Very New... with Questions :)

[Rhale]

Buy a good swivel knife to start with,  you can buy a Barry King for about the same price as a craftool pro from tandy and. Barry’s blade will be sharp to start with, just strop once in awhile.  I have numerous brands and sizes I have used for years including King, Henley, Beard, Smith, Miller, Stolman and others, they are all very good knives.  Practice, practice, then practice some more. I prefer a 1/4” straight blade with a 3/8” barrel, that is probably the most popular combination.  Hope this helps!

[seabee]

Swivel Knifes and Barry King

Seabee

[Zonker1972]

thank you to everyone who replied to this tread. I will be dropping into Tandy this weekend and trying a few knives.

zonker

[immiketoo]

As a man who has tried nearly everything out there swivel knife wise, I will say this.  You can buy a good swivel knife at Tandy.  Their pro version is as good as anything else out there apart from aesthetics.  Rickert Werkzuege sells a phenomenal knife for cheap.  Problem with these two are the blades.  They all need work to cut smoothly.  Geometry is terrible for some types of carving and passable at others.  You can learn to use it, but if you experiment with blades, you can fine tune your carving pretty quickly.  Everyone has a preference.  I like a thin barrel and a low angle blade.  As you can see, I've tried nearly all of them