The Dark Art

of grinding drawknives

When I look back at my time spent with Dave Sawyer, I vividly recall the simple, skill based techniques he used. He wasn’t so concerned about teaching or how others might do what he did. His approach to teaching was to show you, then ask if you needed to see it again. I think Dave believed that he could do it, so could you. Much of what I learned required real time to develop the awareness and skill it took to do the job. Don’t get me wrong, he was no purist, he used tenon cutters in his lathe to taper the spindles where they met the arm and a router to make rocker slots, but lots of his techniques were bare bones. One of those techniques is freehand grinding drawknives.

Here is a drawknife I ground without the use of any jig or tool rest. The wavy line you see running down the center of the bevel is the lamination line where the high carbon steel is attached to the back of the blade.

I haven’t taught this technique in 20 years, so I had to think a bit about how to present it, but the real question I had in my mind was “Why?”. I know a much more controllable way to do this with a simple jig.