Adventure Continues...

[galadduin]

The finished image: (named "Republic Knife")

.

Hi, this thread is continuation of http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=591459
I had 2 days off, yesterday and today I worked on this knife.

I annealed the blade in my prototype container it took about 12 hours, sadly the foil I used to close the container was too thin for the job. I have a thicker foil used to wrap the blades but it is impossible to use it like that.

But the foil of blade was somewhat survived...

But foil leaked some air as you see..

Decarb was not so much, ground off easily..

Drilling, It is strangely much softer than the annealed condition of the steel company sent to me....

Chamfering the drill holes to reduce the HT stress there:

Cleaning the scratches of 80 grit belt with an arkansas stone, soft steel is too easy to work with...

Sweet

 

[galadduin]

Now I wrapped the blade and soaked at 1030 C for 1 hour. After hardening:
I guess a tiny hole on the foil caused this color on the blade.

After a snap temper at 180 C for 30 mins, Going to deepfreeze (-24 C)

Tempered 250 C (for 57-59 RC) 3 times.. Here it is now a usable knife...

I forgot to take pictures of putting bolster on. The distal taper was wrong I guess, there is a gap at the bottom of the bolster and knife. But nothing to do now.. I've put this problem in the experience vault...

Here is the handle material, ebony and American black walnut (thanks to Mitch Wilkins, he sent it to me about 3 years ago, there was writing on the wood saying "Emre, this is presentation grade black walnut"....

testing the handle with pins in place..

 

[galadduin]

Now I have to work on lanyard hole

Before gluing everything I put some angled holes beneath of the scales to better epoxy hold...

Also I'm making some grooves on the pins with a file on the drill press...

Grabbing the glue setup. I'll work somewhere else, dust free zone,

Prepared some ebony and walnut dust to mix with epoxy,,,

I fill the scale holes at the bottom with JB weld.

Mixing the ebony dust and epoxy,

 

[galadduin]

Glued ebony parts

After gluing handle, rough shaping (unfortunately I made a bad decision, tried to peen some but normally there is a crack at the left scale )

The crack can be seen near the back pin...

My neighbor (this knife's future owner) wanted to make his own handle shape: He is a carpenter with 25 years of experience. Handle is in safe hand I guess

As this is his dream knife he has an good idea of how the handle should be :

He uses dremel like a magic wand, I wish I could use that tool with that control:

Sanding the handle:

He uses also files to shape the wood:

 

[galadduin]

Here is the finished handle:

The ergonomics is perfect and wood is too handsome. The handle work shows this knife. I guess I'll outsource handle works to my neighbor

Adventure is finished finally
Tomorrow I'll clean the blade, remove scratches on the handle and buff. The pics will be on the gallery. This project turned out to be most fun work I made. I hope you enjoyed this adventure as well..

Thanks for looking

Emre Kipmen

 

[howiesatwork]

Nice pictoral! Did you get the crack fixed so it doesn't show?
Looking forward to seeing the finished knife.

 

[galadduin]

Nice pictoral! Did you get the crack fixed so it doesn't show?
Looking forward to seeing the finished knife.

Unfortunately I'm afraid after buffing the crack will be visible, the lighting was not enough to show it. I filled the crack with the walnut dust + epoxy. The break of the wood pattern is visible after a high finish... At least the owner is too pleased with the overall product, he doesn't mind the crack. If it wasn't for him I would replace this scale, but he stopped me saying "I dont care it is a super knife"

I'll post the finished knife pictures tomorrow on the gallery...
Emre

 

[galadduin]

Finished knife pictures are in gallery now as promised : Republic Knife - Gallery Thread...

 

[howiesatwork]

Having the owner say he likes it as-is is great. Nice work. Thanks for the pics.

 

[panch0]

Thanks for the pics you don't know how helpful it is for us thats are barely learning to crawl. :thumbup:
-frank

edit: Great looking knife by the way!

 

[Allen Newberry]

Nice looking knife. I was in Istanbul not too long ago and did my own search for cool Turkish knives. You are ahead of most of the other makers from what I saw.

Allen

 

[anvilring]

Emre! great work! You have made a lot of progress in these past few years especially considering the limited tools you have. We forget here in the USA, how fortunate we are to have lots of good equiptment to use for cheap! Congradulations on a great finished piece and keep more of them coming!

regards, mitch