Knife?

[Boy Scout]

I am beginning to carve many small and delicate things such as a ball in cage.

Is there any knife that is better for this task? I always find myself having a hard time with my murphy knife. Maybe its time for an upgrade. Or i can stay old fashioned and stick it out with what i have.

Any thoughts?

[Tom Ellis]

I would guess that first off you need to learn how to sharpen your Murphy. They don't come with a good carving bevel, so practice with that. There are some good youtube videos on how to do it.
Any knife you buy will have to be sharpened, and stroped often if you do a lot of carving, Denny, and a lot of other knives come with a good edge for carving, and are fairly inexpensive.

Good luck, and happy carving. Tom

[Inadv]

Boy Scout,

I have just recently started using a few knives that I made with Murphy blades. I bought them from Rick at Little Shavers and had him to shape the bevels and sharpen them up for me before shipping them. I really like the extra thickness of these blades for some types of carving, and I would think that for a ball-n-cage kind of thing it would be great since there is a lot of "digging in" involved. Something a bit more flexible like the Denny that Tom mentioned would probably be good for shaping the ball. That said the Murphy knife blade as it comes from the manufacturer has a pretty hard to work with bevel for keeping it really nice and sharp. I'd recommend that you send it to Rick and let him do his magic on it. You'll really be glad you did, and he is really reasonable with what he charges for sharpening.

L.P.

[Gulf Coast Handyman]

I just did my first ball in cage last week. One thing that I found was a long blade was to long and a short blade was to short, what worked for me was a 1 1/4" blade. My favorite knife is a Drake (www.drakeknives.com) , for the ball in cage I used a Denny because it had less flex. Hope that helps.

Dave

[rick-in-seattle]

Boy Scout, you are correct about needing a thin-blade knife for tricks & puzzles.
When I was carving chains & balls-in-cages, my favorite was a 5 dollar schrade with the blades ground for carving puzzles exclusivly.
You may want to look at this knife at knife-center, I don't believe it locks
Uncle Henry Knives: Texas Ranger Cigar Whittler, SC-9TRT
But Uncle Henry and Old Timer are all made by Schrade and some now come with blade locks.
Don't buy just for the pretty handle, the locking blades are the most important feature.