David Barron Marking knife

I'm teaching my daughter to do some turning and as a first project I thought we would make a marking knife based on David Barron's article.

I made one for myself as a proof of concept. Here's a photo. Better than how it looks, it works as advertised - the dimple on the side parallel to the blade does help hold the knife with the blade 'straight', which should help make the marking more accurate.
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Great minds think alike!!!

I'm in the middle of doing like wise. I started modifying a Ramset masonry anchor.........


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.....but then I decided to use solid brass stock and brass tube as a ferrule instead.........

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It would be so much simpler to just epoxy the blade on to the handle, but I want to be able to replace it a lot easier hence the grub screw. This is how far I have gotten. I can't go any further until I get to get a lathe to turn the handle or find someone to turn a couple of handles for me.

Yours looks great. The ball on the hand is very functional for when you hod it with your mouth. I like the finger grooves/indents as well. My most used marking knife has them and I find it very ergonomic when using the pen grip.


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This one I bought on eBay has the blade epoxied in which gave me the idea of using a grub screw instead.




Cheers,
Mike

Hi Mike

Thanks for sharing those thoughts.

I decided to make my knife with the epoxied blade. First because the knife was a proof of concept and epoxy got it done quickly!

Then because the handle is actually pretty simple to turn and the blade is easy to sharpen.

But well done trying the grub screw idea. I think I will stick with epoxy - sorry for the pun. The idea of the blade coming adrift in the middle of a cut and the irritation that will cause me ultimately discourages me more than the fact that I may have to make another one sometime! I know that the blade probably won't come loose, but I worry about that (and I know the epoxy could fail too).

That's a perfectly valid reason to use epoxy, Jeremy. My main concern with using the grub screw was that there would be too much play in the blade and that it would wobble around everywhere. I'm happy to report that it's nice and tight thus far with zero play whatsoever.

Interesting variation however a traditional making knife should have a bevel only on one side and the opposite side is flat

Yep, I've got that type as well (the Blue Spruce in the 1st pic and a Narex one) but for some reason I prefer using the point of a scalpel for my scribing. If it's good enough for Dave Barron......