Gramercy Tools Spoonmaker's Drawknife

Drawknives are wonderful tools for removing wood quickly and accurately. With smaller projects such as spoons, the size of typical drawknives gets in the way. The Gramercy Tools Spoonmaker’s Drawknife is designed to avoid this problem. It has a very narrow front to back - only 9/16”. This gives you a remarkable ability to dip into and out of concave features of your work. The blade is only 2 1/8” long, which makes it easy to control. The circular handles, which are designed to be grasped between thumb and forefinger, give you the kind of accuracy you need with small work, and they won’t get in the way like large handles will. Unlike a traditional shave this shave works well in either direction - without the handles hitting your clamp, vise, or shavehorse. This is especially important with short work because you can easily shave in both directions without reclamping the work.

The Drawknife is made of 3/16” O1 steel for rigidity and authority in use. We do all the machining, hardening, and sharpening ourselves in our Brooklyn workshop to ensure quality. Our hardening process for O1 relies upon carefully timed and controlled heat, soak, and quench times to ensure a fine, long-lasting edge. We then grind and buff the cutting edge to razor sharp so you can use it immediately, right out of the box.

When you harden steel it typically warps a little. After hardening our drawknife usually has a very slight concavity on the bottom. This is intentional and it helps sharpening the tool.

Sometimes, when clearance, agility, and portability isn't an issue having traditional handles gives you more power. To cover that situation we also offer a hardware kit with two aluminum bolsters and all the hardware you need to make your own handles that can attached solidly to the drawknife. It's a fun kit that only needs a knife or chisel to rough shape a pair of handles, and you can finish up with the drawknife itself. Each handle is attached and detached from the draw knife with a single screw. For more information and instruction on making the handles please download the PDF listed on this page.

The historical inspiration for this tool goes back to a Saxon shave found in a circa 900 AD tomb. That shave was a regular shave that had been cut down for greater portability. The Gramercy shave takes the design in a new direction especially for small work and spoons.

Made entirely in our Brooklyn workshop. Patent pending.