Made at 173
A Legacy Project
A few years ago I saw the great Paul Sellers make a layout knife from a paring knife. Up to that day, when trasferring measurements to a board, I used just a pencil or sometimes my box cutter. But after watching Paul make a layout knife of his own... well...I realized how badly I needed one! Let's get into it...
The Layout Knife
A layout knife might not look like much, but in a woodshop, it’s worth its weight when you need dead-accurate lines—way better than a pencil. The blade’s nice and sharp, kind of like your grandpa’s wit, and it scores the wood clean so your saw or chisel has a perfect track to follow. That also helps keep those pesky wood fibers from misbehaving and tearing out.
I use the knife a number of ways, but the primary use is when I'm cross cutting with a hand saw. Having that scribed line has made my cross cuts much more accurate... now if I'd just get better at measuring!
To Buy or Not to Buy
So here was my (very minor) dilemma...I can definitely afford the $8 to $10 that a Stanley knife would cost but, I rarely find the fun in buying something that I could very easily make iut of something just lying around. Here's the one I considered, mostly because Paul Sellers has used this model for years.
But after seeing Paul make one out of an old paring knife, I had to give it a try!
Paring Knife Conversion!
It started with the paring knife a friend gave to me when I mentioned what my project was. Apparently his wife was going to put it in their upcoming rummage sale. The process started by putting the yip of the knife into the vise and snapping the end of to the length I wanted. Here's a little illustration that may help (amateur as it is!):
The black line is approximately where I snapped off the tip. Then, the red line shows how I put a kind of bull nose on the blade, and the blue does effete I til some time polishing the blade smoothly because that's where my finger will be gripping and pressing on. And I should say, I used my Chicago Electric angle grinder with a flap disc for shaping the blade.
And, coincidentally, the knife was a Chicago Cutlery walnut-handled model... until I was writing this, I hadn't noticed the Chicago connection, although I doubt either had actual connections to Chicago.
I digress... the first knife turned out nice, simple and clean, but very effective and I've used it quite often these past few years (I don't remember what year I did this first one). When I went to the workshop to take a picture, I noticed the wood handle was starting to look a little dry so I gave it a little Linseed oil treatment.
So here's how it looks today...
Oh... and if you want to see the Paul Sellers instructional video that inspired me... here it is!:
Then A Second One
The story doesn't end there though. A couple years ago my kid sister was getting rid of a bunch of kitchen stuff. I saw some knives and thought of that first layout knife, and grabbed a few of her discards.
There are many tools that generally pass unnoticed along and around a woodworking workbench. Many get the merest nod, are seldom ever mentioned, and even though they may be picked up a dozen times in an hour or a day, somehow they seem less consequential than they actually are. I too gave many that passing interest even though I relied on them as much as the ‘doing‘ tools like planes and saws. - Paul Sellers, Observations Series
The one I used for the second knife isn't in that picture so I found one on the internet just to show you!
I used the same process to make this second knife. But as you can see I have it a totally different profile.
It's in a kind of bird's beak profile at the tip, and also removed some steel on the underside to give this knife, not only a different look, but a different feel and handling as well.
And this one hangs over the auxiliary workbench!
Hey, thanks for stopping by - see ya' next time!
