Witherby draw knife and stave tear-outs.

[Gregoryv]

Ok question.  Have any of you noticed that working a stave one way to the other when chasing a ring can cause tear outs? Could  a bad bevel on my draw knife be causing this?  My draw knife is a Witherby and the bevel is about 35 or 40 degrees.  When I expose a layer of early wood in between two late wood rings and try to use the knife to wedge one ring off the other, the upper layer ends up tearing off the under layer I intend to use for backing.  My knife tears thru the early crunchy wood, but then the wood splinters and “grabs” the lower ring.  What am I doing wrong?  I know I can use a scraper or a less aggressive approach, but I really want to master this technique.  As I have seen a lot of tutorials on this, and the only difference is in the tutorials the splinter cause by the draw knife stays on the ring to be removed.  Should I change the bevel on my knife?

[Pat B]

You can change the angle by tilting the draw knife. Are you using it bevel up or down? You'll have better control with the bevel down.

[bjrogg]

Greg I'm curious what your edge looks like. From how you were discribing your sharpening problems it doesn't seem right to me. All my draw knives bevels continue right to the edge. I'm going to post some pictures of one of my draw knife edges.
Bjrogg

[bjrogg]

I don't know if you can see what I'm saying. Pictures didn't turn out that great. Probably should have had a different background.
Bjrogg

[DC]

working a stave one way to the other

Can you explain this a little better?

[bjrogg]

I'm a bit curious what you mean by wedging the wood off to. I might split it off above but when I get to one ring above I'm more like shaving it off. Leaving some crunchy early wood and using scrapper to clean it all up.
Bjrogg

[Gregoryv]

What starts as a peel turns into a small split then a tear.  My knife has a much steeper bevel than yours.  Probably twice as steep.

[Pat B]

Are you working bevel up or down?

[PaSteve]

DC, I think he means working the stave in the opposite direction. At least that's what I thought he meant.

[Gregoryv]

Bevel down.  Working from my layer that is the back toward the layer I am removing.

[SLIMBOB]

Myself repeatedly and others keep telling you the same thing.  Scrape the last ring off.  Don't try to strip the wood off exposing your back ring, especially on green wood.  I don't mean to be snarky but you have asked the same question 3 times.  Either you don't believe the answers your getting or don't understand them.  Your ok either way, I just want to know??? Turn the blade upright and shave it off.  BJ just said the same a few inches up.  Are you just not believing that to be sound advice, or have you read something (Video) and your not getting the results that were advertised and you are determined persevere?  I'm not angry at all, just puzzled.

[Gregoryv]

I am sorry I am new and was concerned as to the bevel on my draw knife.  So I asked a question in a forum and a lot of people helped.  I am trying to do exactly what you stated. I can’t scrape the last ring if I cannot get to it cleanly.  I was worried that maybe I should change the bevel on my draw knife or maybe get a new one.  This hobby is new to me, but I am very passionate about it.  If you aren’t going to try to help someone and just keep feeding them the same information over and over again than maybe you are wasting your time.  Because it has done nothing but hurt my feelings.  So I do not know if that makes you feel good, but it doesn’t me.  I am either not getting something or something is wrong with my tools.  Thank everyone who tried to help me, and anyone else I’m not sure why you even waste your time reading my post?

[SLIMBOB]

I'm not trying to be unkind....  I will take it that you just simply dont understand and that is ok  You ask how you can scrape a ring off when you cant get to it cleanly.  Very simple, scrape until you are cleanly on it.  If you have to scrape 3 rings off that way to get there, so be it.  That is better than continuously tearing into the next ring by trying to "lift" the offending ring(s) off of your intended back. 
1.  Tear into a stave removing all the bark and sap wood present.  Go at it helter skelter if you wish.  Expose one continuous ring if possible.  Any ring.
2.  Identify which ring you wish to expose as your back and gently....gently...remove the wood above that ring.  If tear outs are happening turn the blade upright and shave off all of the rest.
3.  There is no 3.

Dont be so sensitive.  The world will eat you up.  I'm happy that your taking the time and show an interest in this, but so much of this is just doing it.  You will get the hang of it.

[DC]

Maybe the problem is the difference between cut and scrape. By scraping we mean having the edge at 90° to the wood vertically and drag the drawknife along the wood. It scraped rather than cuts. Scraping will not lift a splinter. I wouldn't worry about the bevel angle. I'd be willing to bet that every-bodies bevel is slightly different. At your(and my)level of drawknifing I really doubt that the bevel angle makes much if any difference.

[Gregoryv]

Ok it was a lot of grinding but I got my draw knife bevel down more like in your pic bjrogg.  Now it is working great.  It is “cutting” instead of tearing the wood.  Thank you very much for posting that pic for me.  I am about half way thru my first stave with no tear outs at all.  One more thing, when I am done should I come back and clean up my pin knots, or just leave one layer of growth over them?
Greg