Finished my third, and also a question.

R

Ryan J

Joined
Jul 14, 2014
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233
Just finished this tonight. It's my third so far. Steel is 1095 cut from an old hickory butchers knife I had setting around. Heat treated it myself. Heated in my woodstove until non magnetic. Used a hair dryer to add air. It was 90 degrees that day and hotter than the 7th circle of hell in my shop. Tempered twice at 430 for two hours.
Handle is "my"Carta. Card stock from hobby lobby. Not sure if I'll try to get better with it or just buy handle material. Pins are 1/4 steel rod. Every steel surface is as near to mirrored as I could get it. I bet I have 60 hours in this knife. Mainly due to trial-and-error, and I learned a lot. I finished and refinished the blade 5 times before I was happy with it. Made 3 batches of micarta and 4 sets of scales. All in all I feel like it's a pretty good third knife. It's a gift for my knife nut uncle. It's going to be a neck knife. Here are some pics. Still learning with the photography.



Side profile. Fits the hand nicely. Sanded the blade at 100, 220, 320, 400, 600, 1k, 2k, and hand rubbed with mothers for a good long while. 1/8 thick at the spine. Plunge line got smudged so I did away with it. Built my grinder and the belt wobbles about 1/16. It makes a straight plunge impossible. A new kmg clone is in the works.



Close up of the file work. Sanded to 2k and polished like everything else. Sharpened at 20 degrees on my KME. Finished on a strop with Ken Schwarzenegger 1.5um CBN so the secondary bevel is shiny like the rest of it. :)



Filework turned out nice. It's really tiny. You can see some of it didn't line up perfectly though I measured it all out with a caliper. I'm getting a magnifying visor and that will probably help. Colored the epoxy with a dry paint pigment I found at hobby lobby.

Thanks for looking!

Now my question. Since this is a neck knife I'm making a kydex sheath. Will it scratch my blade? I've searched for the answer and heard it will and that it won't due to it being softer than the steel. I'll be vacuum forming it and I thought about forming it with a strip of leather laying on the blade and epoxying the leather into the sheath. The blade would touch the leather rather than kydex then.
 
The simple answer is that yes, kydex will scratch the blade. On the other hand the knife will also start to take on colours from oxidation since it's made of a carbon steel. Now for the good part. It looks very well done and you should be proud to get such good results so soon in your knife making history. Your uncle is going to love you for this one !!!
Frank
 
Frank Niro said:
The simple answer is that yes, kydex will scratch the blade.
Click to expand...

A clean, properly designed kydex sheath will not scratch your knife. Dirt, grit, sanding abrasive, etc that happens to be inside your Kydex sheath will however. A dirty leather sheath would do the same.
 
Frank Niro said:
The simple answer is that yes, kydex will scratch the blade. On the other hand the knife will also start to take on colours from oxidation since it's made of a carbon steel. Now for the good part. It looks very well done and you should be proud to get such good results so soon in your knife making history. Your uncle is going to love you for this one !!!
Frank
Click to expand...
Thank you! I've seen your work and coming from someone at your level that compliment means a lot. I hope to get into folders soon and your work is inspiring. What do you think about the leather lined kydex idea? I thought maybe I could recess the leather in the sheath so that the kydex comes in direct contact with the handle scale for retention.
 
JBC69 said:
A clean, properly designed kydex sheath will not scratch your knife. Dirt, grit, sanding abrasive, etc that happens to be inside your Kydex sheath will however. A dirty leather sheath would do the same.
Click to expand...

This was one of the answers I found in my searching. It makes sense. I suppose that
a neck knife would have a small advantage in not collecting add much soot and grit since it's upside down. I'm wondering if the leather insert is advantageous then. It would make the sheath bulkier.
 
Not bad at all. Its definitely unique. I wouldn't have gone so thin at the finger choil. It just seems like a weak spot that could break easily. Overall not bad and the good news is they will only get better.
 
Excellent workmanship.

There are some issues in design that should be considered in future knives:

The very thin section above the finger groove is far too thin. In a necker, it will probably be POK, but any heavier use cold snap it in two.

The little tit sticking out below the ricasso should only go as far as the edge does. The choil ( small semicircular notch) is to end the edge. The ricasso should follow the same line as the edge. As it is now, it will impede cutting and other functions. Someone might say, "Oh, that is a guard", but it isn't big enough to have any function as a guard,..... and the deep finger notch is the actual guard.
 
Thanks guys. Yeah your both right about the choil depth. I didn't like the shape inside the handle so I kept taking more out of the choil to make it look right and learned a lesson. Like you said since it's a necker I imagine it will be strong enough. And I think what I'll do is cut that nub in front of the finger choil off and make the choil on the blade have a longer radius so it comes back close to the guard. It's kind of dangerous and pokey anyway because it's beveled slightly. Thanks for the advice.
 
Just for edification, a choil is an unsharpened area at the end of the blade edge. It is often a semi-circular indention. It is there to allow better sharpening and make the blade safer. Some are very ornate, like a Spanish Notch.
A hollow area on the handle is called a finger groove or finger notch. It is not a choil.
 
10-4. Still workin on this knife lingo!!!!
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
Just for edification, a choil is an unsharpened area at the end of the blade edge. It is often a semi-circular indention. It is there to allow better sharpening and make the blade safer. Some are very ornate, like a Spanish Notch.
A hollow area on the handle is called a finger groove or finger notch. It is not a choil.
Click to expand...
 
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