Knife jamb for carving. What tools are needed for wood carving. Making a knife handle

Knives with blades of different shapes found the most wide application. Traditionally they are associated with contour and geometric carving, but can be very useful for working out elements of flat-relief carving. The knives are made from high-quality hardened steel. The following types of knives are distinguished: jamb knives, cutter knives and spoon knives (Fig. 2).

Blunt knives(Fig. 2, A) are intended for performing geometric and contour carvings, cutting out ornaments. For such knives, the bevel angle plays an important role, which can vary from 30 to 80°.

The required bevel angle is determined by both the labor intensity of the work and its complexity. Knives with a bevel angle of 60–80° are designed for cutting large straight ornaments. For smaller work or making curved designs, knives with a smaller bevel angle are suitable.

Knife cutter may have a different shape depending on the type of thread (Fig. 2, b). IN geometric carving they are used for rosettes, various curved elements, and in contour - all kinds of roundings and bends. Cutter knives are indispensable when performing slotted overhead threads and specialized work. Cutters can be wide or narrow.

Spoon knives (spoon cutters)) have a spherical surface and are used mainly for the manufacture of carved dishes, since they can be used to sample the inner surface of the product (Fig. 2, d).

Rice. 2. Making knives from a saw blade for metal and mounting them with cuttings: A– knife-jambs with different angles bevel; b– cutter knives; V– cutting line on a large hacksaw blade; G– production of handles for big knife; d– spoon knives; e– gripping the knife when carving.

Knives are widely used in the practice of a carver both when performing rough work (usual cutting of wood with a full blade) and in cleaning threads with the tip of a knife. At home, it is impossible to harden a knife made of good steel exactly along the entire blade. Therefore, they use either a successfully purchased ordinary penknife(which happens rarely), or homemade.

Typically, craftsmen make knives for wood carving themselves from the blade of a mechanical saw for metal, a file or a straight razor. The easiest way to make excellent knives is from a hacksaw blade for metal, and both a small fragment and a completely dull blade are suitable for this. Such canvases are narrow and thin, used in hand saws, and wide, 2 mm thick, which are used in industrial machines for cutting metal. The former are used to make small joints and cutters, while the latter are used to make large knives for rough processing of large workpieces, sculptural carvings and other large-scale works. Depending on the thickness of the steel strip, the size of the knife is determined. It is advisable to have 2-3 knives of different sizes and with different shapes tip: from sharp (about 30°) to rounded.

Thin sheets are simply broken into in the right place using pliers or a vice. In the same way, you can break off small unnecessary parts from a piece of fabric. But with machine-made canvases they act differently.

It is necessary to mark the required bevel angle on the workpiece (Fig. 2, V) and cut it off on the edge of the sharpener, making grooves on each side along the cut line, or using a grinder with a cutting wheel. If you are careful enough, you will end up with two pieces at once in the shape of large knives. This angle cannot be knocked down with a hammer, holding the blade in a vice: the direction of the chip line may turn out to be the most unexpected, or the impact will result in hidden cracks in the cutter, and fragments flying off with force can cause injury.

The resulting edge is smoothed on a sharpener. Then, at a distance equal to the width of the cutter, at the same bevel angle, you need to mark the boundary of the first chamfers. The first chamfers are removed on the wheel symmetrically on both sides so that they are parallel to at least half and form a thin working part of the cutter: when pressing on the tip of the cutter with a fingernail thumb it should spring back slightly.

It is useful to correct the thin cutter plate obtained in this way on the flat side surface whetstone, especially its end - the working part. Also, on the plane of the stone, the second chamfers are removed on each side of the working part of the cutter at an angle of about 8°. The second chamfers form a blade with an angle of 15–16°.

In order not to go beyond the specified angle of 15°, you need to monitor the lifting height of the end of the cutter. It should be equal?–? cutter length.

Subsequently, when adjusting the tool during operation, the angle of its blade is dulled to 20°, which is still acceptable for carving, but at the first opportunity it must be adjusted again.

On a sharpening wheel, knives are not sharpened to a sharp edge. To avoid the risk of spoiling high-quality steel by overheating, final sharpening and finishing is carried out using a whetstone.

If the sharp tip of a knife breaks off while working with wood, it is not necessary to sharpen the entire blade again. It is faster and more convenient to make the tip of the knife sharp again by selecting a semicircular depression at its end from the side of the butt of the knife. This can be done with the edge of an emery disc or a needle file, preferably a diamond one.

A jamb is a type of flat chisel with a beveled cutting edge. Most often, the carver needs jambs with an angle of 50–70°. The chamfer is sharpened on both sides and on one side. A jamb with one-sided sharpening is useful for removing material, cutting out ornaments, and finishing three-dimensional surfaces. Thanks to the angled cutting edge, it is easier for them to cut off excess. Double-sided jambs are mainly required when carving flat reliefs.

It is best to make a jamb knife from a hacksaw blade 14–16 mm wide and 0.8 mm thick. Such a tool easily enters the wood, slightly moving the layers apart, which makes it possible not to chip small parts.

