The three knives pictured to the left have  an upsweep or scimitar blade shape that were made by Ralph E. Long.  They are pictured here to represent the blade shape that I have come to utilize in ninety nine percent of my carving with a knife.  That was not always the case as my journey of knife carving has taken several revolutions in the evolution of discovering what blade shape works best for me.

As a boy growing up on a farm three miles south of Poneto, Indiana in the early 1950’s, a pocket knife was a constant companion for whittling and making many of my toys.  When the “carving bug” bit me in the early 1970’s in a serious way, the pocket knife was my first choice and repeated choice while learning to carve.

The photograph  above contains four  representatives of more than can be counted pocket knives rescued at flea markets, junk stores and garage sales over the years.  The top knife in the photo is one that combined the blades from one knife  transplanted into the body of another with tiger maple wood strips inserted into the handle.  The third from the top is a “favorite” knife from 1966 that started me on the road of wood carving before I knew what I was doing.  The blades were sharpened by trial and error the best way I could at the time while still not knowing what I was doing.  These experiences were the beginning of the journey of “Accidental Learning,” which continues today and will continue in the days ahead because so much of learning is accidental.

Accidental Learning begins with the first photo of two old pocket knives that have survived repeated sharpening by previous owners.  The large blade in each is a “spear point” and the smaller blade in each is a “pen blade” which was a miniature of the spear point shape.  Over the years of repeated sharpening on a whet stone the cutting edge became straight almost to the shape of a “wharncliffe blade” shape.  It is the “wharncliffe” or “straight cutting edge” blade that is most commonly called the “carving knife blade” or “bench knife.”  The most popular and commonly used carving knives all have a straight cutting edge. Read the rest of this entry »