Push/Pull Shave

Push Pull Shave

Is it a Swedish push knife? Pull shave? A gentleman’s draw knife? Or a new tool all together?  Hi I’m Paul Clark, Brother-in-law to Jason Lonon and co-worker with his tool making business.  In this article I’m hoping to give you a glimps not only into the push/pull shave, as we are calling it, but also into the prototyping process and what it takes to bring a product like this to the market.  

      My background is in metal fabrication, welding and machine work.  With a lot of hands on experience in engineering, product development, and manufacturing.  I have worked a lot with hydraulics, electrical, and pneumatics.  I have always been one to think outside of the box, so to speak, and to always try to improve things even if they dont need improved.  

     About five years ago as I was browsing the internet I kept coming across the Swedish push knife and it captured my attention.  It is a simple edged tool with two handles straight out from the blade, similar to a draw knife, but intended to be used by “pushing” rather than pulling the knife towards yourself.  June 25th 2019 I made a quick prototype just to see what it was like.  It was an embarassing attempt but something I could play with to see how the tool works and if it would have potential.  I learned a few things from that sorry tool.  A few days later I made a little less sorry second prototype, with thicker metal and a little narower blade.  This tool seemed to work a little better.  I sent #2 to Jason to get his feedback and he thought it was intriguing but we both wern’t really sold on the idea.  

      At this point, which is comon in research and development, the idea stagnated.  I like to think of it as simmering on the back burner and melding, like a good hearty stew.  We went on to other already developed ideas and made a bunch of hook (spoon) knives, and straight blade sloyd knives, some small chip carving knives.  A year later July 1st of 2020, I caught a whiff of that simmering stew and went for another go at it.  Let me back up and give some specs and insight into what i found in the prototyping of this push knife.

      I really liked the tool, it gave a lot of control with the two handed operation.  You could really move some material if you wanted or finish a surface with a smooth knife finish.  But I didn’t like the un-natural way it felt in my hands.  The straight handles weren’t very ergonomical.  The blade tended to catch in the part causing the tool to pivot around the handles, making the user have to grip the handles pretty hard.  And with a straight blade it took a bit more energy than relly seemed worth it.  

     So after picking this idea back up in July, There were a few improvements in my mind that needed done.  So to solve some of these problems, I started with a three inch blade and put the handles at a slight curve in order to place the users hands in front of the cutting edge.  That way instead of pushing or having the energy exerted behind the blade making the operator have to grip the handles tightly.  It placed the cutting edge slightly behind the latitudinal line of enery naturally allowing the blade to follow rather than lead.  Similar to how a caster wheel wants to naturally follow.  On prototype #3, I also put a slight curve on the blade letting it slice through the piece more smoothly.  This was a great improvement and really was showing some potential.  It needed a few more tweaks and on July 4th I made prototype #4, which looking back is almost exactly what we made in our first production run.  But that’s not where the R&D stopped.  

    We posted a short clip on instagram around July 4th and that garnered a lot of views and sparked a lot of interest.  With that there was a fire put under this thing and we started to look at this as a potential product to add to our repertoire.  

      Jason and I had a lot of discussion on blade geomerty, handle design, etc.  we tried several different blade designs.  We did a single bevel, double bevel, offset double bevel, narower and wider blades and probably a few more that I’m not remembering.  We put these tools in the hands of some woodworkers and asked for their input.  After a couple weeks and some good insights from the end users we did our first production batch of six push/pull shaves or as my kids call them the push-me pull-you from Rex Harrison’s 1967 Dr. Dolittle.  These went on our website for sale around mid August.  And unlike Dr. Dolittle, our push me pull you had an instant success.

     The design we settled on has a three inch blade on a slight convex curve, sporting a single 25 degree bevel, made out of 5/32 thick O1 tool steel. The tapered octaganal handles each at about 5” long angled back towards the blade making the whole tool about 13 inches long.  

     And being one not to let good enough alone, we have since moved the handles another few degrees further on an angle just to make it a little more user friendly.  Are we done prototyping this tool?  I guess history will have to answer this one.  Thank-you for taking the time to read this article.  If you have one of our tools we’d love to hear from you.

Bowl Adzes

The first of our large batch of bowl adzes are now in stock. This is our popular elliptical sweep adze. By elliptical sweep, I mean that the curve of the cutting edge is flatter in the center, tightening up on either side, thus resembling an ellipse rather than a semi circle. This adze cuts quickly, yet leaves a slightly smoother finish than an adze with a semicircular sweep like our kuksa adze. These adzes are forged from American made 4150 steel which is a higher carbon version of the popular 4140 used by many blacksmiths. Handles are hand made from American hickory. If I had only one adze, this would be the one.

If you use our adzes, which is your favorite? Leave a comment below and tell us which adze you like and why.

Spoon Hook Sweeps

Our spoon knives or spoon hooks have been one of our most popular tools for the last several years. We often get questions regarding the difference between our compound sweep and open sweep hooks. Sweep is a term that refers to the curve of the cutting edge. The photo above shows the two side by side. On the left is the compound sweep; the curve starts gradually from the handle and tightens up toward the tip. This is a great all round spoon knife which can carve quickly and make a wide range of hollows from coffee scoops to larger spoons. The open sweep on the right has a much shallower curve along its entire length. This is ideal for carving larger and shallower spoons, and leaves a smoother and more subtle texture. Using an open sweep knife is what finally helped me carve comfortable shallow eating spoons.

