Tool Talk
Woodworking Forum => Woodworking Forum => Topic started by: john k on October 15, 2014, 04:39:37 AM
-
A good part of my collection of user drawknives. The first small one with red handles was made by my father during slack time at the defense plant he worked in the 1940s. Handles are of some early very hard lucite, he turned on a lathe, the blade was made from a broken shaper blade. I used it a lot when I was a kid. The next up, looking kind of pathetic, came out of a junk box of my uncles. Have every reason to think it was once my great grandfathers, which would be the only item I have from him. Next up looking rather stout is a name brand, sorry I don't recall and its cold out there now. The company that always had 1840? on their logo. I rescued it from a neighbors barn just before he took down the outbuildings with a bulldozer. The top one is one of two I have with adjustable angle handles. No idea who made it, but unscrew the nuts, and the handles and blade ends are serrated to hold at any angle. The big one underneath is one I actually paid money for at an antique shop. If I recall the blade is close to 20 inches, probably for cleaning off bark? Have a few more, and use 3 of those often. Great for truing up rough wood for the turning lathe.
-
The 20 inch length of blade makes it a mast knife. The "maybe 1840" looks a bit like a D.R. Barton (1832 mark) or a L. & I.J. White (1837 mark). Either way it will be a very good knife.
Shaving bark is certainly something these tools can do, but that's not anything they were designed to do. Drawknives are shaping tools, used by coopers, wheelwrights, cabinet makers, bow and gunstock makers, carriage wrights, shipwrights -- you get the picture. Back when Roy Underhill was at Colonial Williamsburg, the wheelwright there did all of the shaping of spokes with a drawknife -- he was good enough to ignore the spoke shave. All those curvy cabriolet legs were shaped with a drawknife. In practiced hands the drawknife is a precision tool.
-
The very top adjustable looks like the drawknife patented by R.N. Watrous Dec. 15, 1857 and manufactured by Nobles Mfg. Co. In Elmira, NY. Patent no. 18,877.
Link to the DATAMP entry below.
http://www.datamp.org/patents/advance.php?pn=18877&id=13372&set=3
The picture shows what it looks like disassembled.
Mike
-
Nice collection John!
Jim C.
-
Mike that is the one, interesting they did not put a hex or square head nut on it, looks like it was to be tightened with a nail. A mast knife eh? Since I am over a thousand miles from any big water it is interesting how it ended up here.
-
I believe the largest drawknife is more a coachmakers tool.
Mast shaves were generally very wide and heavy.
A narrow blade was made for working curves. In this case, big curves.
yours Scott