We use a layout knife for our work for laying out joints mostly I use them all
the time and have this is one of my favorites in fact it is my favorite we
make square lines with it we can do all manner of other things with it we can
carve with it chip carve with it we can do all manner of things like this and
sometimes you may not have your hand on a knife you may not have access to this
knife this is like I said it's my favorite but not everybody can get hold
of one let me show you everybody can get hold of a kitchen knife these are just
common kitchen knives one has a more refined handle, but you could reshape
this handle to make it more comfortable like this one but to make one of these
knives just takes about three or four minutes how I'm going to make this one
is I'm going to snap this off here so I've got a piece of wood these are inch
and 3/4 so I'm leaving one of the pieces about quarter of an inch from the end of
the handle there, we're clamping this in the vise here or in these two pieces of wood
and then in the vise and I'm just going to cinch this in the vise like this to
make it super tight right around the base here then I'm going to take a pair
of locking pliers like this lock them onto the bar and then I was going to
bend it back and forth until it snaps which shouldn't take too long just keep
going it'll break and I'm going to keep this piece for another knife or for
another piece I could cut this here like this cut an arc on here and make another
knife from that piece so I'm going to keep that set it aside this is a
stainless steel and stainless steel is not always the best for a knife
but we're going to use this one because it's available and it will make a knife
and it's a very practical knife so what I want to do is I want to create a shape
like I've done with these here these are a couple of knives that I use this one
is more standard for certain types of carving especially
for my type of work here you might use this for more carving work chip carving
work whatever type of work you want but you can make all types of different
shapes that will work for you so I want to take this back off here along here
and I don't really need the line because I'm just going to eyeball this till I
get the shape that I want but I'm going to basically take this off here so to do
that I have to create a vise because this is a woodworking vise not a
metalworking vise so I have created a small vise here as a temporary vise
so I'm going to put this in the vise here now I have to file this down and
this needs to be super tight so I need to go maybe even lower into the vise
so it really grips this and then just a flat file here and I'm going along here
if I go across listen it will cut but this way will cut a lot faster and a
much bigger area and I just keep going on here until I've got my shape down you
probably would find this a little bit difficult to cut with a hacksaw maybe
not some hacksaws are better than others you can see it's going to clog
here and when that builds up in there you just take a file card which
is just like a steel brush and file out those areas inside like this just go
with the the teeth of the file and just clean out
those long teeth, I file this down
till you get the shape you want, I'm taking the main long part of this off
I've got this down and I've kind of curved this back in here now I have to
work on the tip and this I'm going to just bring this corner off almost like a
45-degree here I guess and I'm going to get down to the tip eventually once I've
gone down from here then I can start bringing this continuity
I want around here and that's going to be close to the shape that I want I may
take a little bit more off here because I don't like the thickness there now on
this particular knife I may not like the thickness but on another knife I might
want that so a bit more off the hump here and then the continuous stroke from
the top here right down onto the very tip
this would make a very nice layout knife here I'm just going to break the corners
with the file to take that off now I want that I don't need this edge to be
sharp from my particular knife I don't have to do anything here this will reach
inside very nicely into the area that I want to reach to I could go with a
sharper point if I wanted to this is going to be fine so all I've got left to
do to this now is to make it work with a sharp edge so what I'm doing the knife
edge is already beveled nicely for me so first of all I'm going to just take a
fine file this is a fine file and I just file the bevel basically following the
same bevel that's on the knife we're actually
increasing it slightly just to give it a little extra strength now there is light
reflecting off the edge which I expected because this is an old kitchen knife
that was probably not sharpened in years same on this one here if it's flexing
too much here just take almost anything and slip it under here drop as long as
it's out of the way drop it down
underneath here and that will stop it from bending piece of wood pencil almost
anything and I'm keeping that bevel all the way to the edge can you see in there
if you have the light reflecting off the bevel just slightly there so I go until
the edge no longer has a shine see I can't cut myself on here it's just not
even sharp so I'm going to keep going with the file another way you could do
this is just make a platform here and you can file it on top of the bench top
like this perfectly safely but keep working the bevel this is a fine file
but it's not super fine so right now I'm just taking this down to get near to
a cutting edge then I'm going to go with this one if you've got one of these if
you don't have one of these you could just wrap a piece of sandpaper fine
sandpaper maybe 400 grit start at 400 go to 600 and 800 if you want to and you can
get right onto this edge and this one we're going to use just a circular
motion here so it's cutting on the forward and the backward stroke because
these are diamond particles this is a medium grit right now and I'm looking on
the edge until
I feel and then I feel on this side because I want a burr on one side this
will put if I file this side it's going to put the burr on this side and I don't
have it yet and usually I work both sides equally
this one I'm going to work this way now some people say you have to work into
the edges this way but we're not generating any heat so there's not
really any real reason for that if you're working with a grinding wheel
then it's a little bit different you want to push the edge into the stone and
that reduces the amount of heat buildup but we're generating almost no heat
buildup here I keep going until I get the burr I don't have a burr very much
of it there anyway I don't really need to do back here but it would be handy to
have one thing I did when I was breaking this I have a slight bend on the end to
correct that I just put this in the vise wear safety glasses in case anything
happens to the hammer I've never had it happen that's got that straight now am I
sharp yet, it's getting there is very close to sharpness that I want a little
bit more and then I'll go with a finer abrasive
you can put water on this paddle as well on the diamond as that will stop it from
clogging and it increases the cutting capacity of the tool keep going keep
going don't give up yet I'm going to go with a final one here
and then my last stage is to go on a strop which is just a piece of leather
glued to a block of wood the strop will take off any burr and it will actually
continue sharpening because I charge it with chromium oxide which is an abrasive
impregnated into the surface of the strop just by rubbing onto the surface
of the strop there now I have a burr all the way along this is my strop and I've
charged this with chromium oxide which is just a buffing compound like this so
I just charge the surface with this, here and then I pull this like
this maybe 30 times 40 times along this back bevel keep it as low as you we're
filing or honing out keep it very low in angle can you see how low that is so now
I've got one side done I'm pulling now and I can see the burr is folding back
and forth so you can only trail it you can't go in this direction because if
you go in this you're going to cut the surface of your leather now this edge is
getting very very sharp this is surgically sharp now so be very careful
with it that's it clean off with another
strop this has got no abrasive in it so you can clean off this bevel and that is
your knife ready for using to create your knife walls for laying out your
dovetails now I feel up binding in the cut so it's pulling in the cut but very
nice crisp clean edge like this
so I get this beautiful crisp clean cut with it and I can as I did before use
this now to chip carve with if I want to cut the leaves for my saw handle or
whatever else that's it handmade homemade get your knife into a layout
you