For a a long while we offered a choice of long and short handles, and a wide variety of hardwood handles for our spoon knives. This dizzying array of combinations of choices became unwieldily for both us and our customers to navigate. With the current batch of spoon hooks, we eliminated the short handle as well as the choice of wood. From now forward, we will make each batch with only one wood, and announce it on the store listing. We will only make the long handles from now on in order to eliminate a mostly meaningless choice (if you want a short handle, a saw and knife make short work of that job.)

Steel Sales

Being a small business has its joys and challenges, and of necessity you learn a little about a lot. We have been learning lately about steel. The steel industry is highly “sectored” as they say, and different grades of steel are handled through different supply and distribution chains. After a long search, Justin has found a steel company who would deal with a customer as small as we are, and late last year, we purchased 7,000 pounds of American steel. One way to look at it is a way to insulate ourselves from rising material costs. Another is how can we be of service to others.

We are now set up to supply our fellow toolmakers and blade smiths with USA production, hot rolled 5160 steel round bar in several useful sizes. We also cary 4150 in 2” round, and 52100 round drops in a wide range of sizes from a local industry. Check out our web store for complete details. Also, come see us in person at the following events.

Big Blu hammer-in, Morganton, NC. March 18 Hammer on the Hill

Fire on the Mountain, Spruce Pine, NC. April 29 Fire on the Mountain

Southeastern Blacksmiths Conference, Madison, GA. May 18-20 SBA Conference

Spoon Carving Kit

As a maker of spoon carving tools I occasionally get the urge to carve a spoon. I’m not too proud of any that I have made to date but have enjoyed tapping into the reminiscences of my younger self and picking up a slightly sharper knife than my original Swiss Army knife from over 3 decades ago. As a kid I enjoyed carving and did quite a bit, including learning how to carve interlocking wooden chains from an elderly man in my hometown in the mountains of Idaho.
So fast forward to this past spring, I’m the dad of five kids. We were on a family trip back up to Pennsylvania to visit relatives. My wife wanted to spend an afternoon with her aunt who has a kid about our children’s age. So the kids are running around having fun, my wife was in her element chatting with her aunt, and I’m there bored. You might relate to the feeling, and not being one to just sit and do nothing, I saw a pile of some type of olive wood branches, selected a nice one and began to carve. But I was missing a tool or two, and was struggling to use what I had to create the spoon that was in my mind. The finished spoon resembled more of what that younger self would have carved than what I know I was capable of making.
Not to let a good disaster go to waste I came up with the idea of a carving kit that I would like to have for these situations. It would include our Sloyd knife, hook knife, a push/pull shave and a small bow saw. When we got back home I proceeded to make a bow saw for my kit and was quite pleased with the way it turned out. I sewed up a leather tube with a lid, and now have a kit that I bring with me on trips for that moment of boredom. Not that I am blessed with those moments too often, remember I said something about being the dad to 5 kids (they are currently all under the age of 10) but when that moment arises, I’m armed and ready.

Drawknives

The drawknife is such a useful tool, capable of rough and fine work of every description. In the old tool catalogs of the early 20th century, you will find a wide variety of what appear to us to be very similar drawknives, but with very specific names. There are wagon-maker’s, coach-maker’s and carriage-maker’s drawknives. Even with the illustrations, I don’t really know the difference. The carpenters and the plough-makers each had their own drawknife, and how about my favorite? The saddle-tree shave. Talk about specialized! It’s obvious that no woodworker should be without one.

I have just posted my latest video to YouTube in which I describe and demonstrate our drawknives, inshaves, and cooper’s hollowing knives. Compared to the drawknife, the inshave is a much more narrowly focused tool, which today is used primarily by chairmakers in the Windsor/stick chair tradition. I discus the strengths and limitations of this deceptively complex tool. And the coopers hollowing knife… If you are not a cooper, you will not find many uses for this specialized tool, but my, how fun it is to make curved shavings!

New Website

This will be my 5th website since the late ‘90s when I started forging iron and selling my work. That first website I developed myself when a friend suggested I could write it in html. “It will be easy” he said. I don’t know that “easy” would be my description, but it worked. For my second website I used the Mac OS website editor, and that was so much faster. The main idea was to have an online brochure and gallery of my work. The third time around, I hired a web developer to build a site that I could add e-commerce to in the future. Before I could do that, the website and developer both mysteriously disappeared. Version 4 was developed by a friend, and I finally added e-commerce. This site served me well for over 5 years, during which time I added YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

Today, we are launching my latest website using Squarespace. My goal is to give a more unified presentation, take more control over the design, and connect with folks in some different ways. Social media has served us well, but has some serious short comings. Lots of folks don’t use social media, and our experience with social media is governed by algorithms that change without our understanding. So, we are adding a blog page to give more thoughtful and detailed content that you can interact with on your terms. We are also finally launching our email newsletter to give product updates and other news.

To all of you who have followed our journey, purchased our tools, and appreciate quality handcraft; thank you!