A WIP

[gudspelr]

I got myself into knives as a result of is forum a few years back. I'd built my first longbow and found this site and got some aid in the bowlers bench. Afterwards, I found this subforum and things went downhill for me in a hurry. In an effort to give back even a little of what this place has given me, I decided to do a WIP on my current project and post it here.

As a disclaimer...I'm not exactly a fast worker and these photos will show where I stand as of now. It may take me a bit to get things finished. These knives are fairly "basic". There are no bolsters and will have full scales for the handles on them. It's my hope that this can help anyone at some of the basic levels and give some ideas on how you can make "simple" end up looking like more than that. Also, if any of you really really good makers out there have some advice or input, PLEASE feel free to add to this. I'd love to streamline/improve what and how I do things. I really enjoy forging, but a little while back, I found myself not working at all because I didn't have the time to get the forge going, etc. A friend gave me some great advice-just cut out a blade and get some grinding practice in. That was fantastic advice and I've sort of split my making between stock removal and forging. These will be stock removal blades-so let's get going   .

A friend saw a bird and trout that I made my dad and decided he wanted one. Instead of making just one, I decided to do 3. The steel is 15N20 that someone was kind enough to gift to me a little while back. They were larger/odd cut pieces that were long enough for me to make these. I drew out this design a bit ago and ended up really liking it, so I made a thin G10 pattern to keep around. I drew the profiles out on the steel and went to the bandsaw.

 

One thing to think of when designing different knives is to use what you have to your advantage. For instance, the 1.5" wheel at the top of my flat platen makes a decent little transition at the front of the handle. This can help make that transition easier to do than using a really small wheel and getting little divots in there.

 

After some work on the grinder, the blades are profiled.

 

I want to get rid of the bits of rust and such, so to the disk I go with some 220 grit paper on there.

 

Which gets things nice and clean (except for the one that had a LOT of rust on there...).

 

I've been meaning to get some Dykem in order to mark my blades..but haven't yet. Instead, I use a big red Sharpie a friend gave me one time. He felt the red lasted a bit longer than the other colors when grinding. Either way, it helps out in several ways, including marking my center line.

 

 

[gudspelr]

 

I'm not a huge measuring guy when I don't have to be... So, I scribe once with the blade on one side, then flip it over and scribe again. This way, it'll show me right where the center is, even if I don't have the scribe perfectly centered on the blade.

 

Since these are so thin to start with, I'm going to give grinding hard a whirl. I'm only going to just start a distal taper grind and the beginning of the edge bevels. Grinding the distal taper isn't all that important at this stage on these really-they're really thin. But, I've found myself having difficulty on thicker, hunter blades and such if I don't take the time to help establish a distal taper before grinding my bevels. I hadn't really thought about it before and realized it was because I was forging that part of things in...duh.

The marker really helps see where your pressure is on the platen as well as how falt your steel is.

 

The beginning of the edge bevels is really a rather acute angle.  This is how I establish the edge bevels on pretty well any knife I'm trying to make.  Get the edge towards dime/nickel thickness, then take the whole side of the blade down after that to match.

 

 

After I get the edge bevels started on all three and straighten anything noticeable that I can, I put them back on the grinder at 120 grit.  Different folks have different feelings on what grit to go up to prior to heat treat.  I was taught to go to 120 and I've never had a problem cracking something in the quench because of it.  I go back over the bevels and flats as well as the spine and blade edge all the way around.  Then I start thinking about my pin placement.  I use a fine sharpie to draw out the approximate place the front of the scales will go to.  Then I mark the front pin (these will be 1/16" pins).  Second, I mark the back pin.  I measure to see if they're both the same distance from the end of the scale, front and back, and adjust if necessary.  Then, I mark for the middle pin and measure from the front and back pins to ensure the middle one is centered.  I also check placement from the top and bottom of the tang to be as close to centered up and down as I can.  A little extra time during all these steps (in my opinion) helps the finished product look as good as you can make it.  It's really lousy when you put in so much time and effort, just to have an off center pin because you didn't measure...

I started using a spring loaded center punch to mark my holes rather than a hammer and punch.  I've found it can be easier to get the punch right where I wanted it.

