Monday, July 27, 2009

Yet Another Knife Tip! (Use That Is!)

Some times we use the knife TIP like a pencil. Instead of writing we make a cut with the knife, as in when carving an eye brow, for instance. Or when making any other arched/circular stop cut. Often times the knife will signal us that it is about to inflict a cut to our hand or finger. You must learn to recognize these signals, or invest in band aid stock. When using your knife in such a manner, it may begin to drag, or start to require more pressure. This is the WARNING SIGNAL. If you keep on cutting and applying more pressure, the knife may move very fast into your hand or finger. What you should do when you get this signal from your knife is to change the angle of the blade a bit, while completing your cut. Get off the knife point and move the knife so that it is cutting more on the blade than the tip. Does that make sense? If not tell me!

6 comments:

Larry Marshall said...

This makes perfect sense to me. As an addendum, the same advise if you're using the tip like a pencil and come to an edge in the piece. You want to stop the tip and "move the knife so that it is cutting more on the blade than the tip."

Cheers --- Larry

Tom H said...

You are absolutely correct Larry!

JimB said...

If you are not extremely careful, you WILL get the point!

Tom H said...

And I have JimB! I have! (got the point, that is)

JimB said...

I have the scars to prove, I too have gotten the point!

Tom H said...

There's another warning sign that you are about to be cut by your carving knife. There's a 75% likelyhood that you'll get nicked when someone is watching you, and when you don't have a band aid.