Chris, Here's a Question about the Vulcan Tantos

dl351

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May 5, 2006
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So, like the tread title says, this is a question primarily for Chris, but any response is welcome. I posted this on the "Defective knife or bad finishing?"
thread, but I think Chris may not have looked at it. So here're my thoughts and question:

Okay, so I was thinking about the line that doesn't seem to follow the curvature of the blade and started to look on ebay at the Vulcan tantos listed, and a lot of them have a straight line as opposed to the line as seen on SOG's website that follows the curvature of the blade. Now, I'm no rocket scientist, but it seems that if you have 3 pieces of metal of constant thickness sandwiched together like the San Mai Vulcans, a curved grind should produce a curved line at the point of contrast between the metals. Like I said, I'm not rocket scientist, but my idea makes sense to me. Chris, if you could chime in and maybe tell us whats up with the funky straight line as opposed to the "curvey" lines that would be great!

I really like the way the Vulcan Tanto looks, but the straight line thing going on seems kinda weird to me.

Thanks!
 
Yeah, I have looked into this and not really sure of a good answer to for this. First I just checked out a couple knives here and they have the straight line there. The photos used on the website and catalog were taken of a prototype and where heavily corrected and we may have gone a little too far with the corrections. Also it looks like the grinds have changed slightly from the original prototype.

Now thinking about how the blade is ground and looking at the other grind lines it is starting to make some sense as to why it is straight as opposed to curved. Take a look at the attached picture. I have added three parallel lines. These are in line with the top grind of the knife edge. Look at how the top line is parallel with the top of the hollow grid for the knife edge. Go down to the second line and it pretty much lines up with the san mai line. Finally the sharpened edge. This has the curve cut into it which is not actually cut in the initial grind but in one of the final sharpening steps.

Vulcan-sanmai.jpg


I hope this make sense. I am not sure how to exactly describe this but I thought I'd try. Let me know if this helped or raised more questions.
 
Ah! That makes sense now. Had I known that the curve was cut into the blade when the sharp edge was ground, I would not have asked the question. Thanks a lot, Chris!
 
You know it took me a couple looks to figure out what was going on. Now it seems to make sense.
 
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