Free lesson
It was never your hands. It was the edge.
Ever push a gouge through basswood and get fuzz instead of a clean slice? Ever sharpen for twenty minutes, feel the edge with your thumb, and still tear the grain on the first pass? Then sit there and quietly decide you were not born with it?
You were born with it. Your edge is dull.
I was invited to teach on the coast of Maine, and I filmed the whole sharpening lesson there, in front of the people who paid to be in that room. It is free and there is no card. Put your name and your email below and the lesson opens on this screen, right away, before you have time to go and check your inbox.
Two boxes, and the lesson opens the second you press the button.
Why I hand this one away
I teach three things, in this order. Design, then carving, then sharpening. Sharpening comes last because it is the hardest, and most people quit long before they ever get there.
So I moved it to the front and made it free.
A dull tool fights you. You feel it in your shoulder before you ever see it in the work, and then you look at the mess and blame your hands. My master settled that for me when I was young. I brought him a board and told him it was bad wood. He told me there is no such thing as bad wood. Only dull tools.
In prison I carved furniture with two tools. A knife I made myself, about 10mm, and a gouge I made out of a nail. They were sharp. That was the whole difference. I was paid one boiled potato a day for that work. One potato.
So when somebody writes to me that he cannot start until he can afford a proper set, I understand him, and he is still wrong.
The room fills in about eight minutes
My in person classes sell out in about eight minutes. Not a sales line. It is the reason the online school exists at all. A bench holds who it holds, and everybody else emails me too late.
The people in that room paid to be there. You are watching the same lesson for nothing, from wherever you are, with the camera closer to the steel than any of them were sitting.
They paid for the room. You get the work.
What you will be able to do
Set a low, long bevel on your own tools, so your knuckles ride near the wood and your shoulder stops paying for every pass. Put a micro bevel on the edge so that thin point does not break and the tool can work upside down. And bring a dull gouge back in about two minutes. I do not teach hand sharpening here. I show you what I use instead, and why the grinder in your shop is working against you.
This is not for everybody
If you carve little figures out of a stick with a knife on your porch, this will not help you much. That is knife work. Good hobby, and I respect the men who do it well, and it is a different craft from mine. Here it is gouges on a bench.
And if the price of one decent gouge and a piece of basswood is the hardest number in your life this month, do not buy anything. Get a pencil and draw every day instead. Drawing is free. Come back when you are ready, and I mean that plainly.
After the series
I keep writing to you when I have something worth sending. Something I learned, or fixed, or ruined at the bench, usually with a photograph. One click gets you off the list.
A bench only holds so many people, and the online school is how everybody else sits down anyway. Tuition is $25 a month or $200 a year, and it renews automatically until you stop it, which you do yourself in one click. Every course opens on day one. Nothing sits behind a second door.
Shall we carve?
When I was six I stole my grandfather's chisel. I did not ask him. I wanted to carve a face and the brick by the house was what stood in front of me, so I carved the brick. The tool was finished in about a minute. He was not happy with me when he found out. Then he said, all right, I will show you how to use it. That was the day somebody finally told me about an edge.
That is the whole reason this lesson is free.
Same form as up top. Go and watch it.