15n20 steel Give-Away

JTknives

JTknives

Joined
Jun 11, 2006
Messages
8,651
In the spirit of the coming holidays I thought I would say how thankful I am for this forum and all you guys as well as for all the metal you bought from me. To say thinks I am giving away a package of 15n20. We are considering offering a smaller size option in the future. So that is what we are giving away, it's 5 sheets of .090 thick Uddeholm 15n20 that measure 8.5"X11" (cut oversize to account for HAZ and remaining tooth gullet) which happens to be the size of a sheet of copy paper. Makes it handy to plan out your cuts and knife designs on paper. It's 12lbs of steel in a flat rate bubble envelope.

Onto the way to enter.
Because we are in the session of giving I thought what better way to enter then by giving tips or advice. If you discovered something that helped you out then share it. If you learned something new that will help in the future then share it. If you built a little doohickey that makes your life easier then share it. We all love pictures so if you have a picture to help with your tips please share.

For a post to count as an entry it needs to contain something useful to other knife makers. If your a new knife maker then share what you have learned so far. You can enter more then once by sharing more then once. But make sure it's good stuff, put some effort into what your sharing.

We will cover shipping to where ever the flat rate will take it. If you are in Canada then you would need to cover the shipping cost.

I think that's about it so go and post. I'm thinking we will run this for a week but don't have a set date in stone yet so make sure to get in while you can. Oh one last thing your user name will be entered into a hat and for each good post you will get another slip of paper in the hat. My wife will do the drawing and I will record it to prevent any shenanigans.
Here is a few pictures of the steel being given away.

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Right on, JT! That's great of you to do. Nothing to add, other than give you kudos for doing this, so I don't expect to be entered (and I have my own mill contact where I have an unlimited supply myself...)
Have a safe and happy holiday season!
~billyO
 
Well one thing I've done which seems easier is to set the angle I want on my platen and then clamp the knife to a 1-2-3 block and run it down the tool rest to grind in bevels. Seems most are trying some type of sliding jig to give the angle but it just seems so easy to angle the platen. Also, really focus hard on finishing the front of the scales before attaching them because it's very hard to shape the front or even close to the front. Also, if trying to heat treat outside in the sun I found I cannot see a a color change from black when the steel reaches no mag so test frequently with the magnet.


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Awesome giveaway.

A few things that have helped me tremendously.

1. Use a "sharpened" brass rod to clean the epoxy off the blade after it has hardened. The soft metal won't mark hardened steel.

2. Using a Kant-twist hold down clamp on a drill press is 100 times safer and gives much cleaner holes in steel with zero chatter.

3. A step bit offered by tru-grit along with a preset over travel on a drill press makes corby installs easy and perfect every time

Happy Thanksgiving!!!


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Thanks for the great chance to work with this steel and Happy Thanksgiving! (I've been following your sand pot thread religiously. Fantastic information even if my little shed shop doesn't need one)

I don't come from a shop background so many of the tools used in this hobby I've never touched before. Can be a hard learning curve as a noob.

3 days or so after picking up and repairing (replaced the chuck and arbor. Oh man that was tough to figure out what I needed. Manual? LOL Nope) an old 100+lb drill press from the 1970's... a helicoptering knife blank. I escaped a painful part but learned the lesson.
A simple fix is a bolt, washers and a nut in the table slot to prevent the work piece from spinning on ya. (local stores had no clamp that fit my press)

Trying to grind a small & stubby hollow ground utility knife to conserve your steel is not good practice. It's far trickier to get that grind right than it is to just start off with a 4-5' outdoors knife with a flat bevel.
Mild steel is cheap and easy to get to practice on. Or paint sticks.

Always use a backer under your handle material when drilling your pin holes. Big chunks blowing out the backside suck. (Ya Ya I know)

Yes that small wheel tool arm with a 1/2" or so durometer wheel truly is indispensable. Get one early on.

