if never seen a factory new knife that shaves armhair. Except maby for razor blades. But alls kitchen/grafting knifes arrive not dull. but definitly not sharp. Good news is that a new knive only takes a few minutes on a stone to get to shaving.
@BG1977 Did you manage to do the grafting cuts oky this year?
Good technique helps a lot.
The video already posted by carot is from a guy thats grafting profesionally. And teaches his crew. I learned technique from waching his video’s and pausing and playing back the cuts.
like jcguarneri already posted, the skillcult video is excelent also.
This is another video. Fastest grafting if seen
He keeps his thumb a little in front of the knife. I always try to keep it behind the knife’s edge. I gues he’s experianced enough that it doesen’t matter. But when learning id always keep your fingers behind the knifes edge.
Another one of him
Although i completly agree with skillcults idealogie of skill>tool.
I tought 11 people how to graft last season. All of them never did it before. All of them no to limited knife experiance. And a single bevel matters a lot. 1 person made 30+ cut’s, could not get it. swapped knife. first cut, perfect.
If you practise enough or have enough knife skills a dubble bevil will work just fine. But for a beginner learning, a single bevil is a huge advantage. However with the right teacher and a sharp dubbel bevil you’ll also learn just fine.
A single bevil knife is flat on 1 side. And beviled on the other.
You always want to have the flat side in contact with the part of the plant your keeping for your graft. And the beviled side touches the part that your trowing away.
Also a “higher” knife makes it easier to make single cut flat whips (W&T) i use both an opinel #12 and opinel #5. The #5 is awesome for small cuts and chip budding or thin scions. But thicker or longer cuts are much easier with the increased length and hight of the #12 blade. Although the #12 might be a bit on the larger side. if your buying an opinel id sooner go for a #6 - #8
Tina vs cheaper
Those Tina knifes look great, never touched one. For the price of one of those i can buy 10-12 opinels. Those opinels dull a little fast during grafting. But i touch em up with like 10 strokes on a stone every 100ish grafts. If never been disapointed by going for higher quality on a tool though. So someday hope to own a Tina knife. For the time being it’s a little to expensive and i can imagine that goes for a lot of hobbyists. Although if you compare it vs the difference in cost between buying grafted tree’s vs grafting rootstock yourself. The tina knife can be earned back in 1 season. So everything’s relative.
For a stone, i think a quality 1000 grit water stone (pref japanese) is all you need. Higher grits will be slightly better, but matter nothing until your technique is good enough. First you sharpen back and forth till you feel a bevil on both sides. Than you alternate edge trailing (edge leading is “cutting” into the stone edge trailing is “petting” the stone with the knifes edge) to remove bur and refine the “ragged” edge you got from the edge leading strokes before.
This video shows you the edge trailing (stropping) motion. Het gets it sharp enough to cut tomato’s paper thin on a 140 grit wetstone. Imagine what you get with that techinque on a 1000 grit.
https://youtu.be/YxpmooHDM5I?t=472 (copy paste the link, can only play on youtube)
Another thing you could try with peaches or other stuff that likes higher temps is chip budding later in the season. (either with dormant wood from fridge, or prunings late summer)
To be honest, i have limited experiance with peaches. But it seems logical to me, that things that like higher temps. to graft them when the temps are higher.
And graft things that are harder to get to take, when the rootstock is more active.
little long video. But i think it’s quite beginner friendly.
And ofc again an excelent skillcult video.
