PEP BB tool.straw.drawknife - Sharpen a Draw Knife

My parents passed on to me my grandfather's drawknife. It was rusty and had lots of nicks. It took a lot of sharpening, but now it's sharp enough to slice through my finger easily, as well as debark trees.

I inherited several old tools when I moved into this house. The guy who owns it, who is a friend, said I was welcome to them. I don't know how long this drawknife sat in a shed but it is quite pitted and it took almost 2 hours to clean it up. I could have gone on and gotten clean metal along the entire primary bevel but, frankly, at that point I'd had enough - the cutting edge is easily sharp enough for me (particularly as I mostly use it for de-barking). On subsequent sharpens I'm sure it'll get prettier.

I worked my way through the grits of the thin stones that I have for my sharpening jig: 160, 320, 600, 1500. I then buffed using white compound on a leather strop to hone the blade.

I worked the primary bevel, matching the existing grind and trying to take out the file marks and the peaks from where it had been sharpened inconsistently in the past. This took the bulk of the time as there was a lot of steel to remove. I then worked a much steeper secondary bevel to clean up the cutting edge.

As I'm preparing to do the BB for make a wedge style handle I realized it might be quite handy to have a draw knife to do that one.  Well, I do happen to have one that I bought many years ago at a flea market.  The catch, I never cleaned it up and sharpened it.  Over the years its gotten ever more rusted due to my often humid atmosphere coupled with complete neglect.  Happily there is a BB for sharpening a draw knife.  (Is there something wrong with me?  Why am I doing straw level BB's in order to do a sand level one?)

I decided the first order of business was to just strip off all the surface rust and generally clean the tool up.  I started with a 250 micron diamond sanding block to get the worst of it.  Then I did use my little Foredom bench lathe with the yellow grade radial bristle brushes to quickly clean off the rest and give a decent overall finish.  When it came to the actual sharpening though I did it all by hand with my diamond grit whetstone along with my diamond files, which are essentially small whetstones as I interpret this.  (Go ahead and reject this submission if you feel the diamond files violated the requirements of this BB.)

I gotta say, "Damn, this was hard metal!"  It did not grind away easily at all!  I had wondered why the BB instructions didn't specifically say a file could be used.  After having done this I suspect I know why.  The metal would have been too hard for a regular file to cut.  At least that is my guess.  I didn't risk dulling any of my files to try.  Since the diamond files are more of a grinding whetstone than cutting files they worked fine. Still, I was working it for a long time.  However, I now have a nice sharp draw knife.  I look forward to trying it out while making wedge style handle soon.

I borrowed this draw knife to peel logs. I need to sharpen it up before I send it back.