(no subject)

[unicornduke]

 After months of no combs for sale or extremely expensive ones, two different people have posted hand combs for sale, both for around 70 dollars plus shipping. I messaged one a few days ago and they haven't responded. But they also haven't updated the post. So I went ahead and messaged the second person who just posted their combs last night. 

We will see how that goes

I also bought a carbon steel knife for whittling purposes. My experiments in making spindles is doing decently and I want a better knife than my current utility knife. 

A cute game called Lemon Cake just came out, it's an indie game made by one person and she does really cute games. It's a bakery game, if you like diner dash or other games like that, it's very similar. I'm enjoying it so far. 

I've also got plans to play Valheim, which is apparently vikings open world building/mining/fighting game similar to minecraft, gonna play it with my siblings tonight. 

Weekend plans are: sidejob work, taking Mara to a park, watching hockey with friends, making yogurt, playing video games, ice skating

Comments

[graydon]

Yay knife!

How you fixed for honing or sharpening?

Yay available combs! Hopefully someone actually wants to sell you some.

[unicornduke]

Combs! Are mine! I have sent the money, I will be receiving combs, this is truly exciting!

I've got some small sharpening stones around somewhere but also apparently an offer from bomberqueen17 for her sister's sharpening tools haha. They are carbon steel blades since the internet told me they were better for wood working. And from what I remember they hold their edges longer? Perhaps?

https://www.opinel-usa.com/collections/classic-folding-knives/products/opinel-no-8-carbon-steel-folding-knife

I got two because it can't hurt to order two

[graydon]

They are carbon steel blades since the internet told me they were better for wood working. And from what I remember they hold their edges longer? Perhaps?

You know how it's "good, fast, cheap, pick two?"

With knives (= any steel edge tool) it's "tough, hard, corrosion resistance, pick two".

Opinel high carbon knives are XC90 which is almost exactly classic high carbon steel; iron, with eight parts in a thousand carbon. (they're using nine, and a little bit of molybdenum.) It'll take a sharp edge, it'll wear relatively easily (compared to modern fancy tool steels), it will sharpen easily, and it's a terrible candidate to slice tomatoes. Absolutely classic choice for a whittling knife.

These days, you get "stainless" which drifts off into "cutlery steel" (the core thing about kitchen knives is that people chuck them in the dishwasher, so what you make them out of has to cope) which are fancy stainlesses that have good edge retention properties. (and then off into strange and wonderful products of modern material science like nitrogen steels and the various super-stainlesses.)

You get "tool steel" which is some range from "alloy steel" to "utter witchcraft" where they're not after corrosion resistance but they do want to make the marketing point about why it's so expensive. (Some of these have worse corrosion resistance than classic high carbon, but they're meant to exist inside and work in an oil bath, so who cares? Important to watch out for those in general purpose knives.)

And you get "high carbon" which is code for "not stainless, not especially fancy" which can be (as in the Opinel case) actual high-carbon or some alloy steel that isn't a marketing point.

Wood carving, woodworking generally, benefits from tools being kept sharp which means you care about how easy it is to sharpen; it's not hard to find people online deciding some of the popular-for-knives-and-plane-blades tool steels are too difficult to sharpen, what do you mean diamond lapping film? So one great thing about high carbon is you can sharpen it back up quick. It leads to a carve a bit, touch up the edge, carve a bit, touch up the edge, working pattern. (touch up the edge = couple quick passes on a hone or a strop; it's not a full sharpen where you might use different grit sizes in succession or a jig. It's mostly there to avoid a full sharpen.)

And, yes, absolutely two doesn't hurt. (Other great thing about carbon steels; two is much more affordable than one of some of the fancy stuff.)

(I can go on for several days about sharpening so am carefully not.)

[unicornduke]

Ah, this is interesting! The problem with information on the internet these days is that the information is a firehose and it's hard to tell actually what is relevant with more general search terms. The sharpening thing didn't come at all when I was looking around. I did wanted a folding knife because it will be safer to store and easier to throw in my pocket, otherwise I was kinda uncaring about what else happened. Thank you for the thorough and useful explanation!

It's also just useful to have an extra knife or two around. I used to have a few here and there, just little pocket knives but they've gradually disappeared as life happened. I'm pretty much down to my multitool leatherman which lives in my pocket full time with my wallet and keys. Which works well but sometimes I'm wearing sweatpants and need a knife.

[graydon]

You're welcome!

It is absolutely a firehose and a lot of it is getting into what might as well be religious positions. (I have the advantage of being taught this stuff years and years ago when it came out of textbooks and the materials science hadn't got so far into elvish craft.)

Folders are absolutely preferable for pocket carry, yeah.

Sharpening as a subject starts bizarre arguments on knife forums; I suspect a lot of people want to avoid the arguments! Lots of excellent little combination stones these days; https://fallkniven.se/en/knife/dc4/ or https://www.spyderco.com/catalog/details/303FCBN2/1078 are fairly top-of-the-line but also extremely low hassle.

[dragonlady7]

oh man. combs!!
i need to sit my ass down and spin this weekend.

i got my dad's leatherworking stuff last weekend. He had less than I thought! All the stuff he's fixed for me over the years-- well! anyway.
I found the belt I'd scavenged to repair my bearing with, so now I'm deciding if I want to do that or just use the makeshift one until it falls apart. So typical... really I should make the new one AND use the makeshift one until it falls apart.

Graydon's comment below about sharpening knives reminds me that Annie's got one of those fancy belt-sander knife sharpeners she'd likely let you use, so let me know if that need comes up! Nothing like 'em for re-grinding an edge. (I'm in charge of the knives for slaughter days so I'm the one that uses it so I know where it is, LOL.)

[unicornduke]

The combs are mine! I have sent the money, the will ship on monday. I'm very excited! Definitely make the new one, that bearing will give out sooner or later. And it will be the most inconvenient time for it to give out and need to be replaced.

Thanks for the sharpening offer!