First framelock and how it happened... pic heavy!

[Shannon Carter]

I recently completed my first frame lock (..finished product here) and took a ton of pictures during the process. I had a few people ask me to share how it was made, so I thought I would start a thread about it. I figure this will take a few days to complete. And if anyone is interested, I will be glad to share links to the materials and tools that I used, too.

Also, I just wanted to say that its been awhile since I’ve posted in this section of Bladeforums. Seems like I lived here in 2012 when I first started making knives. I’m a DIY kind of person and enjoy researching a hobby about as much as I do making stuff. Very helpful group of makers here and lots of great info! I always loved finding threads like this where makers would share a glimpse into their process and pictures inside their shops. I’m definitely not an expert at this stuff.. not even close, and I made several mistakes during the making of this knife, but I will cover those as I go through the steps. And that’s the SOLE PURPOSE of this thread - to encourage new makers or someone who may be considering knife making. It’s a hobby.. it’s meant to be fun. Yes, it’s challenging, but a rewarding one, I promise.

Thanks for checking it out and I will be glad to answer any questions to best of my ability.

Let’s keep it positive!
—Shannon

Like a lot of knives that I make, this one also started in Draftsight. Draftsight is handy since you can place the blade on a separate layer than the handle/frame and rotate it on the pivot to check for clearance.

Thinking I would actually make more than one of these, I cut the frame out and glued it to some scrap steel. I cut and profiled the steel to make a template.

Finished template.

I coated a piece of .158 titanium with Dykem layout fluid then clamped the steel template to it using vise grips and traced around the edges with a carbide scribe.

All of the rough cuts are made on this saw attached to a SWAG offroad portaband table.

I also traced the template with a sharpie onto this piece of carbon fiber I picked up from Jantz at Blade Show last year.

Titanium is a tough to work with. I used an old 60grit Blaze belt on an 8” contact wheel.

Starting the profile..

Grinder setup.. this is a welded no-weld grinder — plans from usaknifemaker.com

Grinding titanium is a take-it-slow process.. I can only run the grinder at about 20%. The goal is to slow the grinder down to the point where the titanium is no longer sparking. It actually goes faster this way.. kind of hard to grasp the concept until you actually work with the stuff.

Titanium makes quite a mess, so I wet this cloth to collect the shavings.

Finished profile..

Backside. I noticed that it leaves a bit of a sharp edge/overhang on the titanium, especially if it is run too fast.

Switched the belt out to a used 60grit Aluminum Oxide belt for the carbon fiber. Dust collector and mask are definitely used during this process..

Funny.. it took about 15-20 minutes to grind the titanium.. about 2 minutes to profile this piece of carbon fiber.

Finished Ti and CF pieces for the frame.

Titanium is just a little over .158 thick. This came from Alpha Knife Supply.

Carbon fiber is much thicker and I probably should have started out with a thinner piece, but I thin it out later on the surface grinder. I bought it thinking I would use it on a fixed blade.

 

[Tkrocky]

Nice I love your design, I am excited to see how it turns out! Thanks for doing this thread I love these things!

 

[Lo/Rez]

Good thread. Nice knife.

 

[Shannon Carter]

More pics…

Now that the scales are profiled, it’s time to get them flat. We have a disk grinder in progress.. pics of it below, but its not complete. So the process is to use sandpaper on a piece of granite and sand away.. I took a sharpie and drew several lines across the piece of titanium to help me get an idea of progress. The goal is to get the pivot area and the backspacer area pretty flat.

Same process with the carbon fiber. Lines drawn for a guide.

Disk grinder on the bench.

Titanium after sanding.

I was considering a blasted/stonewash finish for the titanium side of the frame. I went ahead and blasted the inside of the frame to see how the finish would look.

220 grit media in the sandblast cabinet.

Inside of the Ti and CF frames completed after sanding. Flat and ready for next steps.

