A few finished knives form a newbee

[JustinJ]

Been a life long welder, mainly building custom aluminum boats in my small shop. I've been a life long hunter. My father had always had nice custom skinning knives from a few local makers from southern Louisiana where we are from. I couple of years ago, I tracked down one of the makers my father would always brag on to see if he was still around and making knives to see about getting a knife made to give my father.
He was still in fact making knives, so I went to his shop to commission the build. He was/is a retired machinist, and we just sort of hit it off. He has been kind enough to mentor me, and I have been trying to take full advantage of his 45 years of knife making.

Took me a while to slowly piece together some of the things I was lacking in my shop, but finally got it all set up, and have been grinding for about 6 months now. I'm now hooked!!

Anyway, here are some of my first few. So far I have been strictly working with O1, since the small second hand electric kiln I have is plenty adequate for the soak it needs. I've still got plenty to learn, and after a shop meeting with my mentor and inspection of some of my knives, he was able to point me in the right direction and answer my questions as to some of the issues I was having.

The antler handle skinners are from whitetail sheds I had found over the years. I have a pretty good pile of sheds laying around, and plan to do several more along those lines.

I know I was having a little issue with my plunge being a little too sharp, or hard. I think I understand why that is, and am working on correcting that. Any other critiques are more than welcome.

 

[Cushing H.]

Ummm. WOW? Beautiful work. The only thing that i see is some lack of flushness of the pins on the antler handle (but could be an illusion)

did you consider including a sharpening choil for the blades?

 

[JustinJ]

No, your spot on about the pins not being perfectly flush. I was scared about digging into the bark of the antlers too much. The gentleman who's showing me the ropes was dealing with some family emergencies when I was finishing those out, so I just did my best at he time. I intend o try and go back and clean them up some now that I've got a little better grasp on he whole handle process.

No, had not thought about including the sharpener but I like hat idea. What is needed to do that? Are people just buying a steel, cutting it down and applying their own matching handle material?

 

[Cushing H.]

Not sure what you are asking? If you are talking about your plunges, i assume you bought flat stock and profiled and ground to shape (the stock removal method)? If so, the sharpening choil is typically ground in during the profiling stage...

 

[Drew Riley]

Looks like you've made a pretty dang good start. The first thing I see is just your pin placement and finishing could be improved a bit. As you already know, the plunges are a bit sharp too, but that really comes with practice. Keep up the good work!

 

[JustinJ]

Yes, they are stock removal knives. In starting with precision ground .125 × 1 1/2" flat bar.
Sorry about the confusion on the sharpening choil, my fault as a result of my still learning all the knifemaking terminology. Yes, I have thought about adding them. The gentleman I'm learning from generally does not add them, so ivr been sort of following his overall technique for the time being.

The plunges were all rather sharp and abrupt. I was not leading me belt any off the edge of my contact wheel, and I think that is a huge part of my problem. I've been working on correcting it, and making great progress.

 

[Cushing H.]

there was a recent thread on plunges, including reference to a video put out there by Nick Wheeler on how to round out the plunges using a hand method (for some reason he claimed some would call this "cheating" .... I dont see why it would be. The thread is:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/plunge-cuts.1710263/
the video from Wheeler is:

I dont think that is "too late" to touch up the plunges on these knives using Wheeler's approach. I am NOT practiced at knives with plunges (only done one) - but there is periodically quite a bit of discussion on how to clean those up and round them. Try a search - check out that thread (kind of short at this time) .... if that does not give you what you need - I have no doubt the fine people on this forum will quickly chime in if you create a dedicated thread to that question....

Again, great work. Those shinogi's are nice and clean. How to get that is still a mystery to me (though I typically make cooking knives with wider blades, and things fall apart when the grind line gets far down the blade and the angle relative to the flat just becomes really, really, shallow.... )

 

[DWidling]

Also a newbie, also finishing up a few of my first knives. I thought I was doing pretty well, up until right now . Good work, these are beautiful. The fact that I couldn't find anything wrong with them is either an indication of how well made they are or how much I still have to learn. Or both....

Keep us posted, eager to see more of your work!

 

[JustinJ]

Thanks for all the kind words guys.
I can certainly pick them apart myself with all sorts of little issues, but for my first bunch of finished knives, I am very pleased overall.
I had actually came across that thread/video about rounding out the plunge line. Funny you talked about cheating, I dont know why but I felt like I would sort of be cheating too using that approach. I guess it's just because the guy teaching me does everything free hand and does not use any jigs when grinding. Right or wrong I don't know. Just the way I'm being taught.

I feel after meeting with my mentor last go round, and really looking at my plunge line issue and watching him grind a few focusing on just that part alone, I've got a much better grasp on what I was doing wrong.

I thought about trying to correct these some, but on second though I decided to leave then alone. They were my first attempts, and they are what they are. I like the idea of being able to look back on them years from now and seeing how I've progressed.

 

[3fifty7]

Damn fine first batch of knives. As you are realizing time spent working and learning from an experienced maker is extremely valuable. Appreciate the time you have with him.