Earlier in the year I mentioned a new knife I had acquired in a trade for a bowl. It is a lovely little detail knife by Magnus Sundelin. I've used it several times now to engrave my initials into my work and recently had a go at doing some carved decoration in a spoon. To be honest I was a bit disappointed when it first arrived. Where the blade meets the handle there is a hole that I would have expected to have been filled with epoxy. The grind on the blade is also a bit uneven.
Maybe I'm being too picky though, with a full size blade I think the hole in the handle could allow the blade to move, but with the fine work you do with this kind of knife, it probably won't make a difference. The grind doesn't seem to matter either as you only use the first 5mm or so of the blade. So in practice it works really well, it's very sharp and the fine angle of the blade make it glide through the wood. It's similar to using the tip of my Frosts 106, but much better balanced. So this is my knife of choice for engraving now, I haven't tried it for chip carving yet, but I'll give it a go when I get around to it. Now I just need to practice a lot more.
You can get the knife from
here.
It seems to do its job just fine, looking at the results. But I agree, the nicer the tool or the more interesting the history, the more we get attached to it.
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I think that is so true. I enjoy using the tool because of how it works, but also how it looks and the fact that it has been made by an individual craftsman. We all put something of ourselves into the things we make and I like Magnus' ethos.
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