How To Sharpen Wood Block Carving Tools,Record Woodworking Vice Spares,Balsa Wood Airplane Kits Uk,outdoor wood craft projects - Good Point

Just exactly why sharpening should be such a struggle for many printmakers is difficult to understand, as the process itself really is extremely straightforward: you rub steel against stone until the steel is the shape you want. But that's not the answer you presumably came here to read, so let's take it step by step through the process of putting an edge on a couple of tools: first, the standard Japanese hangi-toh, the basic cutting knife, and then an ai-suki, the tool known in English as a 'bull-nose' chisel. These photos were taken some years back by one of my daughters on a visit, and going by the print photo that is hanging over the carving bench, it must have been in the late summer of 1998, when I was approaching the end of the long Hyakunin Isshu poetry series. Here's the setup - the sharpening 'kit' lives permanently by the side of my carving bench; at any point during the work, as soon as I feel a tool is not performing well, I turn to the side, sharpen it as necessary, and instantly return to carving. The first step, no matter which tool is being sharpened, is to use the nagura to bring up a nice bed of mud on the stone.


I use a side-to-side motion for this job, keeping a good firm pressure on the tool to keep it pressed flatly on the stone. My hair is a lot whiter these days, but nothing much has changed with the sharpening procedure. It's a rare sharpening session that lasts more than around two minutes, and that only happens if I have broken the tip of the knife. The concept is simple - rub the bevel on the stone until it is sharp, keeping it perfectly flat. I use a side-to-side motion for this tool, and add a gentle 'rocking' of my wrist as I go, to try and match the curve of the bevel.


If you carefully inspect the photo of my hangi-toh on this page, you will see a slight 'roundedness' at the base of the bevel, where I have let the thing rock just a bit too much while sharpening.
So although I might spend as much as thirty minutes in a long carving day for sharpening, this would be spread over a dozen very quick and short sessions. This extends all the way up the blade, but ends up being ground flat (during this sharpening process) just at the final section near the tip.

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