 

 

And I use a #52 drill bit-it's just a few thousandths larger in diameter than my 1/16" pin stock.  A lot of the time, if you use the same size drill bit as the pin stock...it won't fit...ask me how I know...

 

[gudspelr]

So, off to drilling.  Do yourself and your bits a favor and use some drilling lube of some sort-makes the bits last longer.  I use some 1-2-3 blocks on my drill press table to help elevate my work without having to move the table that I squared up and locked down.

 

Nice fit.

 

These are really lightweight little knives and I like to drill some extra holes in the tangs to help a bit with that.  These are really thin, so it's not like it's a must, but the holes also help with the epoxy.  I like to have as much helping the epoxy as I can and extra holes for their to be "epoxy pins" as well as the pin stock is a good thing.  Plus, later on we'll put small little divots on the inside of the scale material to give extra surface area for the epoxy, too.

And they're countersunk because I'm a little weird like that... I know they'll be covered up, but having a nicely chamfered hole for some reason makes my brain feel better...

 

Then I take them over to the granite and a piece of 220 paper to help get rid of any of the little bumps raised by the drilling, etc.  I could've done it on the disc, but I didn't feel like putting a new piece of paper on it and this probably took about as long.

 

Then they're all done and ready for heat treat...almost.

 

And you can see how thin these are...

 

Thin blades normally make me cringe when it comes to quenching, but I have had good luck with my molten salt pot.  For those not familiar, think of a vertical forge with a stainless steel tube in the center that sticks out the top.  The tube is filled with a substance that's solid at normal temp, but becomes molten once heated up.  The burner(s) of the forge heat the tube up and now you have ridiculously hot liquid inside the tube.  Stick in a really high temp thermometer hooked up to a little computer thingy called a "PID" and now you can read the temp of the liquid and program inputs to shut off a gas solenoid so the burner goes on and off to keep the liquid at the temp you want.  Here's the one I built.

 

**********It should be noted, these can be extremely dangerous.  Don't think the following pics and info are such a good idea that you should just sling something together and give it a go.  VERY bad things can happen if you don't pay serious attention to what's going on, as well as the build and materials (i.e. "salts") being used.  It's a fantastic tool, but one that should be really respected.  Ok...nuff said on that.

While the salt pot is heating up, I get my little toaster oven ready and start heating it up.  I put some steel inside of the oven to help as heat sinks so I can get a more consistent heat with less fluctuations.  I also use 2 digital thermometers with probes to read the temp.  I once had a bad experience with a thermometer that was way off...it made me sad...  So, I now have some redundancy in my system.

 

[gudspelr]

While those things are getting rolling, I take the time to clean up the blades with some acetone.  I don't want any oils, marker, etc. on them.  Imagine something liquid (i.e. oil from drilling) hitting 1500F liquid.  This is one of those really bad things that can happen...

 

So, once everything's going along as it should and I'm ready, I slip the little stainless steel rod I have bent up through one of the holes in the tang of the first knife.  This allows me to hang onto the blade so it doesn't find it's way down to the bottom of a 24" tube filled with freakishly hot liquid.  Consider this another bad thing that can happen.

These weren't forged, so there were no thermal cycles prior to grinding.  I really don't know that it helps one little bit, but I like to do this with my stock removal knives, too.  I figure if nothing else, it shouldn't hurt anything.  So, into the pot it goes.

 

 

 

One of the benefits of using a salt pot is you submerge the blade into liquid.  This keeps oxygen away and thus, scale from forming.  Each time you bring the blade out, though there is a bit of a build up of the "salts".  I let the blade sit in the pot and come all the way up to heat, then pull it out and let it cool before putting it back in.  The second time, I leave it in for a shorter period of time.  The third, shorter than that.  What I'm trying to do is not let the blade come all the way up to heat by limiting the time it's exposed, so I get some of that decreasing heat thing going on.  I also use a little pipe I have in the shop to help me see that it has in fact cooled down before going back in.

