The Far-Eastern Wood Butcher: Prime cuts from the far east.

For people who do not like long winded essays; "I re-sharpened my whittler blades single-beveled at about 20 degrees angle, and it cut better" There. For windbaggery fans: Four score and seven years later, the whittler knife remains mostly unchanged. Abraham Lincoln was a whittler. He used a six bladed ivory scaled Congress made by a Sheffield cutler. My post today is the result of my purchase of 3 whittler pattern knives. I felt that a change is in order. I will attempt to whittle away the logic behind a whittler blade, a sliver at a time. Most Whittlers are made for collectors What makes a whittler a whittler is their ability to cut wood with ease. The type of steel, the heat treatment and the way the steel is shaped / sharpened affects the cutting characteristic of a whittler to a large extent. Unfortunately, many folders sold today have collectors as their primary target, not wood carvers.  As a utility steel for cutting cardboard boxes, string...

You're so right. I should be writing about Whittlers instead of Stockman knives. Afterall, this is a wood working blog. But do you whittle the whole day? Perhaps. Can you peel an apple with a whittler? Maybe, but not as well. What if you forgot the butter knife at a picnic, or you somehow need to spey or neuter an animal in an instant?.. (ok, I'm pulling your leg, but I'm referring to the ubiquitous spey blade in your stockman.) A stockman knife (Also called your Gandpa's EDC) will do all of the above with ease, and it will WHITTLE. My shallow pocket and minute brain says that Whittlers are for collectors. Try buying a Stag handled split-backsping whittler. They are not cheap. This is one of the forty stockmen I've purchased online. The other 39 are on their way. And yes, I have issues. The stockman bug maybe. Wait till my wife sees them: I like to imagine myself as a craftsman first, woodworker second. Now you see why I bought this brand. Looks so ...

(Edited 7th Jan 2014. A few dozen people actually reads this post, so I'll do my best to justify their time. This is my second scale, and this post is not meant to be a tutorial, but a sharing of my attempts to rescale a razor. If you are a woodworker, it is not as difficult as it looks. The more care, the better your work. I'm being casual here) R eplacement scales are usually made because the original are broken or badly warped. Or the maker must be feeling very creative. In this case, the original scales worked fine, just that it tends to cause the razor to rust badly in the same spots. I suspect it was some substance embedded in the scale. Perhaps moisture gets trapped in the micro fissures in the scales. A Kobar razor by F. Emde of Germany. Teak was chosen because of its oily nature, and also for its dimensional stability when wet. Warping or twisting is a very undesirable feature in razor scales, since the blade may hit the scales on closing on a twisted sca...