First folder making progress

T

terrinecold

Joined
Oct 3, 2016
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I have had a lots of issues but recently I am making good progress on my first folding knife, it is a lockback. The shape of the liners will still be modified and the scales are still to be made. However the mechanism is working fine.
Also obviously the blade is shaped but no bevel were ground and it is not yet heat treated (I did heat treat the spacer/spring so it is springy)
I have a real pivot and bronze washer but for now I am using a pin which fits and is easier to put in and out.

What do you think?
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Look good , steel does not like sharp corners except the one on the edge ;) It's good always to drill small holes first where two lines of cut meet ...

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Thanks for the advice. I can definitely soften the top angle IPG the lockbar. By the way the excess material you see there will be flattened with a hammer and sculpted to make a decorative "fly" (typical ornament on a French lockback or slipjoint). The bottom one I will need to verify that it is not a part which is in contact with the notch on the blade but I think it will be ok to soften it too.
You can see when looking at the spring that I was careful about that there as I was worried about fatigue on that piece.
 
It might be the photo, or just me, but the spring seems to be arched in the wrong direction.
 
It would have been better had it been arched in the other one (more space for the blade). I does work though. The actual reason is that I built it arched correctly but it wasn't going up high enough in the liner for the lockbar to act on it. So I bent it the correct way (prior to heat treating it, it is pretty bendy).
I'll start making scales this WE, I'll post more progress pictures.
 
Interesting spring contour...I would like to see a photo of the blade and lock bar pinned to the scale and see where the lock bar contacts the spring if you have one? I've never seen a spring bent that way since it leaves little room for blade in the liners.
 
Will take one. In the meantime here is the result of work today.
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I learned a lesson there. It doesn't show well but at the top of the lockbar there is a "sculpted/filed" design called a mouche in French as it traditionally is a fly or bee on a Laguiole. In my case it is a fish.
This part was forged before it was to be sculpted (it needs to be wider than the back) I had left a little metal for that purpose. However I should have done it prior to filing the lock mechanism because the hammer blows bent the lockbar and the knife would not open anymore as the bar was too bent. Of course by the time I realized it I had already spent a couple more hours doing filework. I managed to readjust it but the bar is now a bit too high in the back. Thankfully there is enough material there so I'll be able to file it down. I'll have to redo that part of the filework though.


Question for those who have already done folders. I intend to heat treat the lockbar in addition to the blade and the spring. Do you think I should also heat treat the liners?
 
Another question. For the first time I assembled the knife with the real pivot and the bronze washers. Putting those washers in was extremely difficult. Is there any trick to it?
 
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When closing, the heel of the blade was correctly stopped by the bar but as the clearance between blade and spring was too small for my peace of mind I glued. Bit of leather at the point of the spring which may be in contact.
As mentioned previously the spring geometry is a bit of an accident and is to be put with all the other things I learned building this knife. A first is needed for everything.

Tomorrow I will start filing the blade's bevels.
 
It is only my opinion, but I would heat the spring to full red and re-shape it right. Then re-do the HT on it with a torch.

I like the spring to curve alongside the lock bar so it is laying flat almost against it, not pushing straight down in only one spot. The end of the spring is usually about half way between the lock bar pivot pin and the end of the lock bar. To adjust the pressure needed to release the lock, you thin the spring as needed to get the proper flex. If the temper is right, the spring can be tweaked by careful bending so it seats just right. I polish the spring bottom and lock bar top to keep friction down. I also round the bottom of the spring so it touches with less surface.
 
I see your point. However I think you have much more experience than me and I fear I would have difficulties reshaping the spring correctly. At this point the knife mechanism works and the blade doesn't hit the spring. The main advantage of having the spring reshape would be to be able to redesign the blade. Which I don't want to do now.
My current thinking is that I want to have a first working finished folder with a nice handle. And that I'll make another one after with all the lessons learned which should end up being much better than I could do this one short of remaking everything.
So I definitely take your advise about spring shape and position. But for the next knife.
 
