I received this yesterday and I'm a bit tripped up on how to proceed. Philip's suggested blade bevel angle is 10-15 degrees, which matches the "ideal" 13 degrees I've seen listed in several other sources. Yet my blade came rough ground at 6.8 degrees. It would seem I have two choices. 1) go through the long process of grinding/honing the bevel to 13 degrees, or 2) put a small secondary bevel of 13 and leave the primary as is. Most of my woodworking tools have a secondary bevel which does make touch up quicker, but I use jigs to precisely hold them when sharpening. When sharpening the pairing knife by hand and trying to register the angle to the flat of the bevel, I'm not sure I would be able to do this accurately if it had a secondary.
Has anyone else come across this on a new Barnsley blade and if so how did you proceed?
This one is my favourite skiving knife. I have had it compared with two other Blanchard HSS knives and this remained my preferred one although simple carbon steel.
Mine came at 10 degrees and I have kept it at that. No secondary bevel.
There is something nice at this tool that breaths 'good design' and 'experience in the background' which I came to appreciate and love.
Just to close out on this topic, I had emailed Barnsley last week and they got back to me today with this:
@Leathercraft Masterclass Well I finished the 6 hours of hand honing torture about an hour before your post haha. Can't. Feel. Fingers. It's a 13 degree bevel all the way across now. Had to start at 60 grit and worked up through 3000 followed by stropping. She's a skiving machine now!
@CrankAddict I'd vote to add a secondary bevel, if you don't like it you can always finish the whole thing at 13 degrees.