10" integral chef WIP.

[Salem Straub]

Thanks guys!

Quint and Chad, my roller bearings are from a LARGE rock crushing machine that processes dolopril and calpril ore locally. Three bearings were removed from the shaft, and scrapped. The races are about 20" in diameter, and I got three buckets of rollers as well as the races.

The bearings are a solid alloy, as are the races- not case hardened. They rust fairly easily, so a carbon steel. They have a very fine grain when broken, harden like glass, and act like 52100 in every other way. The only caveat is that I've never had them analyzed; process of elimination is pretty reliable with bearings, and I've been making knives out of this stuff for over two years with nothing but good feedback about edge holding and durability in the field.
Dozier, I think it's not just the photos making it look easy, but the breezy narrative. In reality, I swore a lot today in the shop.

 

[Salem Straub]

Chapter 3.

Ok, next I put the platen back on, ride the belt up to the right side, and begin grinding the rear shoulders of the bolster square. I begin with the shortest side (nearest the blade) and grind it perpendicular to the tang axis. It happens to be the top of the bolster this time.

I change grinding the shoulder from the tang side, parallel with the tang. I move back and forth a couple of times, each time removing a bit more steel from the inside of that corner.

When the first and lowest side is set, I roll the knife 90 degrees and start grinding the next side of the tang shoulder, using the same series of motions. I do this until I've come back around to the side I started, and all of the sides are good and square with each other by eye.

Now I begin to grind the corners of the bolster round, using at first the platen edge and then the small slack belt section below the top idler wheel. This helps to feather in the rounded corners under the heel, and to blend everything.

A few shots of the bolster in its final stage before heat treatment. The corners have been rounded and blended into the whole, which is still essentially square. You can see the shoulders are pretty good at this point- it's entirely possible to get a quite acceptable fit here without files or a guide. All the same, I'll be hand filing this area totally true after HT.

Here's the knife almost ready for HT...

And here's the blade, after I've gone over it at a different angle with 120 grit Blaze. I just like to remove the big nasty 50 grit scratches, just in case of stress risers leading to cracking in the quench. If it was a hamon blade, I'd get it hand sanded to 220 grit lengthwise before HT, to avoid bright decarb lines on the etched blade.

Ok, after all of that boring grinding I get back to hot work- which I prefer. Last time I used Parks 50 to quench- usually it works fine with proper precautions, even on thin 52100 and CruForgeV, but I just can't bear the idea of making this knife three times so I'm going with a slower quench.
I have a quench tube full of soybean oil, which I preheat to about 130 degrees. To do this, I use a large chunk of round mild steel welded to a handle- I heat this to about 1600 degrees, then pump it up and down and swirl it about in my quench oil.

I watch the thermometer as I do this, pulling the bar out at about 120 degrees. The oil will climb another 10 degrees or so afterwards, with agitation.

Using a simple pipe muffle through the doors of my vertical forge, I first normalize three times, using a magnet. This is to further refine grain size, and relieve any stresses from the grinding process. I watch for warpage. None occurs.
I heat to critical once more, up just a bit past evenly non-magnetic, and quench into the tube. I move the blade up and down, stopping after about 20 seconds to pull it out and wipe it down.

Here's a shot of the edge- nice and straight this time, and a shot of the bevels. The scale broke fairly nicely all over.

My outdoor gas tempering oven has been preheating all this time, up to 425 F. I put the blade right in, on some foil chairs. I'll pull it out in two hours.

 

[Don Hanson III]

Salem, very nice work!

 

[Salem Straub]

Thanks Don!

 

[catcalls]

Wonderful knife, wonderful WIP!!!

 

[PT Doc]

Excellent. Great to see how it's done.

 

[Salem Straub]

Chapter 4.

I take the blade out of the oven, have another look at it, detect a slight bend. So, I put it back in for the second temper, shimmed and clamped to a big old chipper blade that I use for this.

Here it is, after cooling from the second temper.

Of course I overcorrected a bit, so I put it in for a third temper heat of one hour, shimmed and clamped the other way to a lesser extent. When I pull it out after the third draw, it's ready to go.

I use a 120 Blaze belt on the Pheer to brighten the blade again, and to feather the last 3/8" or so of the grind slightly convex at the edge.

I round the spine and the heel for comfort.

I switch to an A65 Gator belt (220ish) to further refine the flats, edge convexity, and rounded edges. When the gator loads up, I take a piece of an old Blaze 36 belt, crease it, and use the exposed abrasive to clean the gator's surface and get it cutting sharply again. I repeat these steps with an A45 Gator belt to remove the 220 scratches.

I put a new 220 grit J-flex on the small wheel, and go over the bolster front transitions, and under the heel.

I grind the bolster to 400 all around.

With the whole blade at 400 grit belt finish, I put the blade in a leather caul, in the vise, and do some finish filing on the bolster/tang shoulders. I start with a safe edge square file, then finish up with a small round needle file to keep a small radius on the inside of that corner.

I find my 10" integral chef knife board- with a notch cut out for bolsters. I clamp the blade on, and hog away at it with the steel bar and 220 grit Rhynowet redline paper spray glued on. I use a round stainless bar to sand the bolster faces. I continue to roll the sanding bar at the edge to keep a smooth convexity near the cutting edge.

With the blade at 220 hand finished all over, I lay the tang on some card stock, trace the tang, draw my handle around that, and cut it out.

I lay the scale pattern on the G10 block, and scribe the outline.

I put the tang on top of the card and block, then slip out the card. I scribe the tang onto the block.

The tang measures .180" thick. I halve that, getting .090", and set the micrometer to that. I use the mic to scribe this depth of .090" onto the front of the block where the tang will bed. Note that the block has a tang half scribed onto each face.

