Custom chopper WIP

Knifemaker87

Knifemaker87

Joined
Jan 2, 2006
Messages
1,073
Hey everybody
I got my first bone fide order since starting back with knives. I got an order for a custom chopper. a heavy duty no frills cutting knife.
Here is a drawing of the basic design. .25"thick 5160 flat ground blade differential heat treat micarta scales stainless tube pins, wide blade with a slight taper towards the tip, but with enough weight to give it a real nice balance and sweet spot.
Chopper.jpg


The other thing is the owner will be going out of town for several months less than three weeks from now. so... my job is tog et the knife finished in time to get it to him before he leaves.

so the updates should be coming pretty fast.
 
I can't wait!

Don't forget:

-9" blade from tip to grip (not 9" edge as that would be a shorter blade length)
-slightly downward angle on the grip (the drawing doesn't reflect that)
-evenly spaced tube pins fr/rear with 'you know what' flush mounted in the middle of the scales
 
Okay,
so what was one knife turned into two. here are the final profiles. all i can say is MASSIVE. the nessie has a 9" blade and the chopper has a 10" blade.
CBR102-1.jpg

CBR103.jpg
 
019.jpg


let's see how close we can get it to look to this, it should have that pronounced 'hump' on the spine and w i d e blade
 
Knifemaker87 said:
CBR102-1.jpg
Click to expand...

to my eye, the design at the bottom is the cleanest and nicest looking and depending on stock thickness, tapering and such would do an outstanding job.
The drawing just posted doesn't look quite right to me, and would be one heavy sob. Imo.
 
Knifemaker87 said:
Hey everybody
I got my first bone fide order since starting back with knives. I got an order for a custom chopper. a heavy duty no frills cutting knife.
Here is a drawing of the basic design. .25"thick 5160 flat ground blade differential heat treat micarta scales stainless tube pins, wide blade with a slight taper towards the tip, but with enough weight to give it a real nice balance and sweet spot.
Chopper.jpg



The other thing is the owner will be going out of town for several months less than three weeks from now. so... my job is tog et the knife finished in time to get it to him before he leaves.

so the updates should be coming pretty fast.
Click to expand...

i've been thinking about the large nessmuk that maybe we should keep it smaller in blade length, like in the original pic, around 8" max

it looks way exaggerated with a 9" blade in the drawing...maybe in real life it will look better, i don't know

i love the original drawing, once we made the blade actual length of 9" i started liking it less and less...
 
Lorien said:
to my eye, the design at the bottom is the cleanest and nicest looking and depending on stock thickness, tapering and such would do an outstanding job.
The drawing just posted doesn't look quite right to me, and would be one heavy sob. Imo.
Click to expand...


I have 2 Henkles kitchen knives that look just like the bottom drawing that you're referring to...it looks just like a kitchen knife.
that's not the look i would want at all.

it would have to look like a chopper, thick wide massive blade with the pronounced hump and wide profile, with exposed pummel for lanyard hole.
the taper towards the tip will lighten the knife quite a bit, i'm guessing it will also be tapered a little back towards the tang, it will not be all that heavy, it's just .250" not .300" and besides it will be a CHOPPER, where heft and weight is welcomed. More weight behind the chop, more chopping power.
 
look at it without a pointed tip...

looks a LOT like your typical competition chopper, wide, heavy blade, which is what i'm after...a chopper WITH a pointy tip

019.jpg
 
it's your knife man. But, since drawings were posted I came to the conclusion you'd want feedback before you got started with this project. Sorry I got the wrong impression.
Carry on!
 
not at all, i appreciate the imput, i just know what i would want it to look like, but since i'm not an artist it's hard to put it on paper exactly how it looks in my head.

Everyone has different taste and vision of what they want, i totally want a chopper, but i want to use it as a big knife also and don't want it to limit me only to chopping purposes, whereas most choppers out there are cleaver shaped...I wanted a knife that can do a bit of both, chop well but also can be used to stab.

