Any General Tips for Starting to Make Knives?

The best advice I can give you that is generic is to make each knife to the absolute highest standard that you can. Will your first knife be perfect? Absolutely not, but you work at your highest skill level each time, and each knife will show significant improvement.

Bottom line, if you look at the knife and see a flaw or something you don't like or aren't pleased with, you're not done. Conduct this appraisal at each step of the process and don't move forward until it's right. Strive for the highest level of fit and finish possible each time.

--nathan
 
1-2mm is way too thick for the edge at HT. That is .04 to .08". If the steel is a stainless knife steel, and the HT provider is a professional. .01-.02" ( .3-.5mm) is plenty of edge. For a carbon steel, .02-.03" (.5-.8mm) is fine if the HT is done with proper equipment.

About chef's blades:
I have a good friend who makes a beautiful knife. He has made well over 100 knives, and every one was near flawless. He uses a Burr King, and a lot of hand sanding, often on a granite block. He primarily makes fillet blades and hunters in CPM-154. He recently wanted to make a big chef's knife for himself, and profiled it in some CPM-S35VN he picked up from Aldo at Ashokan. He did all the normal pre-shaping, and put it in my box going to Peter's HT. The edge was probably .04-.05" and there were a few big scratches and ripples showing. I asked if he didn't want to do some more work on it before HT, and he said, "Naw, I'll clean it up the rest of the way and get the bevels dead flat after HT ( which he regularly does on his fillet blades). I talked to him the other day, and he said he was amazed at two things - One was how dang hard CPM-S35VN is at Rc62...and, Two was how hard it was to get a 2" by 10" surface dead flat :D
 
silver_pilate said:
The best advice I can give you that is generic is to make each knife to the absolute highest standard that you can. Will your first knife be perfect? Absolutely not, but you work at your highest skill level each time, and each knife will show significant improvement.
--nathan
Click to expand...


Bottom line, if you look at the knife and see a flaw or something you don't like or aren't pleased with, you're not done. Conduct this appraisal at each step of the process and don't move forward until it's right. Strive for the highest level of fit and finish possible each time.

I can't live with myself if I don't fix something I wanted fixed. I've never really done any work on polishing things or using wood ever before. So the first time I mirror polished my first knife, it had a few deep scratches, though the rest like a mirror. After I did that, I bought some sandpaper and handrubbed the whole thing. Next, I ended up staining and polyurethaning the handles 3 times, 3rd times the charm I guess. Also, I tried hollow grinding the blade, but ended up flat grinding after I got terrible results.
 
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