Batch of three pukko's WIP

Adam Reese · Oct 4, 2011

Hello,

I just want to start this out by introducing myself. I have posted before, but never really introduced myself. Well, my name is Adam and I have been interested in knife making for about a year and a half and have been slowly making them since. I have made 13 knives to date, and this past August I joined the Georgia Custom Knifemakers Guild. There are a lot of great guys in the guild, most of whom frequent this website. Well, after Track rock last month, Andy from Fiddleback forge and I were chatting back and forth and he offered to give me "homework assignments" to help me advance in knife making. Well, this is the first homework and I want it to be a WIP so everyone can see how I do things and offer advice as they see fit. So here goes...

Andy said to make some pukkos, and since I am familiar with them and like them, I thought this would be fun. I basically started out with three similar but different designs. The first one will be a stock removal knife. The second one will be forged and the third one will be forged san mai.

Here are my designs so far. I am not decided on the handle of the san mai one yet, but it will come to me.

So, after completing my honey do list today, I was able to get started on the knives.

Here is the material. The top piece is 1/8" O-1 that I had left over from some other knives. The middle piece of steel is some 1/8 mild steel that I will be using for the san mai, in conjunction with a piece from the lawnmower blade below it. I will also use a piece of the lawn mower blade for the forged one.

This is the mild steel. I am cleaning it up and preparing to stack and weld it with the LMB (lawn mower blade) steel

here is the O-1 roughed out, a piece for the forged one cut out and cleaned up from the LMB, and cut and cleaned up mild steel and a piece of LMB to make up the san mai.

This is a shot of the san mai stack that I am preparing for forging.

This is just a picture of how dark I like it to be when I forge. That way I can tell approx. what temp the steel is at for forge welding, etc.

So up until this point everything was going good. I had my san mai billet stacked and was starting to slowly bring it up to temp when Mr. Murphy's law had to rear his ugly head...

That is a picture of my forge running out of propane before I could even get started... Oh well. I will go get the tank filled in the morning and then I can really get to work.

-Adam

Tostig · Oct 4, 2011

Interesting !! Please post more when you get all set up.

Thanks for taking the time to share.

Tostig

crunky · Oct 5, 2011

Awesome, I can't wait to see how these turn out.
How long have you been smithing for?

Fiddleback · Oct 5, 2011

Neato! I like the forging aspect. Especially san mai. I need to play with that stuff. It sounds fun.

Adam Reese · Oct 5, 2011

It is when it goes right...

. I'm sitting in the Dr.'s office right now. my throat feels like I gargled with acid last night. I just want to make sure it's not strep, then it's time to get to get back to work. Those blades aren't gonna make themselves!

-Adam

Adam Reese · Oct 5, 2011

Now for an update. I had some errands to run after the doctors office (sinus infection, not strep!!) and didn't get to go out to work until about 3. Here is the progress so far..

This is just me in my forging uniform

Shorts, apron, socks and crocs... hey, you have to be comfortable. (And yes I have had to kick my shoe across the shop because of some hot slag falling in it, but crocs are darned comfortable)

Next up is the san mai stack heating up getting ready for the initial weld.

Sorry, didn't get any pictures of the welding process, but here is the welded billet.

This is the high carbon forged one, I forged the blade shape and am working out the tang.

This is the san mai one as I am shaping it.

still working out the tang on the plain forged one

I thought I took some pictures when I was working the tang on the san mai one, but I guess I didn't. Any way, here are both knives pretty much done with the forging. The san mai one is on top. I decided to do a full flat grind on that one, so it will see some action on the grinder. As for the other one, I forged it pretty thin and pretty close to shape so I think I will probably just file and edge on it and leave the forge finish on it, after a vinegar soak of course. Who knows.

the tangs are a little shorter than I'd like, I wanted these to be full tanged and peened on the ends, but I didn't give myself enough material. I could always weld something on the ends if I feel like it. They are going to be pinned and epoxied with G/flex, so I'm pretty sure they are going to be alright.

This last pic is both blades put back into the forge to get them back up to temp. I will then shut the forge off and put a piece of kaowool in the opening and in the end of the burner so they can anneal tonight.

Thats all for now. I am working OT tomorrow and then my regular shift for Fri, Sat, Sun days, so I may not get back to these until Monday.

-Adam

Tostig · Oct 5, 2011

Outstanding ! Such a fascinating process , I really appreciate you taking the time to post these pics and explain it.