Update on the folder:
I selected the scales, they are made of olivewood. I cut them and filed them to match the liner shape. I drilled holes for the 2 mosaic pins which are going to hold them to the liners.
The actual shape of the scales will be differen in the end as they will not completely cover the liners. My intention is that the spacer and liners will be held with screws and so will the pivot. The area around the spacer screws will not be covered by the scales. The intention is to make it possible to disassemble the knife. The scale won't be removable though.
Regarding the pin for the lockbar, I think I will have small pins in the scales which will not go all the way through the scale (they will be plugs really rather than pins), the actual pin the lockbar is rotating around will be "floating". Is this idea crazy?





Bellow is a quick image edition to mockup what it should look like with the scales reshaped to leave the heel of the liners showing:
 
I still need to polish the blade and some of the other metal parts a bit more but it is now officially a knife since I just finished quenching and tempering the blade (and the lockbar) and I have sharpened it.
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It can now shave hairs.

I know I made plenty of mistakes when making this in particular with regards to the spring geometry but I am very happy to have finished the project and to end up with a reasonably pretty functioning lockback folder.

As previously I'lltake every critics si I can improve for the next one.
 
I think you id a good job learning.

Some comments:
I would have left the scales full size and made any changes in the next knife. The thin tip at the pivot, and possibly the one at the butt, will likely chip off easily.
When using mosaic rivets, be sure to "clock" them. That means to make all of them turned the same way.
 
thanks for the constructive feedback. Good tip for the mosaic pins I didn't think about it but it makes sense that it would look much neater.
The reasons I didn't leave the scales full size were 2 fold.
1) I wanted to be able to take the knife appart, to do that I fastened both the actual pivot and the spacer with pivot + screw combination. The hardware I have (the pivot) wasn't long enough to go through both the scales, the liners and the blade. I should probably have ordered longer pivots.
2) For various bad reasons which won't happen on the next knife (see previous post about the spring geometry) the handle is a bit too big to be esthetically pleasing when the scale is full size, making them smaller was an attempt to visually lighten the knife.

There is an additional bad reason for the tip in front and specially for why it is at the bottom. The initial design had just holes drilled in the wood larger than the screw. But when I implemented it I had too much trouble actually assembling it, mostly because the shortened pivot screws are very unwieldy. I decided on a point in the scale in the front and I wanted to make it on the top of the knife to balence the tip at the bottom on the back of the scales, however there is an extra hole in the liner which shouldn't be there (another of those learning mistakes) and I wanted to hide it.
I do see that the tips will be more fragile and will pay attention to them (after all as my first folder this is one I am keeping for myself. The next one will be for my son).

All in all, thanks to everybody who gave me feedback. I know I will be able to make the next one better, and I know what are the flaws of this one, I am still very happy of how it turned out and will carry and use it proudly.
 
Picture of the filework. As mentioned more polishing is still needed, I just did the heat treat yesterday and removed the oxydized layer, I now have to go through the sand paper grits to get everything nice and shiny.
 
If you use screws to attach the scales, you can put the pivot screw under the scales by making a recess in them for the screw head. From the outside, there appears to be no pivot. The same goes for bolsters, mill/drill the recess and mount the bolster over the pivot.
 
Yes so the question would be how to use screws to attach the scales. I guess I need to tap the liners. I have never tapped anything and do not have the taps. I am pretty sure I can learn, I looked a bit into it, one thing which was a bit daunting was figuring out the tap and drills I'd need for specific screws. Specially with the imperial notation, I have to say I don't understand much of what would be needed.
Also I use 1/8"liners would that be thick enough for screws to hold the scales reliably?
If one of you could suggest a combination scew, tap, drill to get in order to attach the scales?
 
1/8" liners!!!!, most folks are using ones around .040" to .060".

It takes very little thickness to get an 0-80; 1-72; or 2-56 screw to catch and hold. You will break a lot of taps learning, but once you get the hang of it, it isn't very hard to do.
 
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