 

 

 

[gudspelr]

I have some knives I made using my forge to heat treat and they are doing rather well, so I hear.  That being said, I really like the ability to know what temp my blade is at and the option of holding it at that temp (within reason, anyway) for however long I want.  Soaking blades at temp can also be a source of varying opinion.  I have chosen to soak these knives at 1500F for 8 minutes.  Some of that is arbitrary, some not.  This isn't meant to be an "end all" in regards to the proper heat treat of this steel, but it has proven to work for my process and my tools.  So, after the last cycle, I put the blade in and start the timer.  After 8 minutes, I lift it up, grab it with tongs and slip the steel rod out of the hole in the tang.  After lowering the knife to ensure I'm up to temp, it's quickly into the quench tank of Parks 50.

The first of the three was the only one that warped at all.  I decided beforehand to try a method a friend told me about.  Once the blade has come down under the needed temperature, you can take it out of the quenchant and do a little straightening with welding gloves on.  I did a 10 count in the oil and saw the curve in the blade.  The straightening went very well and set very quickly.  I put the blade back into the oil to continue cooling from there.  Sorry, no pics of that...

When the blade goes into the pot for the soak, the built up salts melt back into the rest of the liquid.  When I quench into the oil, I'm left with a matte grey finish on the blade.  I use a scotch brite pad and my water quench bucket to scrub off any bits of salt build up, then take it to my disc real quick to get to bare steel.

   

   

I grab my file and make sure things hardened nicely, which they did.  I set it on top of the toaster oven where it warms slightly and waits for it's buddies to go into the oven.  I did manage to get a quick shot of one blade in the quench after I saw everything went fine and no warping occurred.  It was still too hot to handle when I took this.

   

Tempering is yet another one of those things people vary on.  I fall under the "put it in for 3 cycles" umbrella.  Not sure I have a great reason why, other than it was what I was taught and it has served me well with my process and my tools.  15N20 is often used with 1080 or 1084 in Damascus and many folks temper their hunters around 415, depending on who you ask.  Since these are more slicing type knives that shouldn't see the tougher use possible of a bigger blade, I leave these a bit harder.  I temper at about 380-385 for 2 hours, 3 times.

I'm currently using one of these in my kitchen just to test out and it's been in there a little over a month.  It has stayed quite sharp and only seen a sharpening steel a few times, which has been all it's needed.  I decided to check something after cutting up some meat while holding it with a fork.  When the blade accidentally came up to the fork, it almost felt like it bit into the fork.  Yesterday, I decided to do something dumb.  I took a cheapo fork and started cutting into the handle of it.  The blade didn't chip out, though you could just feel with your nail where I'd cut the fork.  The fork had little marks each place I cut into it, raising a bit of the metal so it scraped against your skin (not going to be using that fork anymore...).  I put the blade on the sharpening steel and it was back to good.

So, for now at least, I plan on trying to duplicate the last process and see what I can get.  I'm about to go pull the knives out from their second cycle and will see if I can get the last one in tomorrow night.  

Any questions/comments are welcome.  Thanks for following along.

[Thadbow]

Very nice Jeremy, thanks for sharing!
I'm looking forward to the rest.....

[gudspelr]

Here's a fairly boring update pic, but figured I'd try to be thorough in showing the process...

I got the knives in for the last of the three temper cycles tonight and this is them. The lighting wasn't great in the garage, you can kind of make out the gold color of the steel.

 

Next will be cleaning them up and get to grinding in those bevels. I've got a little hunting to get in and family time, so hopefully I'll get to these before too long. I'll be sure to take pics as I go so I can get them added here.

Jeremy

[gudspelr]

So, I finally made a bit of progress and wanted to post it up. So, here we go:

When grinding hardened steel, it's important to use a new, sharp belt. Worn belts aren't sharp and that creates friction. Too much friction and all that heat treat work goes down the drain with over heated blades. Let the belt do the work and be quick to dunk the blade in water after your passes on the belt grinder. I know some people choose to grind with gloves, but especially on hardened steel, I think bare hands is by far the better way to go. If the steel begins heating up, you feel it quickly and can dunk the blade. If you have gloves on, the steel can get too hot before you feel it.

I like to put the red marker back on the blades before grinding. It makes things easier to see as you go along. You can see the edge bevel I ground in prior to hardening.

   

When I start grinding the bevels in, I begin taking material off near that angled grind I put in before.

