Beebe Carving Knives?

[Tony Shea]

Has anyone had any experience with any of the Beebe line of carving knives that Lee Valley carries? I'm in the market for a small simple carving knife for fine detail work of cabinetry and furniture. Its more for refining rounded/contoured edges in areas unreachable by any other method and for carving detailed embelishments for my projects. It just seems as of late I'm in need of a decent detail carving knife and really don't own the proper tool. I know I could make one by many different methods such as with a jigsaw blade but i'm just not great with grinding small metal objects without overheating them. Even on two of my nice find Stanley 750 socket chisels i blued the edges on the grinder. Eventually will get myself a Tormek but until then I need a decent carving knife. Any input would be great.

[george wilson]

Use a coarse(36 or 80 at least) white wheel. Grind for 2 seconds before rapidly plunging the tool into water. Don't wait to see IF the tool is hot enough to NEED it.

I look for the water I just dipped the chisel in to sizzle off,and instantly quench. When your tool is reaching the very thin stage, you have to do these things.

[Tony Shea]

I do use an 80 grit white wheel which may not be quite coarse enough I guess. When the tool starts to get down to thin metal things happen way too fast for me. 2 seconds is pretty much too long once down that far, in my experience anyway. Therefore when touching the tool for less time than 2 seconds it is hard to remove much material and be able to keep things trued up. I may look into getting a coarser wheel as this may help grind a bit faster and cooler. I also need a good wheel truing system and have been contemplating the Geiger system and getting a metal reducing bushing instead of the plastic ones that come with the wheels. But the single point diamond dresser price as Lee Valley is kind of appealing, just will need to spend a little time making a jig to hold it true.

[george wilson]

The very best thing for grinding tools,short of a wet wheel grinder,is a belt grinder with blue belts. I think the wet wheel would be better for you.

[Tony Shea]

Do you mean the skinny belts such as the unit that Lee Valley sells without the motor or the wider belts that usually come with a round sander combo unit? I've got an old version of the combo unit but haven't got around to rigging up a jig to hover above the belt to give me a platform to roll my blades down onto the belt square.

[Daniel Heine]

I have one of the Beebe knives and plan to get several more. It is a great quality knife!!!

Dan

[george wilson]

Actually,I use a variable speed Wilton square wheel grinder,but they have gotten excessively expensive. About $2500.00 without the variable speed. I think the price is WAYYYY to high. The things are made in Taiwan,and I had to true up the big drive pulley when I got mine. Lucky I have lathes,etc.,to fix foul ups.

I suppose one of the small units would do. The belts carry away some of the heat.

[Paul Saffold]

The Norton 36X blue belt on a Rigid oscillating benchtop sander generates heat too fast to reshape chisels.DAMHIK. Works good for hss though. Used it to sharpen the blade in a wood chipper, whatever kind of steel that is.

[David Keller NC]

One solution for making small carving knives and other edge tools out of already hardened and tempered steel (that's way too hard for a file) are the small diamond cones that DMT sells. The diamonds, of course, are way harder than any steel could ever hope to be, so you can use them to effectively shape a small, thin blade. The diamonds are too fine to do any serious shaping of a large blade, but it does work well for smaller items.