Call me stupid!

G

Guy Thomas

Joined
Feb 1, 2000
Messages
1,370
I can't believe it, someone remind me the next time I hand rub a blade to perfection to tape it, tape it some more, wrap it in card board and tape it some more before I start working on the bolsters!

My first dumb mistake. I used a popsicle stick sharpened on a sander to clean the epoxy from the front edge of the bolsters after I peened them on. Well there must have been one single piece of grit on the stick because now I have a faint but very visible scratch that perfectly matches the curve of the front edge of the bolster about 1/16" out from the bolster that stretches from the edge to the spine!

Second dumb mistake. It's midnight I've succesfully peened the bolsters on and have filed them down to make sure the pins disappeared into the surrounding bolster. Well I confirmed they had, I'm happy, aside from the previously mentioned scratch) but I notice that one bolster is a little thinner than the other one. Well normally I would fix this after the scales are put on and I was doing the final handle shaping. But NO I couldn't leave well enough alone for one night and set out to make the bolsters match. Sure enough since it was late and I was tired I slipped one time with the file just enough to nick the flat of the blade near the spine on the side opposite the side I had already scratched! (It only had two wraps of masking tape on the blade, not nearly enough protection!)

These two careless mistakes are going to cause endless amounts of grief to fix now. Thankfully this is intended to be a knife for me to carry so that I actually have a knife to show people when they find out I make knives. More importantly though, for this very reason it needs to be as perfect I can get it, so I absolutely have to fix these mars!

Otherwise the knife is coming out great, forged 5160, brass bolsters and some sweet ironwood scales with brass pins and brass thong tube.
 
Bro, if you're stupid, I must be retarded ! I do stuff like that all the time. I usually work anywhere between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. and let me tell you, by 1 a.m. you are getting real tired and the mistakes....oh the mistakes I've made. I do the same thing, if it has a serious flaw, I keep it for myself. I can't tell you how many times I really screwed one up and threw it across the room in a fit. The last time I screwed up some Talonite, I totally freaked ! That stuff's expensive and I blew it! So hey, don't feel too much grief, every one of us has done the same thing many times over. Any artistic endeavor will cause some seruious emotional changes once in a while. Whether pride and anger or disatisfaction. Just keep on, keepin on as they say. Hopefully the mars are fixable, they don't sound totally terrible. You maye have to grind the thicker bolster side down to match the thinner side and change the profile slightly to get the stray file marks out of the spine and blade areas you mentioned. In the end with a little slower movement and carfeul pace it will look greta I am sure. Nowadays I just putthe knife down and start on another one fresh. I'll gho back to the flawed one later when I have my head clear. Starting a new one brings new hope to you and passes to the flawed one as well when you try to fix it. Take care.....RDT
 
Must be running in our online family.

Not nearly as serious as yours, but:

I'm still trying to perfect my own heat treating on 1095. Made a quick blade that came out very nice - figured I'd make a real knife with this one. Triple heattreat in Goddard's Goop went well, with a cool hamon.

I did one temper last night, a little cleanup work on the stone this morning - wow this one is it! So I decided to do a little flex test, before the next two tempers. Not a major test, just a weee bit more

Crack --- Stupid


Steve
 
Ha, I also forgot to mention that last night I was trying to get the knife situated in the vise so that I could saw off the excess wood of the ironwood scales. Loosened the vise to reposition the knife and watched the thing slip right out and down on the concrete floor. It bounced on the butt first, flipped and then hit tip first, bounced again and smashed edge first into the concete.

Good news, the crushed wood of the butt was being sawed off anyway and the tip is untouched after striking the concrete.

Bad news, the edge got slightly bunged up over about half an inch, nothing a little quick work with a stone won't fix when the knife is finished.

Makes you wonder where those missing genes went though!:D
 
Silly Boy! I say chuck it in, give up, take up bridge.

Or accept the fact you're a humanbean, and get to work fixing it.

One of my favorite quotes is from Michaelangelo, who should know:

"Work is the elimination of traces of work."

See you soon man,

Dave
 
Try using acetone while the epoxy is wet with a q tip to remove the excess epoxy. This works well without scratching!

Good luck and as Tom said... Welcome to the club.
 
You go into the shop tired or not feeling good, or just really pissed about something. Next step is getting hurt or screwing up the knife. I've been there, done that too, against my better judgement. Now I know better, and have the scar to remind me to not even open the shop doors if it is not a good workday, or night.
 
Dave! Shouldn't you be grinding some Corian or something? :D Thanks for the tip Darrel, I usually use a rag to clean around the front of a bolster or handle scale but I've had the alcohol indermine the epooxy before. Thought the popsicle stick would work better, now I know better!

John, fortunately I mostly use hand tools. When I'm really tired or in a bad mood I never fire up things like the table saw or the grinder. I also have never bothhered to set up a buffer!

I finished shaping the handle tonight but now I've uncovered some voids in the ironwood. I need to use the serach feature and find out how to deal wit them. This is the first time I've used it and I really like the way it works with hand tools.
 
Guy I generally wipe most of the glueof while wet. However I was shown another way recently you get a bit of brass anout 1/2 inch wide
1/16th thich. and about1&1/2 inch long. make a wood handle. use the coener of the brass to scrape away the epoxy. It the brass gets blaunt either give the corner a tap with a hammer or file a bit back.
 
It seems like every time I have tried a brass, wood or other stick to take excess off it scratchs the knife.
So I just do it wet!
 
As I mentioned in another post, I had my first blade warp special. Jacked around and let it get too hot. Decided I was going to take the "wrinkle" out of the fighter's belly between tempering. Sure enough, got two 3/4 inch small connecting cracks in it. One more, and I'd have a perfect square. ;)

I've done a lot of stupid things in the shop. Including drilling a hole in the tang of a dagger with a drill press without securing it. As you can imagine, when it got to the bottom of the steel it shot out the blade and slammed it into the wall. :rolleyes:
 
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