Tessa double sided tape. It's only 0.008 thick and you will find a 1000 uses for it. One of my favorites is dirtying it up a bit after applying it to a 1/2" thick piece of mild steel about 3' wide and 8-10' long. Perfect sanding block for flattening your knife blanks/handle scales on a granite surface stone or thick piece of glass plate. Credit for this goes to Glenn Hovin from his IG feed.
*Tesa 51970 Tackified Acrylic Double Sided Filmic Tape, 55 yard Length, 1-1/2" Width, 8 mil Thick

Water will hold your sheet of sandpaper to your granite surface stone. Yup. Just a little water between them. Water is sticky you ask? Nope. Physics is wonderful.

I've learned so much more than this from the knifemaking community here and on IG than I can possibly list. I am forever grateful and always thankful for the knowledge and wisdom that is shared here. Hopefully I can give back some in the future.

Thank you,
Anthony
 
It's awesome of you to have such a great giveaway. With it being thanksgiving here in th USA I'd also like to thank all the members of this forum for their infinite knowledge and willingness to help people just starting out as myself. Something that I've learned, of course because of a mistake, which are the best learning experiences, is that when you get scratches on your blade after you have already sharpened the edge to a razor like status, is to run a bead of hot glue from a glue gun along the sharpened edge. When you sand and just the tiniest bit of the sandpaper hits that edge it seems like it instantly dulls your edge. That bead of glue makes a nice guide for the paper and also keeps you from knocking the edge off. Once you are done it peels right off and you can clean it right up.

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Great giveaway JT.

Tip for those using hand tools. A file with broken teeth will make scores in the steel you are filing that will take forever to hand sand out!

Thanks!
 
Awesome giveaway for the holiday's.

My best tip i could give goes to stopping getting cuts from hand sanding. I always see guys using sanding blocks that are nothing more than a piece of flat wood, steel, micarta etc. Tip of the day, make one where one side has a ledge facing down on it about 70% to one side. Much like a side handle police baton. Only needs a lip about 1 inch tall and at most a 1/4 wide and it will act as a stopper to keep ya from getting cut if you do slip up. I doubt im first to think of this, but have yet to see anyone doing so. It does make hand sanding a slight bit more clumsy, but if you leave a good half to 1 inch dead space between where abrasive is and the stopper on your sanding block, it really is pretty much not noticable in most instances. I do stop using this once im on to final finishes though. If I get time ill take a pic and add it of mine
 
Awesome! Thanks for the chance! I agree with BartlettBlades that this forum is super helpful for beginners.

When hand sanding, use a hard backer for the paper, and use good lights before moving to the next grit. Even if you have to go into a different room or whatever, make sure you got the the marks from the previous grit out, so you don't have a 120 grit line on a 800 grit hand rubbed finish.
 
When forging sanmai, if you forge evenly and count your hammer blows on each side of the bullet you should have no problem keeping your core centered. I also find sanmai easier to straighten when it's cold so I usually anneal the blades after forging and then cold forge them to straighten. You can get away with this because the outer layers don't harden. Awesome giveaway man!

Happy thanksgiving!


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Here are some things I have learned for handles, these aren't all that special but here they are:

1. Use a bit of double stick tape to hold scales together to do rough profiling on a sander. Don't forget to clean the adhesive off before you glue. You can shape a paint stirring stick with your handle profile and tape your scales to this. Be sure to leave enough excess handle material for final fitting and fine sanding. The paint stir stick gives you a nice gripping platform since it will extend beyond the scales.

2. Always final finish the front of your handle before installing it. This will ensure you don't scratch your blade trying to finish sanding the front of the handle. This assumes a non-bolster installation.

3. Unsure about drilling pin holes to get them to line up with the holes in your steel? Just glue and clamp one scale, then drill through the holes in the handle. Then glue the remaining scale and drill through the holes in the first scale installed. Then install and glue the pins.
 
Count me in!

I'm a noob, but here's a few noobish things I learned the hard way:

1) Your HF 1x30 NEEDS that little dust shield above the platen. Otherwise, it throws crap straight into your face. I lost mine, ran without for a little while, then had to make another one because the little pieces were bouncing up underneath my glasses.

