2020 GEC #62 Easy Pocket Congress and Pocket Carver Thread

hornetguy said:
thank you, my friend... we all have to start somewhere. Maybe I'll get to "Jiki" level someday... :D
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Lol, thank you. That's the best part you are carving while you're practicing and that's the goal right?
I got some pocket carver time in today as well.
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Jiki said:
Lol, thank you. That's the best part you are carving while you're practicing and that's the goal right?
I got some pocket carver time in today as well.
zwsyWhG.jpg
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Great carving- great work on the eyes. What size gouge are you using for the detail on the hat? Looks like some V tool work in the beard, mustache and maybe around the eyes. What percent of this carving would you say was done with the pocket carver?
 
hornetguy said:
pretty crude, but this is a little owl I've been working on today. I'm finding out that a lot of "whittling" is just practice... this one is a little better than my first attempt (except for snapping the tip of one ear off :rolleyes:). By the time I've done 10 or 15 of them, they might actually be presentable. This one was done with the red/black micarta pocket carver. Sweet tool to use....

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And I was offering YOU advice? You’re no greenhorn. Great work! Looks like you might also be using a Sheffield (Wright?) lambsfoot and a Case Swayback. I think I’m noticing that you’ve yet to put the #62 to a stone- can’t recommend that enough. If you can believe it, the tiny blades get even less resistance with an excellent edge.

Edit: just noticed two more wharnecliffes more in the foreground... how’d I miss those. What’s the ID on those shiny specimens?

Edit part duex: if I had to guess I’d say the were Case Seahorse Whittlers, though I’m unfamiliar with the pinched bolsters on the right one and the jigsaw puzzle covers of the left.
 
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EngrSorenson said:
And I was offering YOU advice? You’re no greenhorn. Great work! Looks like you might also be using a Sheffield (Wright?) lambsfoot and a Case Swayback. I think I’m noticing that you’ve yet to put the #62 to a stone- can’t recommend that enough. If you can believe it, the tiny blades get even less resistance with an excellent edge.

Edit: just noticed two more wharnecliffes more in the foreground... how’d I miss those. What’s the ID on those shiny specimens?

Edit part duex: if I had to guess I’d say the were Case Seahorse Whittlers, though I’m unfamiliar with the pinched bolsters on the right one and the jigsaw puzzle covers of the left.
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no... I'm still very much the greenhorn, but I'm beginning to get an idea of what this hobby involves. Baby steps...:thumbsup:

good eye.. the two in front are a yellow delrin carbon steel Rough Rider whittler with the pinched bolsters, and the jigsaw one is a Case seahorse whittler.
I keep a pretty junky workbench. :oops: I've been playing with different woods and projects, and am learning which knife "fits" a project best. The lambfoot blades are pretty good at taking large chunks out, and the swayback is, also... to a slightly lesser degree. The pocket carver is best for detail work, like the little owl.

I did use a stone to thin out the bevel on all three blades of the PC... I'm trying to follow the advice of an online whittling guru who swears his carving knives have never seen a stone... he only strops. I had to thin down the bevel in order to get mine to achieve that kind of edge. And so far, have only been stropping to get back to that edge, while carving.
 
EngrSorenson said:
Great carving- great work on the eyes. What size gouge are you using for the detail on the hat? Looks like some V tool work in the beard, mustache and maybe around the eyes. What percent of this carving would you say was done with the pocket carver?
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Thank you, I am very proud of how my eye carving is developing, but I am still practicing. Pocket carver on 100% till the very end. #9 gouge on the hat, #9 gouge and vtool on the beard. I need to work on carving hair, if I can figure that out I will be very happy with my end product.
 
