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!