Right now, my workbench looks like this 5 days a week.
My shop is pulling double duty as a office while I’m working from home. I’m fortunate to be in a place where this is possible. It’s different than going to the office every day, but I’ll keep at it and stay productive.
I did get some shop time in this weekend, and finished up a little drawknife I’ve been working on.
Back up a few weeks ago, when I had the mini-forge out, where I started with old jointer blade.
I wasn’t sure how this was going to go, so I annealed the blade to soften it, making the metal easier to work.
I used my belt sander to shape the tangs for the handles. For a smaller tool, leaving the handles straight instead of bending them made more sense. It used to be a jointer blade, so the bevel for the cutting edge is already there.
Then, I heated it in the mini-forge until it was red hot, and quenched it in oil. Same process as I used before.
I used the oven in our kitchen to temper the blade this time.
A couple of weeks later, I used the belt sander to grind off all the forge scale, and hand sanded the whole blade up to 220 grit. Using finer and finer sandpaper to polish the whole blade is an option, but on tools like this, I actually like the hand-worked look.
Next, I wet-sanded the top bevel and the back of the blade all the way up to 2500 grit to sharpen it. By using a piece of glass as a flat surface for the sandpaper, you can get a very sharp edge with this method.
I added a couple of small turned handles, by drilling holes in them and tapping them on with a hammer. They’re not permanently attached with epoxy, in case they needed to be changed later.
The blade is about 3 1/2″ wide, so it’s not meant for real heavy work. I’m thinking about putting together a small green woodworking kit to keep in my truck or throw in a backpack. Eventually that’s where this little drawknife will wind up.
