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The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is$300$250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Photos Beyond excited!!! Yozakura Forge
- Thread starter Dabling
- Start date
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2016
- Messages
- 306
This is Grant, I'm very excited to be working with Mr. Dabling on this set!! I think that this is the first time that I've done this large a matching set; the plan is to make a 300mm sujihiki, a gyuto, a paring knife, and a nakiri that really is big enough to pass as a Chinese cleaver, all with matching ironwood handles. Here's some WIP photos of what I've got so far:
The first few are the blueprints I sketched out of each knife. I started with 1/8" thick W2 stock for each knife and forged the suji, paring, and gyuto out. I didn't have anything even remotely big in enough to accommodate the dimensions of the nakiri so I had to go and order a larger piece of steel which has not yet arrived. After the blades were forged, I normalize them, cleaned up their profile, scraped a lot of the forge scale off the face of the blades, filed in clean shoulders on the tang, and applied clay for a differential heat treatment. You can see the clay patterns I used for the gyuto and paring in the image gallery. After the quench and temper, I cleaned off the clay remains and finish ground the paring and gyuto. You can see the hamon clearly in the right light without an etch. I've tried to capture the hamon as best I can on camera in the last couple videos in the image gallery. Both the gyuto and paring knives have rounded spines and I will round their choils off on a jflex belt before I start polishing. I'm planning on posting more pictures of these soon as I continue to work on them!
-Grant
The first few are the blueprints I sketched out of each knife. I started with 1/8" thick W2 stock for each knife and forged the suji, paring, and gyuto out. I didn't have anything even remotely big in enough to accommodate the dimensions of the nakiri so I had to go and order a larger piece of steel which has not yet arrived. After the blades were forged, I normalize them, cleaned up their profile, scraped a lot of the forge scale off the face of the blades, filed in clean shoulders on the tang, and applied clay for a differential heat treatment. You can see the clay patterns I used for the gyuto and paring in the image gallery. After the quench and temper, I cleaned off the clay remains and finish ground the paring and gyuto. You can see the hamon clearly in the right light without an etch. I've tried to capture the hamon as best I can on camera in the last couple videos in the image gallery. Both the gyuto and paring knives have rounded spines and I will round their choils off on a jflex belt before I start polishing. I'm planning on posting more pictures of these soon as I continue to work on them!
-Grant
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2016
- Messages
- 306
Really glad you are still enjoying yours!!
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2016
- Messages
- 306
Some more updates here! Unfortunately I've been super busy with work (and a couple steel projects I've been working on with another metallurgy buddy of mine), but I was able to put in a few hours here and there this week on the set. Here's some pictures:
My next step for the paring knife and gyuto were to round the choils off so they are nice and comfy to hold when everything gets put together. To do this, I take the platen off my grinder and run a slack 320 grit j-flex belt, and then just blend the harsh corners on the choil. Once this is done I can go ahead and polish each knife up. I started with 220 grit aluminum oxide paper lubricated with 3 in 1 oil and backed by a wooden sanding block. On this step I make sure to get all of the machine scratches off and work on keeping the profile of the bevel nice and flat. When I switch sides of the knife, I also polish the choil and spine with sandpaper backed by my fingers to make sure everything stays smooth and blended. I work my way up through grit levels, going 320, 400, 800, then 2000. At 400 I switch to silicon carbide paper which I feel cuts better, but it is more expensive. I normally don't see much of a difference going past 800 grit when I am planning on etching a blade (the etch often washes out fine grit scratches), but I like to be safe with hamon and so I try and go to 2000 always. Once all the polishing is done, I clean all dirt and oil off the blade using dish soap and water. I have to be careful from here on out because the blade can often be quite sharp from the sanding/polishing process and it's easy to cut yourself. I dip the blade into dilute room temperature ferric chloride for 45 seconds and then neutralize in baking soda and water before rinsing and drying the blade. I then take flitz metal polish and scrub the blade with it using bunched up paper towel. This helps get rid of all the dark crumbly oxides, and you can see the hamon very clearly! A quick wash with soap and water and a thin coat of mineral oil and the blades look like they do in the final 3 pictures. Next steps will be to give them makers marks and start work on the handles. The suji still needs to be finish ground and I just got the steel in for the cleaver so I can start forging that soon! More pics to come very soon, thanks to everyone who is following along with the process! Please let me know if there's anything about my process that anyone would like me to explain in more detail
-Grant