   

Then, I start walking that grind up the blade towards the spine. As I do that, I also want to take off enough material that the whole bevel on that side ends up running right down to the blade edge I previously ground in.


   


   


   

[gudspelr]

With a 60 grit belt, you can take off a fair amount of material. One of the many things I've struggled with is leaving enough meat to make it through the finish process. I leave the rough plunge lines forward of where I want them at the end. I use a 120 belt to work those in later-I just want to get close for now. I also need to be careful not to take the plunge right up to the top just yet. It just seems like if I get it all pretty much dialed in at 60, I end up busting through the top of the spine way too easily or have my plunges disappear in subsequent operations/grits.

   

I also like to have the plunge line lean a bit forward. I can always make it a bit more vertical later on as I finish the plunge location. But for some knives/designs in general, I kind of like that forward leaning plunge. Really early on, I even had a few moments of backward leaning plunges which gets frustrating in a hurry. This is all controlled by the angle you hold the blade against platen-is the handle/tang up higher or down lower? If the hand holding the tang begins dropping towards the floor, you end up with backwards leaning plunges. If you pick it up towards the ceiling, you get what I showed above. One of the difficult bits is to get both sides looking the same. Once you get the first side looking like you want, pay close attention and note the angle of the plunge as you grind the new side. If you line up that line with the edge of the platen, you'll be more able to mirror the first side on the second.

   


One thing that I was taught early on when I took a class was to "look twice as much as you grind". At times I'll mark the blade several times over with marker to see what I'm doing. You can catch facets early on and hopefully fix stuff earlier in your grinding. Note how the spine looks and especially the blade edge. An edge that "wanders" is lousy and not noticing it until the end will drive you crazy. As you grind, you want to try really hard to keep the blade edge thickness consistent. I struggled with this, too-I struggled with a LOT of things if that hasn't become apparent yet...  And frankly, I still do, but I'm getting better at recognizing the problems. Also pay close attention to the tip. I've seemed to end up having a thicker blade edge nearest the tip than the rest of the blade. I think this was because of my fear of over heating the tip. With that fear, I'd tend to not grind as well out there and not as long. Again, a good, sharp belt will help you a ton. If it stays thicker than the rest, or you have varying thicknesses throughout, you end up having a bad time trying to put the final edge on. Watch the edge as you go:

   

The next step will be bumping up in grit to 120 and getting those plunge lines really dialed in and moving up from there.

 


Jeremy

[Lin Rhea]

Looking good Jeremy.  

[gudspelr]

Thanks, Lin. You probably won't know all of the people you've inspired and helped along the way. I know you've certainly had an influence on how I look at knives and try to make them.

I guess I lied on the last post about what was coming next... I decided to give doming the spine a try. On the finished one I've been using like this, the corners on the spine have been noticeable, so I thought rounding them over would be a good thing. I wanted the rounding to terminate evenly and in front of where the scales would end. If I let the doming run back to the area of the scales, I could easily end up with a small gap where the scales are even with the top and the epoxy would fill in and be seen.

So, to keep that from happening, I put on the file guide. And shocker...I marked the blade again so I could see where I was removing metal.

 

I put the spine at about a 45 or so degree angle on the slack portion of the belt (on a 120 grit belt) above the top wheel on my platen. I carefully moved it from side to side, to begin taking off those corners on each side.

 

Then continue on with both sides until you're happy.

 

I get a little nervous doing some operations on the grinder and as soon as it makes sense to go to hand tools, I like to do so. It's just a whole lot harder to mess things up beyond repair when using hand tools. So, keeping the file guide on, I clamp it down in the vise.

 

Using a new file, I tried cleaning things up a bit and taking just a bit more material off. The blade is still fairly hard even after tempering, so the file doesn't remove a whole lot of material. After that's taken care of, I go to work with some 120 grit "shop roll" paper. I got a box of it a while back on sale. It has some kind of cloth type backing so it's easier to use in this application. Using the paper, I "shoe shine" carefully and keep looking at the progress. From past experience...be sure you have removed enough material off the corners if you really want it domed. If you've barely got anything gone, it'll take you quite a while for any significant rounding to occur. It's about getting a good balance of material left prior to going to the paper. And, it's just like grinding; look a whole lot more than you work to minimize problems developing amd keeping things even.  