Time to spot some holes. I had to reverse the image I was working with from Draftsight and mark the outside of the Ti scales. I glued the image and used a small punch to mark three holes — pivot, stop pin and forward lockbar relief hole.

I knew I would need a washer on the carbon fiber side of the frame for the bearings, so I used it as a guide on the Ti side to make sure I had enough clearance for the lockbar cuts.

Time to make some holes! This is done on a Grizzly mill/drill. I’ll upload some pics of it later on.

The pivot hole is drilled out with a #31 (.120) sized bit.. anything less than a 3/16” would have been fine, but I decided to use the same size that I will be using for the stop pin hole. The reason for this was the holes need to be transferred over to the carbon fiber side and I didn’t want to change bits.

Pivot hole drilled out..

Stop pin hole is drilled..

Next step is to transfer the pivot hole and stop pin hole over to the carbon fiber frame. Now, this is one step I could have messed up on, but it worked out. What you should do is drill the pivot hole on the frame (titanium) side and transfer it to the show (carbon fiber) side. Put a temporary pivot in the two pieces of the frame and then line the stop pin hole up to be spotted and drilled out. I had the two pieces clamped together with vise grips pretty tight during this picture, so I got lucky.

Now that the holes were spotted on the carbon fiber side, I could ream the stop pin out to .125 on the titanium frame.

Checking the stop pin hole.

Always a good habit to countersink your holes!

Next step is to open the holes on the carbon fiber with the size #31 bit.

Reaming the stop pin hole out to .125.

Time to open the pivot hole up with a size #13 (.185) bit.

Drilling the pivot.

Once the pivot hole is drilled out, it is reamed to 3/16”

Countersinking the holes..

Same process for the titanium frame side.. pivot hole is opened up with the #13 bit

Then reamed out to 3/16”

Tap Magic helps the reaming process a bit..

 

[suitaroh]

Thanks for writing this WIP. :thumbup:

 

[DAVE_M]

Awesome work, Shannon! This one came out great!

 

[Shannon Carter]

And more pics... I took a LOT, so this may take more than few days to complete!

Now that the pivot and stop pin holes were drilled and reamed, it was time to work on the lock bar. I'm trying to get an idea of where I want the lockbar to be in this picture.

The lockbar cut ended up about 2 3/8" long.

Frame is clamped in and ready to start cutting. The disks that I'm using are from Rio Grande.. I am starting a spreadsheet that I will publish online with links to some of the tools I used during this build. I figure that will be easier to look at vs searching through these posts. I'll update the orginal post with a link as soon as I finish it.

The lockbar cut was a bit frustrating, I'll admit. I learned quite a bit during this step, especially about how fast and how much I could cut at one time. In this picture, you can see that the disk started to climb on me.. I made a spotting mark with the punch earlier and I wish I hadn't at this point.

Getting closer to the stopping point.

Overhead view. So the obvious question here is how do you finish the cut since you are cutting with a wheel. I believe the easiest way would have been to drill a hole, but I'm glad I didn't since I had an issue with the disk climbing and me missing the target.

7
I almost bought some Ritz crackers... I think they would have done a better job cutting than these disks!

I used the end of my ruler to make a 90 degree mark for the vertical cut.

Making the vertical cut..

So this is a good example of what I was talking about.. not being able to finish the cut.

Easier to see in this picture. So this presented a small problem and I screwed up here.. my first thought was no problem, I'll just run to the band saw and finish the cut. Bad idea!! As soon as I put the frame in the saw, I could feel the teeth slam against my lockface and it chewed it up pretty bad. I show a picture of that down below.

But I knew the bandsaw was the right thickness to make the cut, so I took an old blade and broke it and used it manually to free the lock. I should have done this in the first place since I would have had better control over the blade. (..and Urge knives in the tray ready for handle shaping..)

Disk thickness is about .022.

Saw blade thickness is a little over .023 - close enough!

Manually finishing the lock cut.