My next step for the paring knife and gyuto were to round the choils off so they are nice and comfy to hold when everything gets put together. To do this, I take the platen off my grinder and run a slack 320 grit j-flex belt, and then just blend the harsh corners on the choil. Once this is done I can go ahead and polish each knife up. I started with 220 grit aluminum oxide paper lubricated with 3 in 1 oil and backed by a wooden sanding block. On this step I make sure to get all of the machine scratches off and work on keeping the profile of the bevel nice and flat. When I switch sides of the knife, I also polish the choil and spine with sandpaper backed by my fingers to make sure everything stays smooth and blended. I work my way up through grit levels, going 320, 400, 800, then 2000. At 400 I switch to silicon carbide paper which I feel cuts better, but it is more expensive. I normally don't see much of a difference going past 800 grit when I am planning on etching a blade (the etch often washes out fine grit scratches), but I like to be safe with hamon and so I try and go to 2000 always. Once all the polishing is done, I clean all dirt and oil off the blade using dish soap and water. I have to be careful from here on out because the blade can often be quite sharp from the sanding/polishing process and it's easy to cut yourself. I dip the blade into dilute room temperature ferric chloride for 45 seconds and then neutralize in baking soda and water before rinsing and drying the blade. I then take flitz metal polish and scrub the blade with it using bunched up paper towel. This helps get rid of all the dark crumbly oxides, and you can see the hamon very clearly! A quick wash with soap and water and a thin coat of mineral oil and the blades look like they do in the final 3 pictures. Next steps will be to give them makers marks and start work on the handles. The suji still needs to be finish ground and I just got the steel in for the cleaver so I can start forging that soon! More pics to come very soon, thanks to everyone who is following along with the process! Please let me know if there's anything about my process that anyone would like me to explain in more detail
-Grant
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2016
- Messages
- 306
Small update today, got a bit distracted early this week welding up a cart for my new kiln, but managed to get some good progress in yesterday. I've gone and finish ground the sujihiki, it is now up to an even and smooth 220 grit belt finish with a nicely rounded spine. A delicate grind like this on such a long knife is no small task, it took me around 3x as long to put this grind in as on the gyuto, and it requires a lot more fresh belts and focus in general. I'm very happy with the results tho. You can see the hamon very clearly in the video prior to any etching amd it has some really nice activity. The profile is also right where I want it, tapering from 1/8" thick down to basically nothing, with a nice and flexible tip. This grind gives a long knife like this a lot of versatility in the kitchen with different areas of the blade better suited for different tasks, and also works wonders on reducing drag at the end of long cuts (especially important when cutting raw fish or other delicate grained meats). Here are some pictures and videos below, I've gone ahead and posted a picture at the end too of the handle and bolster material:
More updates to come very soon! I definitely think I've cleared the halfway point on this project, so probably just a couple short weeks before I am able to finish everything up!
More updates to come very soon! I definitely think I've cleared the halfway point on this project, so probably just a couple short weeks before I am able to finish everything up!
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2016
- Messages
- 306
Another update today! Managed to get both the suji and paring knife all finished up this week. The only thing left for them is to make the saya later on and then finally sharpen them both up. I don't like to sharpen them early because I always seem to manage to cut myself on accident while handling them before they are ready to ship out haha. The gyuto only needs about another day of work to get finished up, and then I will start work on the fourth blade and finally do all of the saya together! Anyway, here are some pictures:
I forgot to take pics of the handles before I started shaping them, but the first few pics are of the handle rough shaped on a 100 grit al oxide belt. I ground into a pretty big void in the suji handle but I filled it with CA glue without a problem and everything looks great. The next couple pictures are of the handle finish ground on a 320 grit al belt, and then finally a video of it after it is hand sanded and buffed to a high finish. I glued everything up and the blades were done! Let me know what you all think of them so far
I forgot to take pics of the handles before I started shaping them, but the first few pics are of the handle rough shaped on a 100 grit al oxide belt. I ground into a pretty big void in the suji handle but I filled it with CA glue without a problem and everything looks great. The next couple pictures are of the handle finish ground on a 320 grit al belt, and then finally a video of it after it is hand sanded and buffed to a high finish. I glued everything up and the blades were done! Let me know what you all think of them so far
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2016
- Messages
- 306
It's time for another update!! I made quite a hit of progress over the last week.
I finished up the gyuto so that makes 3 finished knives of the set (minus sharpening and saya). I started work on the cleaver as well. I've never made a knife quite like this before, so it has been a lot of fun working through the process. The biggest difference between this and my standard nakiri is the height, this guy is TALL! I started by forging down some 3/16" stock to 1/8" thick on my press, then forged and rough ground the profile. After, I scraped the scale off the flats with an angle grinder to help reduce wear on my belts later and ground and filed in 4 way shoulders on the tang. The tang shoulders were actually quite difficult here because my file guide is not large enough to accommodate a blade this tall, and I had to do the shoulders completely by eye. After this is done, I applied clay to the blade for the differential heat treat and did my first quench using the new kiln (it went really well too). I went with a 1475 degree F austenitize for a 10 minute soak period into a 375 F temper which has an expected HRC of 62.5-63.5 from the data I read. Next steps will be finish grinding the bevel and then polishing!
