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.