A marking knife or striking knife is a

woodworking Woodworking is the skill of making items from wood, and includes cabinetry, furniture making, wood carving, joinery, carpentry, and woodturning. History Along with stone, clay and animal parts, wood was one of the first materials worked b ...

layout tool used for accurately marking workpieces. It is used to cut a visible line, which can then be used to guide a

hand saw In woodworking and carpentry, hand saws, also known as "panel saws", are used to cut pieces of wood into different shapes. This is usually done in order to Woodworking joints, join the pieces together and carve a wooden object. They operate by ...

chisel A chisel is a hand tool with a characteristic Wedge, wedge-shaped cutting edge on the end of its blade. A chisel is useful for carving or cutting a hard material such as woodworking, wood, lapidary, stone, or metalworking, metal. Using a chi ...

or plane when making

woodworking joints Joinery is a part of woodworking that involves joining pieces of wood, engineered lumber, or synthetic substitutes (such as laminate), to produce more complex items. Some woodworking joints employ mechanical fasteners, bindings, or adhesives, ...

and other operations. They are generally used when marking across the grain of the wood, with scratch awls better suited for marking with the grain.

Description

The blades on marking knives are made of

tool steel Tool steel is any of various carbon steels and alloy steels that are particularly well-suited to be made into tools and tooling, including cutting tools, dies, hand tools, knives, and others. Their suitability comes from their distinctive ...

, have either a skewed end or a spear point, and the knife edge is bevelled on either one side of the blade or both sides. On single-bevel skewed knives the side of the blade that is bevelled dictates whether the knife is for left-handed or right-handed use, while single-bevel spear point knives are suited to both. Some marking knives incorporate a marking knife blade at one end, and a scratch awl tip at the other end – but because of this they are sometimes considered dangerous to use. Marking knives are either made from a single piece of steel, or additionally have a handle made of wood or plastic. Some woodworkers make their own marking knives, for example from spade bits or planer blades.

Use

Marking knives are usually held like a pencil, and are guided using a

straightedge A straightedge or straight edge is a tool used for drawing straight lines, or checking their straightness. If it has equally spaced markings along its length, it is usually called a ruler. Straightedges are used in the automotive service and ma ...

square In geometry, a square is a regular polygon, regular quadrilateral. It has four straight sides of equal length and four equal angles. Squares are special cases of rectangles, which have four equal angles, and of rhombuses, which have four equal si ...

. Sometimes woodworkers will gently run a sharp pencil along the line afterwards to make it more visible. Marking knives are sharpened in a similar manner to chisels or other bladed tools – using sharpening stones, files or sandpaper.

Shirabiki

A ''shirabiki'' is a Japanese marking knife made from a single piece of steel with a skewed single-bevel blade. A double-bladed shirabiki is used for marking parallel lines. They are made with two parallel blades and a thumbscrew for adjusting the distance between the blades.

Gallery

File:Markingknife.jpg, Marking knife with a skewed blade, made from a spade bit. File:Cc&j-fig2--combined marking awl and striking knife.png, Combination marking knife and

scratch awl A scratch awl is a woodworking layout and point-making tool. It is used to scribe a line to be followed by a hand saw or chisel when making woodworking joints and other operations. The scratch awl is a steel spike with its tip sharpened to a fin ...

File:Shirabiki.jpg, Japanese ''shirabiki'' marking knife.

References

{{Knives Woodworking measuring instruments Knives Woodworking hand tools

Description

Use

Shirabiki

Gallery

See also

References