Confidence Boost

[Varga Knives]

I thought I'd post this to possibly inspire others who are new to knife making. I received my first six knives back from heat treating and more than likely screwed up the HT so they will have to go back (post HT only bare handed from now on). I figured I could finish up the steel I have and send in 9 instead of 6 and save a little on shipping. So, while I obviously still have a TON of learning still to do I did get a huge confidence boost in the shop today. I really didn't realize how much I have learned but the mistakes and problem areas never reared their ugly heads. Plunges used to give me nightmares but this time I just left a little more to the ricasso and they were a snap. I have to credit good belts and a lot of great feedback and information on this forum. Anyway, while the first six literally took me months these three are ready for HT in just one day! Woo hoo!


While they are not perfect, I think they will come out just fine post HT. Design wise I have some tweaks to do for the next batch. The direction of the grits make them look crappy but they are better then my lousy photos show. One of my biggest time wasters I have managed to avoid today is not taking two steps forward and one back (sometimes two or three back). On the others I always found myself hand sanding then going to the belt then hand sanding then to the belt then some files and so on. This time I just free handed on the belt and I knew where I wanted to get to without over thinking and making the whole business more complicated than it needs to be.

Moral of the story is just to keep at it and not worry too much. Experience happens whether you like it or not.

Now if I could only just get to finally putting handles on something!

 

[ricky_arthur]

Good job, now stop grinding and start glueing and sanding wood.

 

[redd1981]

are you saying you may have messed the temper up by overheating during post HT finish grinding? Sorry I get confused easily.

but I have to say your grinds look nice and your design on the bottom one in the first pic really catches my eye, love that "head" on the end of it lol. Looks like it will make a great blade-heavy chopper.

 

[crocogator106]

They look great to me. I'm still new to knife making myself and struggling with my grind lines. What advice can you give me? I try to make full flat grinds but they always wind up looking like a scandi or saber grind.

 

[Varga Knives]

I think I may have overheated them during grinding post HT. I tried the brass rod test but it was inconclusive. Probably too much material behind the edge. I can't wait to try out the chopper but I think I made the handle too narrow.

Far be it from me to post advice on how to grind. Like many people have said you just have to keep at it until one day it just all comes together. I just hope for me that that one day was yesterday and it wasn't just a fluke.

Believe me the plan was never to make this many knives without putting a handle on one but that's just the way things turned out. A big part of that was that I want to use flared tubes and finding the damn right tubes was much harder than I thought. Nickle silver with at 1/4" with walls from .020 to .028" is hard to find and I still don't have exactly what I want but I will try it and see what happens.