I look forward to seeing the finished product.

Tostig

Adam Reese · Oct 10, 2011

Alright, time for an update. I got a little bit of stuff done to today, but had to break for supper..

Here is the forged knife, getting ready to draw file.

After some filing...Man that scale is tough stuff...

some more draw filing done...I need to cut this scale, it's pretty hard to sand...

It's time for a soak in my scary, super concentrated, year old open jar of vinegar...

Yep, it's gross. I put the san mai one in there too, but didn't get a picture of it.

Now it's time to work on the stock removal knife. Here it is set up in my sanding jig

After a couple of passes...

Almost done...

Due to the boot-leggedness of my sanding set-up, I like to go back over the bevels draw filing to make sure they are symmetrical.

That's all for now, I will put up another update later tonight. Now it's time to eat and get the kids in bed.

-Adam

Oh, Crunky, I have been smithing for about a year or so now. Sorry I didn't reply earlier, I must have looked over the question.

Cold Kill · Oct 10, 2011

I love that the blade was glowing purple (or at least the pictures made it look so).

Adam Reese · Oct 11, 2011

Alright, another update.

This is what I did last night, and yes, I am still up but I go to work tonight, so it's all good.

This is the blades after soaking in vinegar. The stock removal one didn't go in the vinegar, it's just there for the picture. I know you may be thinking the tang on the stock removal blade looks short. That is for a purpose, which you will see when I do the handles...

Now it's time for some draw filing...

And sanding. I start with 120 grit then go 220, 320, 400 then finally 500 with wd-40

This forged blade is done and ready for heat treating.

I did the san mai one the same way and this was the result, the only difference is I just went to 400 grit because I ran out of 500

Now it's time for the set-back.... I decided to do a quick etch of the san mai to see how it looked and if I sanded it thin enough to reveal the LMB core. Well...I didn't

So...back to the long boring process of draw filing and sanding. That was a nice little three hour set-back. I should have paid attention to it the first time but my ADD got the best of me.

Here she is after re-draw filing and sanding.

And after a quick dunk to see what she's gonna look like.

Of course there will be a lot more variation after a longer etch, but that comes later.
Next up heat treat then handles, that is when I get a chance...

-Adam

Adam Reese · Oct 16, 2011

just a quick update... I am planning on heat treating these knives on Friday. I was out of town backpacking all weekend this week so I didn't get to work on them. On the other hand, I abused the heck out of a hunter style knife that I made for myself and also a rasp hawk I made and they exceeded my expectations!! I am going to be getting handle material together this week, so I will probably post them as I decide what to use.

-Adam

puukkoman · Oct 17, 2011

Nice work! I'm really excited to see how these turn out. I've been ramping up to a little entry-level knife-making myself, so I really can't get enough of all these WIP threads.

...and, you know, I'm a sucker for puukkos.

cziv · Oct 17, 2011

Very cool. I have a couple of questions.

Why does this picture make the blades look like curled potato chips and the next pics they look nice and flat?

Next, what is this rash of crud all over the blade?

And, how does it get better like this?

Sorry for sounding like Captain Obvious asked these question. I but my knives new and shiny and don't think about how they get that way.

Adam Reese · Oct 17, 2011

cziv,

In the first picture the blades were just forged. That is how they look right after hammering them out. They do have a lot of scale on them and that is why they look weird. I was running a little oxygen rich in the forge so the scale was building up pretty good, but as far as the knives go, they are relatively flat. The reason they look flat in the next pictures is because they ARE flat. I don't have a nice belt grinder so I draw file my knives. This lets me get both sides of the blade pretty much perfectly flat.

The second picture is the san mai knife after soaking in ferric chloride for a few minutes. The black part that you can see right at the curved edge of the blade is the high carbon center. The rest of the "crud" on the blade is where it is starting to flash rust from the acid not being neutralized.

The third picture is the reason I did what I did in the second picture. Once I etched the blade I discovered that I had not filed enough of the mild steel outer layers down to expose the high carbon center like I wanted it so re-draw filed and re sanded the knife and did a really quick etch to get what you see in the third picture.

Thank you for your interest in the knives. I hope I answered your questions without being too confusing. If you have any other questions ask away!! I'll try and answer all I can and if I can't, I'm sure there is someone here who can.

-Adam

crimsonfalcon07 · Oct 17, 2011

Great project, thanks for the thread. Looking forward to more updates.

