A while back, in the bleak mid winter (around January) I had an idea for a magazine article, I wanted to do some more kolrosing and try it out on an axe handle.
Of course I could have bought a handle and tried it on that. Instead I thought I'd make the handle from scratch and renovate an old axe head back into service. My friend found me an old 6lb felling axe that had been hung the wrong way round (for use as a sledge hammer I think).
So I removed the old handle, tidied up the head, gave it a sharpen, then made a new handle for it from ash.
I've been reading about different types of carving. One I'd really like to try is kolrosing, which is where you score patterns in wood then add a pigment (coal, wood ash, etc) then burnish it to close it back up. Kind of like tattooing for wood.
In my research I saw that although you can just use a normal carving knife it was recommended that a wider angled blade might work better. I looked to buy a knife but they were all wither out of my budget or tricky to import at the moment.
I decided that rather than spend a lot of money I'd make one out of some HSS I have left over from when I made some turning tools.
These turning tools have been very useful and I didn't temper them in any way, I think that the light use this knife will get it won't need tempering anyway.
The HSS is 8mm bar, I first ground a 50 degree bevel on the end, then used the grinder to put the 40 degree knife edge on the end. It doesn't take very long, quench the steel to keep it from getting too hot.
I never quite grind it to the tip, instead I do that on the whetstone.
Then I made a really simple handle and put it all together. Then honed it on the leather stropping wheel.
In the video you can see an example of some very simple kolrosing I tried as a test, but it seems to work well so far. I'm looking forward to trying out some nice patterns with it.
