Red Devil leather cutter

[frugalolegeezer]

I was looking at my Red Devil sheet vinyl cutting knife and had a brainstorm. I thought if I sharpened the other side of the cutter I could use it as a leather skiving and cutting knife. Took the tool over to the sander and set a bottle of water for cooling next to the sander and started sanding away the excess metal in order to get a cutting edge on the back side of the knife. Got it sharpened and boy what a cutting tool it is now. Handiest leather knife I have used yet. It woks slicker than a whistle. If you decide to make one yourself be sure and keep the blade cool, you do not want to draw out the temper of the metal and ruin a good knife and be careful, because it is sharp on both sides when you get it sharpened.

[DIYer]

Thanks frugalolegeezer! We've added your Skiving Knife to our Leathercraft category,
as well as to your builder page: frugalolegeezer's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Skiving Knife by frugalolegeezer

tags: knife, leather

[Philip Davies]

Thanks for this. We seldom have the half-moon skiving knives donated, for us to send to Africa. With your permission, I would like to send this picture to the administrator at the charity, Tools for Self Reliance, since we get plenty of these vinyl knives and it is easy to adapt them as you have done.

[frugalolegeezer]

By all means share this with as many folks as you want. Glad to be of help. I have been using this modified tool for leather work and I love it for its versatility.

[Metalmuncher]

Words always fascinate me, in that so many of them have multiple meanings. Although I did eventually find the definition in leather working, meaning to slice off, the first definition Google offered me was this:

skive1
skīv/
Britishinformal
verb
gerund or present participle: skiving

avoid work or a duty by staying away or leaving early; shirk.
"I skived off school"

It took me a moment to relate that to leather working. Would it be safe to assume this would sort of mean "makes leather slicing easier" (avoiding work) in your application?

[Frank S]

demographics play a large part as well. however in this case to skive, trim, slice off,
In the hydraulics field there is skive and non skive hose and fittings. which means sometimes you thin or remove the outer rubber / fabric layer before crimping the fitting to the hose.
As a kid we called them a Hulk bill knife which we used to cut the heads off of maize stalks.

[Metalmuncher]

We always called them linoleum knives. I had not seen another use for one before today.