I clamp up the block, and use the mill at full depth to rout the tang cavity freehand in one pass, in and back. I check the fit- the block will press on tightly to the tang. Tighter than necessary, actually.

I use a file to open up the mouth of the recess a little for the radii in the tang shoulder.

After repeating these steps for the other side of the block, I use the mic to scribe a center line down the end of the block.

I put an old 14 tpi blade on the metal saw, one with some missing teeth but some sharpness left. Just right for ripping G10. I find G10 does not dull tool steel and HSS so bad if cutter and blade speeds are slow, I milled with HSS just fine at slow speed.

Since this saw is a blunt instrument, I mill the faces of the rip cut flat, taking a bit off as well so the scales end up about 3/8" thick.

I check the fit. So far it's all right.

I use a small wood chisel and hammer to cut a tang slot out of some G10 spacer sheet.

I roughly trace the bolster onto the spacer, and cut it out over size in case it wants to shift a bit in glue up.

That's all for now, stay tuned. In case you are wondering, yes it would be easier to use G10 "scales" the right thickness to begin with. I don't like ripping G10 much either, just had blocks this time. This method is fast and breezy with say, 3/8" linen Micarta sheet for scales.

 

[GTH11]

Real, real nice Salem!!

 

[Shaw Blades]

Great tip with the wood chisel. Thanks

 

[efleming]

Very nice Salem. Love your work and WIP's. Keeping an eye on this one...

 

[quint]

Man you make it look easy. Great stuff.

Was wondering on the hand sanding bar I put a radius on one edge of mine so I can start at the top of the curves and bring it down onto the blade in one motion. Do you prefer to just use the bar for the flats then transition to the round bar for the curves, how difficult is it to make a nice smooth transition with that method.

 

[Brian Ayres]

Definitely loving watching you work. I still intend on visiting. Striking a couple cookies to shape sounds fun.

 

[Don Nguyen]

Awesome gator dressing technique!

Can you take a blaze to dress a blaze too then?

 

[Nathan the Machinist]

Cool man, I was hoping you'd WIP this scale technique.

I recall this fellow you made:

Brilliant :thumbup:

 

[Kentucky]

Great WIP Salem...By the way, thats a sweet swage block you got there..I have a thing for swage blocks

 

[jdm61]

Nice work, Salem. I think the blade shape of this one might be a bit better than the one that rippled.

 

[jonnymac44]

Awesome thread Salem! Thanks a bunch.

 

[Brian Ayres]

Great WIP Salem...By the way, thats a sweet swage block you got there..I have a thing for swage blocks

They make great toys for two year olds!

I saw your swage block too.

Neat trick on the gators. I'll have to try that if I ever get one to last that long! I always manage to snag an edge and rip them before they wear out.

Why didn't you just make it a hidden tang and drill the block out?

 

[tedinatl]

Thanks for posting this, Salem! It's always great to see how different top-class makers vary in their processes of making knives. Interesting way to make the handle. How visible is the seam after you've put them together?

 

[Salem Straub]

Thanks, everybody!

s2f, yeah I hate drilling holes in that thin sheet, then filing square. Actually, it's not as bad with G10 as it is with fiber sheet, that stuff is where I started using a chisel.

quint, I'm sure a transition-front sanding bar works well for that. I built this bar for mostly sanding conventional flat blades. When I'm using the round stock on the bolster front, I'm really just roughing with it. When I need it pretty at the end, I can drag lines down the bolster face to the blade tip with the same flat bar; ultimately I use a flat leather-backed bar to drag my finish lines at 600. I may try making a sanding bar with a round front for integrals, though.

Don, Ken Onion showed me that trick with the old Blaze belt. It works better than anything else I've tried. I've not tried dressing a Blaze belt that way- something tells me that it works with Gators because blaze ceramic abrasive is harder than the al. ox. of the Gators, allowing the grit stripping to happen. I'll try it though, who knows?

Nathan, I'm flattered. I was never good with an etch-a-sketch, which I remember as I try to smoothly free-hand a curved mortise on the mill. This WIP doesn't cover how to make the scales fit the ricasso tight when there is no bolster or guard, I'll have to WIP one of those little utilities some time.

Kentucky, I actually made sure to get that swage block clear in the background on a few shots- I knew some smiths would notice it, and I'm proud to have it for sure. Much less common in a smithy than an anvil or post vise. It was part of the smith shop at an OLD sugar mill on Maui.

Thanks, Joe. This one is a little different, good to hear it may be better.

Brian, on this one the tang is the full length of the handle to aid in strength and balance- and also it's a three-pin handle design, so I want all of them to go through the tang. I didn't want to drill a blind hole that deep and narrow in G10 block, and have to rout/broach it- a MAJOR pain. So, I split it and went with a mortised-tang approach. It allows me to remove less material and fit the tang in tighter- it won't come out of the handle with the block halves held around it. This way is optional for this design, but for some utility knives it really makes sense; you can have the beauty of a hidden tang knife, with a very strong almost full-tang inside it, but much less exposed glue joint than a full-tang handle, and less opportunities for varying coefficients of thermal expansion to tear your handle apart.

I could make a shorter hidden tang, put only one or two pins actually through the tang, then put the second/third pins through just handle material, but I feel cheesy doing something like that.

Ted, "top class"? Thanks for the benefit of the doubt. The seam can be made very minimal- on darker synthetic materials one should have to look to see it. On lighter stuff like ivory micarta, it's harder to fully hide but still looks fine. I find it's almost totally invisible on green or brown canvas micarta.

Well, I'm off to harvest more pics for you fellas. Thanks for the interest!