I finished up the gyuto so that makes 3 finished knives of the set (minus sharpening and saya). I started work on the cleaver as well. I've never made a knife quite like this before, so it has been a lot of fun working through the process. The biggest difference between this and my standard nakiri is the height, this guy is TALL! I started by forging down some 3/16" stock to 1/8" thick on my press, then forged and rough ground the profile. After, I scraped the scale off the flats with an angle grinder to help reduce wear on my belts later and ground and filed in 4 way shoulders on the tang. The tang shoulders were actually quite difficult here because my file guide is not large enough to accommodate a blade this tall, and I had to do the shoulders completely by eye. After this is done, I applied clay to the blade for the differential heat treat and did my first quench using the new kiln (it went really well too). I went with a 1475 degree F austenitize for a 10 minute soak period into a 375 F temper which has an expected HRC of 62.5-63.5 from the data I read. Next steps will be finish grinding the bevel and then polishing!
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2021
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- 12
What beautiful work, and thank you for sharing!! Can you go into more detail about shaping your handles and drilling out the hole for the tang?
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2016
- Messages
- 306
Thank you!! And definitely! I will try to take some step by step pictures for the last handle and offer some instructions alongside them as well
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2016
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- 306
Some pretty unfortunate news today, I ran into an issue late in the making of the cleaver and will have to start over sadly. Fortunately, I foresaw maybe having some issues on the first time making of this model and bought enough steel for two more tries before I'll have to order more. The problem I am having is actually super interesting too and like nothing I have ever seen or experienced before. Here's a video of what's going on:
As you can see, the blade is horribly warped. The strangest part is how the blade will click back and forth between two states. Keep in mind this blade came out dead true after the quench and was not overheated in the grind (the temper coloring is from me attempting to fix the warp after the fact with some selective tempering which did not work). It took some thinking, but I think I know what is going on, here's a quick summary of my theory:
The root cause of this failure is because of the differential heat treatment. When the blade is differentially quenched, the edge transforms from austenite to martensite and the spine transforms from austenite to pearlite. Martensite is slightly less dense than pearlite, which causes what's called "sori" or backwards curvature that is really commonly seen in many traditional Japanese blades. Most of the time my kitchen knives are too short to have any real noticeable amount of sori. The same goes for this cleaver, but because of it's height (~3.25"), a huge amount of internal stress is built up from this difference in density, more than what would normally appear in my other kitchen knives. Coming out of the quench, all of these internal stresses are in balance. The edge is in compression and the spine is in tension and both forces are equal and opposite and so the blade does not move. As I grind the bevel in, however, I am removing much more material from the edge than the spine. Despite the compressional force on the edge remaining roughly the same, the stress is increased as the area of the blade that is in compression is being reduced through grinding(stress = force/area). This stress eventually reaches a point to where it can elastically deform the edge to a large degree, and the edge buckles like in the video above. As I was grinding, the buckling got worse and worse the closer I got to a final grind, which supports this theory. My plan to make sure this doesn't happen again is to move the hamon up the blade and allow for more volume of martensite to transform, which will help stop the blade from ever reaching the point where it buckles, and to also grind closer to finish before quenching to help reduce the overall internal forces in the blade. Anyways, if you made it this far, thanks for listening to my ramblings, and wish me luck as I give this one another shot haha
I am pretty confident the next go will come out much better!
As you can see, the blade is horribly warped. The strangest part is how the blade will click back and forth between two states. Keep in mind this blade came out dead true after the quench and was not overheated in the grind (the temper coloring is from me attempting to fix the warp after the fact with some selective tempering which did not work). It took some thinking, but I think I know what is going on, here's a quick summary of my theory:
The root cause of this failure is because of the differential heat treatment. When the blade is differentially quenched, the edge transforms from austenite to martensite and the spine transforms from austenite to pearlite. Martensite is slightly less dense than pearlite, which causes what's called "sori" or backwards curvature that is really commonly seen in many traditional Japanese blades. Most of the time my kitchen knives are too short to have any real noticeable amount of sori. The same goes for this cleaver, but because of it's height (~3.25"), a huge amount of internal stress is built up from this difference in density, more than what would normally appear in my other kitchen knives. Coming out of the quench, all of these internal stresses are in balance. The edge is in compression and the spine is in tension and both forces are equal and opposite and so the blade does not move. As I grind the bevel in, however, I am removing much more material from the edge than the spine. Despite the compressional force on the edge remaining roughly the same, the stress is increased as the area of the blade that is in compression is being reduced through grinding(stress = force/area). This stress eventually reaches a point to where it can elastically deform the edge to a large degree, and the edge buckles like in the video above. As I was grinding, the buckling got worse and worse the closer I got to a final grind, which supports this theory. My plan to make sure this doesn't happen again is to move the hamon up the blade and allow for more volume of martensite to transform, which will help stop the blade from ever reaching the point where it buckles, and to also grind closer to finish before quenching to help reduce the overall internal forces in the blade. Anyways, if you made it this far, thanks for listening to my ramblings, and wish me luck as I give this one another shot haha
I am pretty confident the next go will come out much better!
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2016
- Messages
- 306
Oh and
Gootknives
I have not forgot about your request for a handle tutorial, I'll make sure to put one together when I get to the handle-making for this blade, probably now in another week or so
Gootknives
I have not forgot about your request for a handle tutorial, I'll make sure to put one together when I get to the handle-making for this blade, probably now in another week or so