"I am a masters student of book and paper conservation at University Paris 1 Panthon-Sorbonne. I have been trained to use a French paring knife (rounded blade with wooden handle) but was wondering if anyone has a preference between the French, Swiss, German or English style"
I've taught leather paring, knife making, and — full disclosure — also sell French, Swiss, and English style knives, images available here: https://www.peacheytools.com The advantages of the round bladed knives, like French or Swiss is that they are all purpose knives that can be used both for edge paring and in a scraping motion for reducing the thickness of the leather in the center of the skin, on the spine for example. The disadvantages of these knives is that they are more difficult to resharpen, and take more skill to use than an English style knife. The advantages of an English style knife is that they are much easier to learn to use for edge paring, and relatively easy to resharpen. The disadvantage is that they are only useful for edge paring, and you need a different tool to thin the spine, most often a modified 151 style spokeshave. A spokeshave excels at reducing thickness over large areas quickly and safely. Most English trained binders switched from a French knife to spokeshave in the 1920's, as far as I have been able to determine, see: https://jeffpeachey.com/2008/05/05/towards-a-type-study-of-stanley-151-spokeshaves/ I know a number of bookbinders and conservators who were originally trained with a French style knife, and switched to an English style. In addition to the shape of the blade, it is also important to consider the type of steel, hardening, blade bevel angle, etc.... I did some testing of tool steels and a summary is posted here: https://jeffpeachey.com/2009/01/18/results-of-testing-steel-types-for-leather-paring-knives/ Even though most French knives are now rounded, in the eighteenth century at least they were also pictured with a straight blade, see the image in Plate X of René Martin Dudin's *L’Art du Relieur-Doreur de Livres *(Paris: Saillant & Nyon, 1772). Regards, Jeff Jeffrey S. Peachey Book Conservator 37 Nagle Ave.,#3C NY, NY 10040 1-212-387-7860 jeffpeachey.com peacheytools.com ****** Unsubscribe by sending a message to [email protected] Archives through August 2016 at http://cool.conservation-us.org/byform/mailing-lists/cdl/ Archives from September 2016 onward at https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