2) Be very careful about sanding things too thin. I was working on a traditional folder a while back and noticed a nick right at the blade end of the liner. I tried to sand it out, and ended up sanding that very front bit of the liner paper thin in the process, which looks way worse than the little nick that was there. Pick your battles.

3) When drilling bone/stag, use a backing of course and always go SLOW, and if you think you're going slow enough, then take it down one more notch just to be sure. Use soft pressure, let the drill do the work and cut how it wants. Do NOT try and push it through. Bone blows out easier than just about anything else I've drilled, and sticks out like a sore thumb on a single colored, non-jigged smooth piece.
 
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bnewberry said:
3. Unsure about drilling pin holes to get them to line up with the holes in your steel? Just glue and clamp one scale, then drill through the holes in the handle. Then glue the remaining scale and drill through the holes in the first scale installed. Then install and glue the pins.
Click to expand...

What I do for making sure the holes line up, is just tape the 2 scales together, then tape the blade on top and drill through the tang. Then everything is lined up. To tape, I just use electrical tape and tape in 2 different locations, that way the blade will set square on it, instead of just in one spot so it leans slightly at an angle.
 
Great idea and very cool of you bud! I see a lot of folks asking about sharpening knives so I will tell you how I do it on a grinder. I take all my knives to .010" or less prior to sharpening. I then use an angle finder to set my flat platen at 18 degrees. Run the grinder as slow as possible and use a light touch. Next I use a a new 220 ao belt and hold the knife edge down and at a 90 degree to the floor. Make full passes from heel to tip on both sides until you have raised a burr. If you can't see a burr along the entire edge then those spots with no burr are still to thick so keep going. Next I use a worn 400 grit belt and do the same. Then go to a worn 600. Next I go to an India stone and then strop on leather loaded with green compound. I use thin plastic or phone book paper and make sure the entire edge cuts without snagging or tearing. I saw where Nathan The Machinist made a hanging pendulum to keep the blade at 90 from the floor. Hope this helps.
 
JT, great idea and a very generous give a way on your part. Since I was shaping a WA handle this morning, I thought I'd take a few photos and show how I shape these type handles incorporating a bit of taper.

WAshape.png
 
Happy Thanksgiving! This thread is a free gift for me either way because I'm still very new, so I'm learning just reading through it. I haven't learned much yet that's probably worth passing on. There is one thing I picked up from seeing someone on YouTube do it. When forging and you get a good hammer dent in the steel grinding it out may be more steel than you have to grind (learned the hard way). If you use a ball peen hammer and work gently around the hammer dent you can "push" steel back into the dent and get to a point where grinding is possible. After you work around your dent you'll have more little dents, then back to the main hammer and you can get to pretty flat.

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Happy thanksgiving! This is an excellent giveaway, and great idea to bring in a variety of tips and work methods. I haven't gotten very far into knife making but here goes - be patient. Whether your hand sanding, filing, cutting a profile - be patient. Take the time to complete the task properly, finish every step to where you are satisfied and proud. It is better to go slow and steadily progress than it is to rush it and have to try and fix something later. Or worse, make an error that ruins all the work you have already done.
A good jigsaw with new metal cutting blades can be used to cut out a profile.

Dan T.
 
Thanks JT! As for tips and advice, I'm far from being 'good' at knifemaking, so take anything you hear from me with at least two grains of salt!

1. Post HT, wet grinding is king! If your trying to use plain water instead of an actual cutting fluid, add a bit of dish detergent. It keeps more on the belt, and less of a racing stripe on you and the shop wall!

2. When slotting a guard, cut your slot with a slight taper. If the back of your guard slot is slightly larger, its easier to file the front to an exact fit.
 
This is a nice giveaway, thanks!

A welding magnet makes a nice handle for sanding flats on the grinder and it's also good for rough squaring your platen to your rest.

For epoxy squeeze out at the front of scales I like to cut one end off of a q-tip at an angle to make a small scraper and use that to get a large portion of the wet epoxy off before wiping. It's much cleaner.

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Thanks for the chance. for newbies, don't let your blades get too hot when grinding after you have hardened them.
 
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