To make it, you need to cut or break off a piece of blade 100 mm long, use a sharpener to remove the teeth from one end to half the length, and cut off the end from the same edge at an angle of 60° so that the sharp nose is on the side opposite the teeth. Sharpening chamfer – 2 mm. When sharpening, you need to cool the blade in water more often so as not to burn the nose.

For larger elements of geometric patterns, the blade needs to be made wider. You can remake a flat chisel by grinding down its cutting edge at an angle of 60°. But most often, a large jamb is made from a machine blade 15–25 mm wide, 100–160 mm long and 2 mm thick, the chamfers are sharpened to 6–8 mm. A 60 mm long shank is ground down to a width of 10–15 mm and notches are filed, thanks to which the blade will be held in the handle.

It is advisable for the carver to learn how to work with the right and left hands. There are places where it is inconvenient to work with your right hand, and that’s when the ability to operate with your left hand with the same skill will come in handy.

Spoon cutters are knives with a curved blade, which have been used since ancient times for cutting containers of spoons, ladles, bowls (bratin); Convenient when working with soft wood. You can make a spoon cutter from a rod or strip of carbon steel 150–200 mm long, 10–15 mm wide and 2 mm thick. It is necessary to sharpen an end 50–60 mm long into a single- or double-sided blade without finishing so that the chamfers are on the same plane of the blade. Then you need to bend the sharpened end along a radius of 15 mm so that the chamfers remain on the outside, leaving a neck 80 mm long. The 60 mm long shank must be made flat.

After the metal part of the tool is made, you need to think about its handle. A temporary (also the fastest) option is to wrap the knife with thick adhesive tape, drive it into a thick rubber hose, or copper tube, or even get by with a piece thick fabric, tying it with rope. But a wooden handle will be more convenient. You can press the workpiece tightly into the finished round wooden handle and secure it. The longest, but most convenient option for the carver is to make a handle from two halves. This especially applies to large knives, for which it is advisable to find a wooden handle that is comfortable for the carver’s hand. Working with a large knife usually involves planing into a full blade using force, so with a comfortable handle, your hand will get less tired and the likelihood of calluses on the palm will decrease. It is easy to determine the optimal shape of a knife handle using plasticine, holding a piece of it in the palm of your hand in the same way as the handle of a knife is compressed during planing (Fig. 2, e).

The handle of a large knife from two overhead wooden halves can be tightened with a screw for metal, the diameter of which corresponds to the hole at the end of the saw: the screw goes into the hole of one half freely, into the hole of the other - a smaller diameter - it is screwed in with force (Fig. 2, G). To recess the screw head, for it semicircular chisel or use a countersink to select a socket (countersinking with a drill does not give an even chamfer and tears the wood). The protruding part of the screw on the other side is cut off with a hacksaw and cleaned with a file. Subsequently, after the wood of the handle has dried and compacted, the screw can be tightened. It is clear that to tighten the halves of the knife handle, you can also use a screw with a nut, which can be easily sunk into a hole made according to its shape.

The upper part of the handle is tightened with nylon thread or strong linen thread with glue. The turns of the thread should fit into a recess machined on the assembled handle with a round rasp and coinciding with the recess on the knife blade, previously selected on the sharpening wheel. In the process of winding the thread, it is better to tighten the upper part of the handle in a vice.

The handle for a small jamb knife is made in the same way. The exit of the thin blade from the handle should be no more than 25 mm, otherwise it will bend when pressed when trimming parts. The output of a 2 mm thick blade from the handle of a jamb knife can be up to 45 mm.

For a small short knife, it is not necessary to make the handle short. After all, you will need to freely maneuver it, holding it in your palm in different positions. This is especially necessary when processing internal surfaces crafts, cavities, bends, carvings, etc.

It is easiest to wrap very small knives, for example sharpened from a needle file, with adhesive tape so that the turns of the winding partially extend beyond the end of the handle. This will prevent the winding from slipping during operation, and the hand will be protected from irritation.

After sharpening, wrap the blade with paper and electrical tape so as not to cut yourself during installation and processing of the handle.
We attach a shank to one of the wooden plates and trace the outline of the shank with a pencil. We hollow out a groove in the plate with a depth equal to the thickness of the blade. The blade, after being inserted into a wooden plate, should not protrude; it may even need to be slightly lower than the plane of the wood by 0.1..0.2 mm. There is no need to worry, the glue will fill this gap. In principle, you should get what is shown in Fig. 2. Using the sharp tip of a knife, apply a mesh on the wood planes to be glued together for better penetration of the glue. Apply glue generously, insert the blade into the groove, and press the second plate. We tighten this entire structure with clamps or clamp it in a vice until the glue dries completely. For PVA this is usually a day.

When the glue dries, shape the handle into an oval shape. I deliberately do not give any cross-sectional dimensions; everyone can choose what suits their hand, how it will be comfortable to hold and how it will be correct. We carefully grind the handle, but without fanaticism; there is no need to grind it to a “cat-like” state. There is also no need to soak it in oil or any other nasty thing like cyanoacrylate, let the wood nourish the sweat from your hand.

The number of jamb knives a carver has is also not regulated by any rules or traditions. I have about 10 of them, all different. "