Here you can see the lock is finally free and you can also see how bad the lock face is chewed up.. grrrrr! Something I have to fix at a later time and I will show that step.

With the lockbar finally free, it's time to make the lock relief. Frame is clamped back in and I used the ruler to square up the lock cut with the vise.

Thinking I will make the relief about 5/8" wide.

The relief was made with a 3/8" ball nose end mill.

I left about .060 of meat on the frame. Not sure if this is typical, or not, so I made an educated guess.. a lot of this knife was made that way!

Okay, I said I would admit where I made mistakes and once again I screwed up. I was so excited that I had the lock bar cut and relief made I jumped right into bending the lock. I wasn't even thinking that this would make the rest of the build a little challenging as I moved forward.

I heated the relief area and clamped the lock bar in the vise.. once it was hot enough, all I had to do was bump the frame just a little. I also didn't know how far to bend the lock, so I just guessed and moved it the width of the titanium material.

Good shot of how bad the lockface is chewed up!

Curious if this is about how far other makers bend the lock?

Love the look of heat anodized titanium.. I left it like this for a few days. Thought it looked cool!

So I thought the lock cut looked a little rough. Decided to cut a 120 grit belt and hand sand the inside of the lock bar.

Starting to clean up a bit.

Definitely cleaner looking now.

More to come.. thanks for looking!

 

[Shannon Carter]

Nice I love your design, I am excited to see how it turns out! Thanks for doing this thread I love these things!

Thanks, I appreciate it!

 

[Shannon Carter]

Good thread. Nice knife.

Thanks for the comments!

 

[Shannon Carter]

Thanks for writing this WIP. :thumbup:

No problem! I'm trying to add as much detail as I can.
I appreciate it..
Shannon

 

[Shannon Carter]

Awesome work, Shannon! This one came out great!

Dave, thanks!! I owe you some pictures soon!
Take care..

 

[Varga Knives]

Great job, I love the design and can't wait to see how it turns out. You're learning a lot of things along the way but you should also definately ask questions before trying anything out you're unsure of. It's all too easy to scrap it at any point with one stupid mistake - speaking from experience.

I've never had the wheel climb while cutting the lockbar. You should take passes part way through the Ti and keep running it lightly until the wheel punches through. BTW, I like Proxxon 1/32" disks and never the reinforced (not that you used them) in my experience. Drilling holes on both sides will help in that last little bit you couldn't get also also helps in stress relief.

Mark

 

[Shannon Carter]

Great job, I love the design and can't wait to see how it turns out. You're learning a lot of things along the way but you should also definately ask questions before trying anything out you're unsure of. It's all too easy to scrap it at any point with one stupid mistake - speaking from experience.

I've never had the wheel climb while cutting the lockbar. You should take passes part way through the Ti and keep running it lightly until the wheel punches through. BTW, I like Proxxon 1/32" disks and never the reinforced (not that you used them) in my experience. Drilling holes on both sides will help in that last little bit you couldn't get also also helps in stress relief.

Mark

Mark, thanks for the tips, I really appreciate it! I was definitely being aggressive with the disks. And thanks for the information about the Proxxon disks, too. I'll do a search for them.

Thank you again..
Shannon

 

[Shannon Carter]

Okay, time to open things up for the pivot and bearings. I'm using Alpha Knife Supply 3/16" pivot and bearings. In this picture I have started the bearing pocket on the Ti frame. The outside diameter on the AKS bearings is .382, so I'm using a 25/64" counterbore with a 3/16" pilot.

So this is where I bored a little then measured a little.. bored a little then measured a little.. bored just a little more then measured just a little more.. so on and so on..

Since the AKS bearings are .0625" deep and I wanted to leave about .018" clearance (for the detent ball) between the blade and the frame, I needed my bearing pockets to be .044" deep.. this seemed to be a good way to measure them. Another way I measured them was to put the bearings in the pocket and measure the thickness of the frame plus the bearings with the calipers jaws... that worked just fine, too.