I haven't seen many narrow blade choppers, most i've seen had a slight belly and wide blade, with a slight angle downward on the grip. Most choppers have a pronounced pommel that is made to hold your hand in while chopping. Most have a heavy thick profile (most are going to .300" instead of .250") so i felt .250" would be adequate since i won't be entering any competitions, it would be lighter once tapered...

So that's my vision of what i wanted.
As a hunting knife, yes, the second one might be more practical, lighter and adequate. As a chopper, it wouldn't be...although the lines might be more pleasing to the eye, i agree.

As for the nessmuk, i wanted a large version of a medium sized nessie, thick 1/4" and heavy duty, i have a small neckmuk and wanted a big brother for it, i think i might have gone overboard with the 9" blade though and i'm pretty sure 8" would have been more than adequate and a lot better looking.
I'm hoping we can always cut it shorter so...
 
okay well it looks like there is some chatter about changing the blades... so if that is the case then now is the time to do it.
i cut out the blanks:
IMG_4342.jpg


and then i rough ground the flats. havent done the convex part yet so if the profiles are going to change then i should do it before that.
IMG_4343.jpg


the blades are very heavy. i am going to try and do some tapering towards the tip, but if you wanted heft... you got it. not my particular cut of tea design-wise but i try and build them to spec. Changing blade length etc is going to be tricky at this point but it can be done. I went ahead and cut the blades out as i had approved drawings, but if you want to change them let me know.

more tommorow
~Chris
 
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They look great so far, i love them, don't change a thing!

Definitely taper the spine gradually all the way to the tip and a bit in the tang if need be (only if you think the grip might be too fat to grasp well)
 
Chris,
can you get into the details of heat treatment a little? And if you cryo treat them also or not...also can you take a full on pic of the Chopper's tip?
the pic you took shows the tip tapering in width and i wanted to keep the width the same throughout the blade as in the drawing, but i think it's because you took the pic from the rear, please take a pic that won't distort the actual profile of the blade.

The tip should be slight drop point

001-L.jpg
 
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robino said:
Chris,
can you get into the details of heat treatment a little? And if you cryo treat them also or not...also can you take a full on pic of the Chopper's tip?
the pic you took shows the tip tapering in width and i wanted to keep the width the same throughout the blade as in the drawing, but i think it's because you took the pic from the rear, please take a pic that won't distort the actual profile of the blade.

The tip should be slight drop point

001-L.jpg
Click to expand...

i can get a picture later today. The tip doesnt currently drop as much as in the most recent picture, but that is a easy fix. I can change that no problem. it looks like you changed the profile a little bit more with the blade tapering out in width towards the blade as well. it was just flat after the thumb swell before. Do you want me to modify that as well? i think it looks good.

heat treat-wise i do three normalizing cycles before a differential heat treat 1500ish into 120 degree quench oil with this wide of a blade you should be able to see the hamon but it will prolly be just a simple line due to the slower speed of the the oil and the type of steel. i have never cryo quenched anything before.

I am going to do the taper on the blades todya and do the final touches on the convex grind before heat treating them. I was at a friend's house making damascus this Saturday and got a couple billets of stainless san mai done too. very excited to see how that turns out. i should heat treat the blades in the next couple days, then it will be final grinding before polish then the handles will go on and they will be finished.
 
i did do a different drawing, i didn't mean to taper the tip to be wider it just came out that way, i only meant to show the drop point a bit better since my last drawing was showing the drop point pretty sloppy.

if it's not too much work, yes, drop the point to how you see it in the pic, not quite an even middle dropping point, but just above that mark

if the taper isn't hard to accomplish you can also do that (the slight profile taper that you were mentioning above)
the closer you can make it to my last drawing, the better.

and if you could slightly ROUND the bottom choil part so it's not a sharp point...would be great
thanks
 
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