hornetguy said:
I did use a stone to thin out the bevel on all three blades of the PC... I'm trying to follow the advice of an online whittling guru who swears his carving knives have never seen a stone... he only strops. I had to thin down the bevel in order to get mine to achieve that kind of edge. And so far, have only been stropping to get back to that edge, while carving.
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I’ve been thinking about this- I guess it matters what grade of compound you use. I use a yellow flexcut compound that does a good job restoring an edge periodically, but doesn’t remove enough metal for anything else. My personal experience is it takes a stone to align the bevels of an edge ground on a grinder. It’s like a mandatory first sharping. It’s a pain in the neck sometimes, because edges that looked reasonably straight will often show how much material has to come off to get rid of valleys in the original grind.

after that initial work, all I do is strop unless (perish the thought) I ding a blade.

sharpness is all relative- I’d say for most of my life (until 3 years ago) I never knew how to sharpen a knife properly. Consequently all whittlings took lots of effort and I could never understand why some of my favorites (like a now missing mini copperlock) weren’t good whittlers.

I’ll Include comparison shots of my white bone PC bevels with the stock bevels from GEC that I still have on my farm and field PC (I’ve been lazy).

one more word on the Case Seahorse Whittler- mine took so much Stone work to get the bevels right. On the scale of factory bevels, case’s are sometimes just awful. It’s a great Whittler now, but holy moses... the amount of effort it took to the the straight edges actually straight... ugh.
 
blademan 13 said:
I just received my 2nd #62, this time in very nicely matched stag. Dang near perfect in my eyes but I can’t help picturing it with the addition of a curved bar shield....:rolleyes:
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with stag that good? Setting a shield would be an abomination. Some others? No problem- slap a shield on there. I know shields catch the eye and show a little more effort, but that knife doesn’t need a thing. I feel like I’m looking at art.
 
Forward: re-reading this post it seems a little preachy, but I hope it comes across as one guy's close look at factory grinds (with respect to suitability for wood carving, in particular). I used a color filter to make the bevels more prominent.

As promised: the left side has two seahorse whittlers - the right side you'll see two PCs.
The knives to the back haven't been sharpened yet, and the two in the front I took to a stone.
Note the egregious sins of the upper left seahorse whittler. You can see how the blade starts at the choil more prominent than other areas, then recedes, then displays a prominent belly towards the nail nick before diving off again at the tip. You end up sharpening off those prominent places before you can even touch the low spots. I'm not even going to mention the left to right apex wandering (hard to photograph), but it's always there. The PC even has a "dive off" at the very tip if you look closely enough.
GEC does a much (MUCH!) better job than Case, but any knife taken to a grinding wheel by hand (without a jig of some kind) is always going to have these traits to some degree. You'll notice how "short" the bevel looks on the factory GEC grind. Shortness indicates steepness of bevel angle in blades of similar geometry. You'll note that the one I sharpened has a longer bevel, and that's what I'd consider general purpose. For specific whittling I might thin it out even more, like Jiki Jiki might do. the Case looks like a really thin bevel, but it's a trick of the thickness of the blade and the slope of the primary grind.
Anyway- this is just something I've been thinking about since you brought up "stropping only" sharpening methods, hornetguy hornetguy .
I just can't figure out how stropping would solve these issues in the short term. Over long enough time I could imagine stropping would take care of them- but then again with enough time the grand canyon was carved out, haha.
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The online guru is most probably Doug Linker. He uses carving knives the majority of the time. Helvie, OCC, and Drake. These either come with a true full flat grind or a full convex grind (almost flat) with no bevel. They come extremely sharp. I have Helvies and OCCs myself I also do not sharpen these other than stropping with green compound.
The issue with pocket knives I have is the bevel, as you have noted if it is steep it contacts the wood first lifting your edge from the cut. On the Tidioute pocket carvers the detail blades came extremely sharp and are thin enough that the bevel is a non issue for me. I did bring down the bevel on all of the rough out blades to get the cuts I want.
Since I will only use these for carving I plan on only stropping these unless forced to do otherwise.
The edges on the F&F detail blades were not as sharp and I still have not had the time to get them right.
 
Jiki said:
The online guru is most probably Doug Linker. He uses carving knives the majority of the time. Helvie, OCC, and Drake.
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ah ha! That was the missing information. Purpose made carving knives rarely need the shaping up that pocket knives do.
 
