Japanese Skiving Knife with Camber?

[Zonker1972]

I am sharpening a new 37mm Japanese skiving knife and I was wondering if I should put a camber on the edges of the blade. For those of you who do not know, a camber is a slight rounding at both ends, right and left, of the blade's cutting surface so that the blade's edges do not "dig in". The majority of the blade remains square to the cut but there is a gentle curve on both of the ends. My thought is that this may make easing into a skive easier. Does anyone have an opinion on this one way or another? thanks.

[Tugadude]

You probably know already, but most of them are not cambered.  But there's no reason you can't have both and maybe that would offer flexibility.  Use the two sides for their strengths.

[zuludog]

It all depends on what you want to use it for. According to Leathertoolz videos, a Japanese Leather Knife (JLK) is intended mainly for cutting leather, with skiving being less important; for skiving he uses a simple flat length of steel with a chisel/single bevel at one end, and no handle. But in the West a JLK is used more for skiving

So since you already have a JLK try using that just as it is, with right angled corners; if you find you have problems with it digging in, just round them off slightly yourself, but maybe not as much as the Chartermade shown by Tugadude. You can get a similar knife at a cheaper price from Rocky Mountains Leather Supply

Vergez Blanchard - Skiving / Paring Knife - Straight – Rocky Mountain Leather Supply (rmleathersupply.com)

Besides this knife you can get JLK s with a more fully rounded edge

Here you see that Corter Leather manages to skive well enough using JLK s with 'sharp' corners ; and of course, you can hold the JLK at a slight angle so that the leading corner is clear of the leather

 When, Why, and How to Skive Leather by Hand - YouTube

Search YT for using a JLK and see how people use it

You can skive with the bevel up or down. If you eventually sharpen it so much that the handle prevents the blade from lying flat enough, you can flatten the handle slightly, but I think it will be a while before you need to do that 

This is another good video. Although it is mainly in Japanese, the video and the English sub titles make it clear enough, and he uses a JLK with sharp corners

【レザークラフト】HAKU流・革漉き術 / [Leather Craft] my leather skiving technique using a Japanese leather knife - YouTube

So try skiving with sharp corners first, you can always round them later, but it's not so easy to put the steel back on!

Edited February 7, 2022 by zuludog

[scrapyarddog]

Not horribly necessary unless you don’t start the skive at the edge of the leather but even when I do that, I don’t need that round edge. A gouge or groover plus angling the blade when necessary will normally do the trick.