 

Once I have things more or less where I want them, I go ahead and take off the file guide and take a look where I'm at.

 

Thinking back, it may have been worthwhile to go up to 220 while the file guide was still on and I may do that on the others. But at this stage, I just really wanted to get things roughed in. As I do the finish grinding and get the plunges dialed in, I wanted to know what that doming looked like so I can better control how high I take the grind. There's a somewhat sudden stop of the doming and I'll carefully feather that in later on anyway, so taking the guide off isn't all that critical. I drew in what the front edge of the scales may look like so you can see the area we'll be looking at later on for this transition.

 


Until next time....


Jeremy

[gudspelr]

So, I've been away from this for a while.... Told you I was slow at this   . I managed to get back at it and made some progress so figured I'd post it up.

During some of the in between time, I made a fixture to try helping myself out on my plunge lines. Suffice to say, it didn't go quite as planned and one of the three is now relegated to the scrap bucket... It's not all that bad, I guess, but enough that I can't let it out the door. I may fiddle with it down the road and try some "design modifications" to get it up to snuff. We'll see. On to the fun.

I continued up in grit on the flats of the two remaining blades, up to 400. I also brought the plunge lines back slowly to where I wanted them. Another thing I tried was to put my file guide on the "ruined" blade to dial the plunges in so they were even (got a new platen that'll give me enough room). I'm glad I experimented because it didn't work too well for me. It may after more practice, but I decided to do that another time. I find getting the plunges nice and even still difficult, but slowing down the speed and going nice and slow helps me out a lot.  I like to convex the blade edges, so that was next. I put the blade, edge towards me (be CAREFUL here), on the slack belt above the top wheel. I slow the speed down and apply some pressure to the edge with the spine lifted off the belt. You've got to pay attention as you draw the edge back and forth, but this will take the last bit of thickness down and set me up good for later.

 

You might be thinking that convex portion is going to cause problems when hand sanding, but I'll show you a trick for that in a minute. I take the blades and get one put in my really high tech hand sanding fixture.

 

Hopefully the angle of sanding is easily seen below. Whatever process/grit sequence you use, I've found alternating sanding directions to be really helpful. When moving in grit, sand at a different angle from the previous. This lets you see much easier if you have some deeper scratches left since they will stand out more against the new scratch pattern. Getting in the plunges is always a little bit of a pain, but if you have an angle ground into the front of your sanding stick, you can get in there better....though it's still a pain...

 

And here's the little trick. A friend of mine that told me about convexing the edge, also gave me this tidbit. I had some home made Micarta sitting around that I turned into some sanding sticks. I then took 1/16" cork gasket material and glued it to the bottom of one. This gives me just enough cushion when sanding that it easily blends the convex edge into the flats. I begin with a flat sanding stick, but will finish off with the cushioned one.

 

 

 

Keep on with the elbow grease and fresh sandpaper (don't waste time with worn out paper) and things get closer.

 

[gudspelr]

Be sure to keep different lights around to check out your work. It's easy to look at the blade and miss something. Look at it from different angles and be sure to find those trouble areas that need more work. Like this:

 

It's fuzzy, but you can see the scratches in there. Without looking at it in the right light, at the right angle, I'd miss it. And there's nothing quite like getting up through the grits or even further in the process before realizing there are some little scratches that got missed...

So, now I'll need to get the blades and ricasso areas cleaned up and sanded out to my satisfaction. Then it'll be on to etching my name, handle scales, and so on. Hopefully the next installments won't be so long in the making   .

Jeremy

[Shinken]

WOW!

That is a great combination of pictorial and verbiage how-to!

Thanks for sharing and I am looking forward to the future installments!

Keep the wind in your face!

Shoot straight, Shinken

   

[NittanyRider]

Thanks for taking all the time to post this, Jeremy!  Is there more?  

[gudspelr]

There is a little more....sorry I'm so slow to finish these... I have both hand sanded, but one side on one of them is bugging me. I plan to go back and work on it a bit more before calling them good. Hopefully it won't be too long and we'll be putting on some scales and shaping the handles.


Jeremy

[NittanyRider]

Looking forward to seeing how they turn out!