Delica 4 Mod

T

THG

Joined
May 18, 2008
Messages
3,644
I did a couple things to this Delica 4:

1. I convex-ground the back of the blade
2. I ground off that damn "safety tip"

I started the convex grind on a belt sander, but I wasn't satisfied with the way it was going. So I took it to my new DMT XXC stone and did it by hand. Then I finished the grind with a 120-grit belt on the sander. After that, I lowered the bevel angle on that back side, and now I have one of my favorite (if not, my favorite) users.

Sure, it's ugly, but it works well.

D4Mod-1.jpg


D4Mod-2.jpg


D4Mod-3.jpg


D4Mod-4.jpg
 
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Now its time to flat grind the saber ;)
 
knifenut1013 said:
Now its time to flat grind the saber ;)
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There's 2 reasons I haven't done that:

1. I don't want to lose the Spyder logo :o

2. I'm too lazy :p

I actually started doing the flat-grinding with the belt sander about 4 months ago. It was really slow-going, so I put it on hold. Then last week I got the XXC stone and decided to finish it by hand.

You know what? I probably ruined the heat treat because a couple times while I was grinding the tip to a point, the tip turned a little brown :o
 
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Don't worry about the tip, if it didn't turn blue your still OK.

Not flat grind the whole side just the factory saber, like a single side scandi. We can call it the frankengrind delica :)
 
knifenut1013 said:
Not flat grind the whole side just the factory saber, like a single side scandi. We can call it the frankengrind delica :)
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Oh, yeah I was just thinking about doing a scandi-grind.

And my sister calls my Native the "Decepticon knife" (Decepticons from Transformers), and my Spin the "Embryo," and I have, in fact, been calling this Delica "Frankenstein" lol
 
What and where is the "safety tip" you removed? I don't have one of these knives and it's not clear to me from comparing your pictures to pictures of stock delicas on the web.

Thanks,

Brian.
 
bgentry said:
What and where is the "safety tip" you removed? I don't have one of these knives and it's not clear to me from comparing your pictures to pictures of stock delicas on the web.

Thanks,

Brian.
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I could be wrong, but i think he's referring to the area of the blade by the tip where the spine curves down to meet the edge. i think it was done to increase tip strength though...
 
bgentry said:
What and where is the "safety tip" you removed? I don't have one of these knives and it's not clear to me from comparing your pictures to pictures of stock delicas on the web.

Thanks,

Brian.
Click to expand...

Delica and Endura 4 models have a "blunt" tip designed to strengthen it. Compare them to the D3 and E3s. Likewise, compare the Police 3 to the original Police models. It's not technically a "safety tip," but personally I think it's so lame that it might as well be a safety tip lol
 
Having bent the tip on previous model Delicas (due to user stupidity), I appreciate the safety tip. :D
 
THG said:
There's 2 reasons I haven't done that:

1. I don't want to lose the Spyder logo :o

2. I'm too lazy :p

I actually started doing the flat-grinding with the belt sander about 4 months ago. It was really slow-going, so I put it on hold. Then last week I got the XXC stone and decided to finish it by hand.

You know what? I probably ruined the heat treat because a couple times while I was grinding the tip to a point, the tip turned a little brown :o
Click to expand...

A while back I did a full convex on my D3. It cuts a lot better than it did with the flat saber grind. I started with a 40 grit belt and it didn't take that long to grind it down. Then I cleaned it up with finer grit belts up to 600. That's when I did the same thing to the tip because the higher grit belts build up the heat a lot faster. I ended up shortening the blade about 1/16 of an inch to get rid of it. Now, it doesn't look as good as it would if I had sent it off to Tom Krein, but it's not bad for an evening's work considering it was the first knife I did any major steel removal on. Plus it's nice to use a knife that you customized yourself.:thumbup:
 
I finished it (kinda).

1. I put the same grind on the logo side using the DMT XXC (this took about 6 or 7 hours, I think).

2. I beveled the logo side to ~10° using my new angle block (this took at least 8 hours; I couldn't believe it, and it's still not good lol)

3. I finished the blade with 120-grit sanding belts on a belt sander (not all the deep scratches are gone, but there must be some concavity that's not letting me get the inner scratches out, so I quit because I got bored and it's going to get scratched up anyway with use lol)

4. I got an edge using a DMT XC and then finished the edge with EF.

5. I finished the bevels with 1000-grit sandpaper (although I kinda quit early)

6. I refinished the edge, opened the knife up, and cleaned her out.

And here she stands before you:

D4Mod2-1.jpg


D4Mod2-3.jpg


D4Mod2-4.jpg


D4Mod2-5.jpg
 
Oh, man - that thing must slice like nobody's business! I really like the looks of a delica with a tip that's actually pointy :D
 
chococrazy said:
Now all you need is a leather belt that works with your belt sander load it up with some compound and polish that baby up :).
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Maybe someday. The belt sander is actually not working correctly, and I was reluctant to use it to do this. But if you didn't catch my drift from the beginning of this thread, I'm pretty impatient :o
 
Dorito Monk said:
Oh, man - that thing must slice like nobody's business! I really like the looks of a delica with a tip that's actually pointy :D
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Oh, boy does she cut! This is definitely now the sharpest knife I own. The edge does dull quicker, but it keeps cutting strong because of the thin bevels and thinner blade profile. It's also stupid easy to touch back up. About 10 (alternating) strokes on each side of a DMT EF got me back a scary edge. I'll be getting a ZDP D4 soon... I might take on the beast and give it this same treatment :eek:
 
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THG said:
Oh, boy does she cut! This is definitely now the sharpest knife I own. The edge does dull quicker, but it keeps cutting strong because of the thin bevels and thinner blade profile. It's also stupid easy to touch back up. About 10 (alternating) strokes on each side got me back a scary edge. I'll be getting a ZDP D4 soon... I might take on the beast and give it this same treatment :eek:
Click to expand...

Oh, man, ZDP-189 with that edge? God himself would be afraid of cutting himself on such a thing :jerkit:

Awesome mod!
 
hey guys, im new to bladeforums. this thread caught my eye because i got bored last weekend and took apart my endura and did some file work on it and taking the coating of the blade trying to get a unique look. any ideas? or if you guys want to see pics let me know
 
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