Jiki said:
The online guru is most probably Doug Linker. He uses carving knives the majority of the time. Helvie, OCC, and Drake. These either come with a true full flat grind or a full convex grind (almost flat) with no bevel. They come extremely sharp. I have Helvies and OCCs myself I also do not sharpen these other than stropping with green compound.
The issue with pocket knives I have is the bevel, as you have noted if it is steep it contacts the wood first lifting your edge from the cut. On the Tidioute pocket carvers the detail blades came extremely sharp and are thin enough that the bevel is a non issue for me. I did bring down the bevel on all of the rough out blades to get the cuts I want.
Since I will only use these for carving I plan on only stropping these unless forced to do otherwise.
The edges on the F&F detail blades were not as sharp and I still have not had the time to get them right.
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Yes, you are correct. While he does use purposed carving knives, I figured the principle was the same for a carving pocket knife. I just had to "get there" with the pocket carver. It's amazing to watch him carve basswood. Like the old "hot knife through butter" ...
I am still working on flattening (and even-ing) out the blades on my larger whittlers, but I'm not in as big a hurry on those, as I've been using the PC mostly.

I had a problem getting an edge on my secondaries on the PC, as well. My admittedly amateurish sharpening techniques just were not working on it. I normally can get a pretty "fine" edge on my carry knives, but this one evaded me..... until I flattened the grind a bit, then stropped, once it looked evenly flattened....
 
hornetguy said:
Yes, you are correct. While he does use purposed carving knives, I figured the principle was the same for a carving pocket knife. I just had to "get there" with the pocket carver. It's amazing to watch him carve basswood. Like the old "hot knife through butter" ...
I am still working on flattening (and even-ing) out the blades on my larger whittlers, but I'm not in as big a hurry on those, as I've been using the PC mostly.

I had a problem getting an edge on my secondaries on the PC, as well. My admittedly amateurish sharpening techniques just were not working on it. I normally can get a pretty "fine" edge on my carry knives, but this one evaded me..... until I flattened the grind a bit, then stropped, once it looked evenly flattened....
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you know how I check my sharpening job? With the brightest flashlight available (happens to be my phone) in a dark room. Examine the edge as you move the light across it. Look for a reflection on the edge which would indicate a dull area, but also look for contrast in the bevel finish that might resemble the original bevel. When I have trouble getting blades sharp it’s usually remnants of the original sharpening job which muck things up.

think about it as if you only sharpened one side of the blade- the toothy high angle of the original edge still represents 1/2 of the edge. You’ll still have some of the roughness of the original edge. What I notice is my own sharpening of factory grinds is that I remove 90% of some of this stubborn edge, but the last 10% remains unnoticed at the very edge. This is when that light really helps to see glints of an uneven surface.

if you get that right you’ll get your “hot knife through butter”.

Jiki said:
The problem with watching Doug is that he is so good and makes it look so easy that you end up being too critical of your own work based on the standard that he set.
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You’re right about that, Jiki- don’t be too hard on yourself comparing yourself to a pro. On the other hand it’s a great thing to aspire to. “Strive for perfection and achieve excellence”.

long and short of it- you’re doing a great job with your PC, hornetguy hornetguy !
 
I check my edge (like Doug) by shaving a slice off a piece of wood against the grain and checking for any bur marks.
 
Jiki said:
I check my edge (like Doug) by shaving a slice off a piece of wood against the grain and checking for any bur marks.
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That’s usually how I figure out there’s a problem; cutting through the end grain I’ll see the gouges from a burr or the fibers compressing due to a dull section.
 
Jiki said:
My finished work will never be as clean as EngrSorenson EngrSorenson , but I'm ok with that because I'm not Engrsorenson. ;)
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great work! And you can have clean work or get more work done- pick one! It takes me so long to finish a project it gets hard to start the next one, sometimes.

Edit: that grain on the knife really makes me regret spending money on things like food. There’s a great one out there I have my eye on that looks similar.
 
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