Cold Kill · Oct 17, 2011

What kind of edge grind are you going to make? I know it sounds dumb to ask, but I didn't see him say it (I likely missed it), and there are a million different grinds that can be used.

Adam Reese · Oct 17, 2011

Cold,

The stock removal blade will be a scandi grind. The other two will be full flat/convex grinds.

-Adam

Adam Reese · Oct 24, 2011

Alright guys, time for a much needed update...

I haven't got to work on the pukkos much, mainly because I been working, but there are other reasons...

This is one reason...I got him Saturday morning

But on a more serious note, this is the real reason I put the pukkos on the back burner. There is a man named John Olejniczak at my church who is undergoing a liver transplant. His medical bills are to much for them to handle so my church is putting on a benefit concert to raise money for him.

I was asked to make a knife that will be silent auctioned. I felt very privileged to be asked to do this so I placed this thing as priority one. Here are the pictures so far.

It is at a 400 grit hand rubbed finish so far. I still have to heat treat it, which I will do later today.

I did heat treat the pukkos yesterday, but didn't get any pictures. The stock removal knife turned out perfect, the others, being thinner warped slightly and in my haste I didn't notice them so I will be re-heat treating them with the big knife today. I should get the stock removal knife handled today also. I am going to finish all four of these knives this week, so there will be plenty of updates.

-Adam

P.S please keep John in your prayers.

Adam Reese · Oct 25, 2011

Ok here we go. This is gonna be a pretty good one.

I re-heat treated the blades. Then I started on the handles.

Lets start with the plain forged one. For this one I decide to go with a deer antler handle with a poured solder bolster.

Here it is after I marked about where I want the hole with a sharpie.

For the hole, I start by drilling it out close to my markings, then I use a piece of band saw blade like a broach to scrape out material

Then I heat the tang and press it in for the final fit.

And here it is with the antler fitted on the blade. It is just dry fit in the picture. I will epoxy it in and then pin it, then I will pour the bolster.

To aid in the bolster adhesion to the antler, I drilled some small holes in the antler so the solder would grab it.

For the san mai blade I wanted to keep the theme of the two different metals all throughout the knife, so for the handle I decided to go with spalted oak and blood wood in layers.

With the help of my "surface grinder" (a piece of marble tile with sand paper spray adhesived to it) I make sure everything was flat.

Then I drilled holes in both sides of each piece of wood for better adhesion.

Now to mix the epoxy. This is the first time I have ever used Gflex, so I guess we will see how it works...

Everything all glued up.

This was a test run to see how tight I could fit the "guard".

I was basically messing around with different techniques so that I could get it right the first time when I do the actual "guard"

This is what I am using for the guard. It is a copper/nickle mokume pendant that I made a while back. I will drill it out to fit and then trim it down to size.

(notice the "A" in the pendant)

This is the final shot for tonight. On the left is what is going to be the handle for the plain forged blade, in the middle is the handle and guard material for the benefit knife, which is aluminum I poured and black walnut, and on the right is the wood and mokume for the san mai blade.

I know, I know, what about the stock removal blade? Well, I didn't get it handled today like I wanted, and actually didn't even work on it at all, but that was because I wasn't totally decided on how I was going to do the handle. I think I have figured it out now so I should be getting to it shortly.

-Adam

Adam Reese · Oct 26, 2011

Ok, here is what I did last night, I was too tired to post then.

Since all of the knives are near completion, I am going to start finishing them one at a time, so I can put all of my attention directly on an individual knife, instead of spreading it over all of them.
I am going to start with the plain forged one.

It is going to have a poured solder bolster, so I begin by wrapping the bolstered area with masking tape. SInce the solder melts below the masking tapes ignition temp, it will not burn through it.

I have a ladle for pouring lead bullets that I use to melt the solder in. I didn't get any pictures of the process because I was a little preoccupied with molten metal, but here is what it looks like after pouring, with the tape removed.

Not to pretty, I know, but we can fix this. Any holes or voids in the bolster can be fixed with a soldering iron and more solder.

Then I use a piece of sharpened brass to scrape away the solder from right up against the blade.

And after some polishing and sharpening, here she is. Note: I intentionally left some voids in the bolster so that it would match the forged look of the blade. I think it would look weird with a rustic antler handle, a blade with the forge finish on it and then a perfectly polished bolster.

I'll clean it up later and take it outside for some better pictures today.

By the way, is anyone still following this? I seem to be the only one posting...

-Adam