Bowie Build-along

[Will Morrison]

At the suggestion of the good customer who commissioned my latest Bowie (http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1191607-Gidgee-Bowie-2), I decided to photograph the making-of said Bowie with the intention of putting together a build-along thread. Well the Bowie is done, photos taken, so here's the thread. Enjoy!


The process starts on paper. Here is the final design, a steel template, and the steel that will become the blade.

I welded a mild steel bar onto the blade steel for ease of handling.

Corners ground off. Forging the corners in is a hassle, much quicker for me to grind them off.

Into the forge.

Forming the tip.

Here you can see the clip starting to take shape.

Checking against the pattern to see where the edge begins.

I start forging the bevels at the heel.

 

[Will Morrison]

Bevels taken almost to the spine, and some taper forged in.

Heel defined using the edge of the anvil. I leave the ricasso significantly wider than its finished width.

Tang time.

I get it hot and hit it with my biggest hammer.

As-forged blade with the sketch and template.

Furnace for normalising and thermal cycling.

Getting up to temp.

Air cooling from normalising temperature.

After normalising and thermal cycling, I used the angle grinder to de-scale the blade, and take off some high spots.

 

 

[Will Morrison]

Ricasso ground with a new 50 grit ceramic belt.

Flattening on the disc.

At this point I scribed my profile. This photo shows why I left the ricasso wide.

Profile rough ground with a used 50 grit belt on the contact wheel.

Choil and heel profiled.

Ricasso ground with 180 grit on the disc. At this stage it is very nearly flat and parallel.

The pre-HT flatness and parallelism of the ricasso is finalised with 180 grit rhynowet glued to a flat plate.

 

 

[Will Morrison]

Lines scribed to help keep the edge centred.

Using a worn 50 grit belt on the contact wheel, I establish the pre-HT edge thickness, then grind a series of hollows up almost to the spine.

Flat ground with a new belt on the flat platen.

Using an 80 grit disc to check for flat and even grinds.

The facets on the spine are roughed in on the flat platen.

Getting the blade ready to be hardened. I radius and buff any sharp corners or edges.

Blade being heated to its austenitising temperature.

Here it is in the tempering oven after being hardened.

 

 

[Will Morrison]

Roughly tapering the tang with a slightly worn 50 grit belt. This gets rid of extra material that could otherwise interfere with the next steps.

With the tang relieved I start to re-flatten the ricasso with the disc, etching periodically to make sure there is no decarb remaining.

Fine tuning the ricasso with rhynowet glued to a flat plate.

Next I softened the tang to make it easier to drill and file. I clamp those pieces of brass flat against the bevels to act as a heat sink.

I heat the tang with a torch until it turns a grey colour; I do this at least two times.

Refining the finish on the choil and heel with a very used trizact belt.

Roughing in the choil facets with a used 100 grit Blaze belt.

 

 

[Will Morrison]

Choil facets roughed in.

Refining the spine facets a bit.

The belt tracks better on my contact wheel, so that's what I use to establish the plunge. I nibble away at it until there is enough of a step for the belt to ride against when I switch to the platen.

Edge thickness set for finish grinding.

Flat ground down to 100 grit.

Flattening with 80 grit on the disc grinder.

With a carbide guide clamped to the ricasso I used the abrasive paper overhanging the edge of the disc to cut the plunges.

 

[Will Morrison]

Cleaning up the plunge with abrasive paper glued to a micarta block.

More plunge work. If I were better at grinding all this tedious hand work wouldn't be necessary.

Sanding with 320 grit.

Ricasso cleaned up with 320 grit on the flat plate.

I like to get all the geometry pretty much finalised while I'm at 320 grit, so next up is the choil.

Diamond files are handy for this.

 

[Will Morrison]

Grinding in the clip. I used a slightly worn 100 grit blaze belt, followed by a trizact belt.

Sand to 320 grit.

Spine facets also at 320 grit or so. I didn't get any good photos of it, but I had to do a fair bit of hand work to get the spine looking right.

Cleaning up the choil with a very thin and flexible sanding stick.

While I had my back turned the blade sanded itself to a rough 600 grit. Cheeky bugger.

I used a post-it note to help me visualise the best angle for the guard.

Cutting in the shoulders with a pillar file.

Finishing the shoulders with sandpaper glued to a piece of steel (edge slightly radiused)

 

[Will Morrison]

416 stainless for the guard. This was my first time using 416 instead of 304, almost feels like cheating.

Checking for parallelism while flattening the stock.

Beginning the slot.

Connecting the holes with a chainsaw file.

Using a narrow mill file to open up the slot.

This is the set up I've been using to hammer on guards. Far from ideal, but it does the job for now.

This is after a lot of test fitting and careful filing.

Just a bit more to go.

That's all for now, I'll get the rest up soon.

 

[bbingenheimer]

Will, Thanks for showing your process. I really like the faceting on the spine and choil. Very clean work:thumbup:



Bing

 

[Travis Fry]

Thanks especially for the details of our work around the choil and ricasso. That area has been one of some trouble for me. And I'm more convinced than ever that i HAVE to get my disc up and running.

 

[Barry Clodfelter]

Great build along Will! It is always helpful to see the sequence of steps other makers have.

 

[scottishsmith24]

Will, Thank you so much for posting this. Your attention to detail is impressive and I know this will help a lot of folks on here especially me

 

[AVigil]

Thanks, nice work

 

[MRuthJr]

Thanks for the great ride-along Will! Some very clean work and I'm definitely looking forward to the next installments:thumbup:

 

[i4Marc]

Beautiful work Will. Can't wait for the next installment.

 

[mwschilling]

Nice work! Thanks for sharing your WIP.

 

[Will Morrison]

Thanks for the comments, guys. Here's the next instalment.

Removing the last little bit.

Pretty good fit.

Slotting some mild steel to be used as a sacrificial plate to protect the back face of the guard.

 

[Will Morrison]

Time to etch my name. I must have spent about 15 minutes trying to align the stencil just right.

BOTCHED IT. Got pathetic depth, and the parts of the 'N' barely etched at all. Serenity now!

After a few hours of research and testing I found a solution. Because my mark is so simple I was able to line the stencil up on top of the bad mark, and (with a modified technique) etch again.

Before cleaning up.

Cleaned up with some 1200 grit. You can see the depth in this photo.

 

[Will Morrison]

The alignment pin locations are punched in the sacrificial plate, and the plate is glued to the back of the guard.

Depth set.

Drilled.

Here are some plates from previous knives.

Guard template made from 2mm G10.

Roughing the profile. There's a lot of waste with this 1" wide stock.

This pic shows how the guard flares slightly on the handle side.

Finalising the profile with a trizact belt.