Desired depth of .044"

I knew that I needed a washer on the carbon fiber side of the frame for the bearings to roll against. These washers also came from Alpha Knife Supply and are .020" thick, so I had to counterbore the carbon fiber .064 to compensate for the washer thickness.

Starting the counterbore on the CF frames.

Desired depth with the washer in the pocket.

Flipped the CF scale over and started an outside pocket for the pivot. This was more of a test at this point since I later thin the scales down on the surface grinder. I used 19/64" counterbores for the outside of the pivot hole to give the AKS 3/16" pivots enough clearance.

Starting the 19/64" counterbore on the Ti frame. Here you can see where the already-bent-lockbar caused some issues - I had to hang the frame off of the edge of the 1-2-3 block.

The depth on the pivot was once again a guestimate.

I'm using the domed pivots from AKS and there are several ways to trim them down, but I didn't do that until the knife was finished. And I needed to leave enough meat on the inside of the hole so this much was sticking up.

Better view.

Here you can already see that the pivot will need to be shortened.

Another view..

Okay, next steps were to spot and drill a hole for the detent. I struggled with this!

You can see in this picture that I should have marked my hole a little closer to the inside corner of the lockbar. I didn't know if I would have enough clearance for the drill bit, or not, but turns out that I did.. I just drilled it too far away from the corner. It still worked, and worked well, but I will explain in pictures later as to how I could/should have done a better job of positioning the hole.

Marking the hole.

Pre-bent-lockbar.. I should have known better. Anyway, here I am drilling the detent hole with a #55 bit. I had test drilled a few holes in scrap titanium before this just to practice, and thought I had it all figured out, but I made a big mistake on this one....

...and the bit broke in the frame!

My first thought was, well.. lets start over... next thought was.. time to throw it in acid and see if I can dissolve the bit. But then I realized that I was almost through the titanium with the drill bit!

Clamped the frame to a 1-2-3 block and used a flat punch to force the drill bit back through the hole a little. This left just enough poking out the other side to be grabbed with a pair of pliers. Luck!

Finally... a detent hole! And you can see that I had more than enough room to move the hole closer to the corner of the lockbar.

All for now...

Thanks again...

Shannon

 

[Ken H>]

Shannon - Just today I got to read your thread. THANK YOU!!! for the great work you've done posting and documenting the WIP. I'm sure looking forward to seeing the final product. I've made a few slipjoints, and replacement blades for a couple of Buck folders I had for years with broken blades. Now, I'm ready to try a framelock and your WIP is surely going to ease my way.

Ken H>

 

[Larsje100]

Thanks for all the pictures! This thread contains alot of information.

 

[Shannon Carter]

Shannon - Just today I got to read your thread. THANK YOU!!! for the great work you've done posting and documenting the WIP. I'm sure looking forward to seeing the final product. I've made a few slipjoints, and replacement blades for a couple of Buck folders I had for years with broken blades. Now, I'm ready to try a framelock and your WIP is surely going to ease my way.

Ken H>

Ken, absolutely! I wanted to hit a couple of marks with this thread.. 1.) To be as detailed as possible with the steps and pictures. 2.) Highlight the areas where I feel I made mistakes... and that was really important to me. I still search for WIP threads.. quite often, actually. Just something about seeing the steps people take to create something. And that's exactly what I hope to do with this thread. Thank you for the comment... I really appreciate it!

 

[Shannon Carter]

Thanks for all the pictures! This thread contains alot of information.

No problem at all... I couldn't believe how many pictures I accumulated on my phone during this build. I'm anxious to keep it going and hope others are enjoying watching it progress.
I appreciate the comment!

Take care,
Shannon

 

[morgaj1]

Looking forward to the rest of the build!

 

[Shannon Carter]

Looking forward to the rest of the build!

Thanks! I'm working on the next set of pics now.. time to start profiling the blade!