and cant hook, peve all kinds stuff. an I usem too!!Ahui Hou -Wood_Ogre PS I is lurnin ta do pitchurs 2. Yes sumpins cumn up !!
I’m way late to this party…but…
I’m a guitar maker with several thousand instruments under my belt…and not just a few under my drawknife…one inherited from my dad…and that was passed down through the family from an Emmons Hamlin who in the 1840s estblished the Mason and Hamlin Company…makers of the best selling “pump” organs of the 19th Century, and then pianos that still rival Steinway.
I have one, and one only of EH’s tools…a drawknife. And it is spectacularly different from an “in-shave”. Yes, it could be…and I have used it to rip the bark off of log sections…really rough work at the primary sawmill level. But…in the hands of someone who feels and understands wood grain, there are very few tools that can get from a rough chunk of wood to close to a product…whatever it might be…than a drawknife in the hands of an expert.\
RT
I know this is an old thread but,
I found this at the swap meet one Sunday.
Sat in my shaping room for a couple years.
Gave it to my tool sharpener Kevin.
Sharpened so sharp you could split a hair!
Upon closer inspection,
Patent date says 1885.
So cool!
I didn’t know what I had!
Barry Snyder Surfboard Shaper/ Tool Collector
