First Knife Completed

[sintro]

After buying several knives, I decided it was time to make one of my own. So after much research on Bladeforums and Iforgeiron I set off.
First I bought some 1/4x1.5x12 inch 1084 with vanadium from usaknifemaker and started grinding it out with a dremel

Also, I used a HF 1x30 grinder for most of the grinding.

Took probably 1.5 hours because I had no c clamps or vise at the time, wore through a bunch of reinforced dremel cutoff wheels but it got the job done.

Luckily I'm in a metals and manufacturing course and school and I try unlike other students so the teacher likes me. So He let use the surface grinder to grind the blade down. Unfortunately forgot to charge my phone a few times during this process so I have no pictures of heat treatment or actual surface grinding. Got the blade to about 1/8, maybe a little thicker.

Next I tried grinding in some bevels on a bench grinder at school that was really hollowed out(now I know about this metal grinding metal to fix that though), and the bevels ended up really uneven and crappy.

And finally I started up the forge, set the thermostat at 1550 and heated the blade till nonmagnetic and then another minute.

Pic of the forge heating up

Picture of thermostat and start/stop buttons

Picture of gas system and ignition system

Did the file test and was golden.

It was the towards the end of class so I had to hurry up and wasn't thinking right, so I set the forge to 400 degrees and closed the doors. Didn't realize the forge was gonna stay so hot for so long. I came back after the end of the school day two hours later and the forge had only cooled down to about 500 degrees! Did the file test and the file bit pretty good...

So next day I normalized and day after quenched and tempered to straw yellow.

Like I said, I wasn't happy with the bevels, so I ended up flat grinding it with 80 grit belts from harbor freight

I knew that my first knife wasn't going to be phenomnal, so I skimped on handle material and bought some JB weld marine weld.

Cut the handle blocks out

All trimmed up. Kinda messed up one one scale, accidentaly ground on the side that contacts the blade, and could never get it even, but didn't have enough belts to make another one so I just left it.

And now all stained and poly'd

Need some advice on the epoxy. Should I have used less or was this an appropriate amount?

Epoxy drying up. You can see the on the right scale where I sanded on the inside, bit of a gap.

Thought I'd be able to get the pins flush with sanding, but wasn't able to without biting into the finish on the wood. So I had to stain and poly the handles while they were on the blade and must've done too thick a layer and got drips since I did both sides at once and had it lying up vertical. Thought the grips might go away with a few more coats, but no. So I sanded down yet again ! Knew I should've used painters tape rather than scotch clear tape. STILL don't have all of it off! Oh well, lesson learned. Got all the poly on the metal off with some acetone pretty easy, just took a little bit of scraping.

Not the best picture, but the handles turn out the same as in the previous pictures after all the sanding and stuff. Also, the metal has a coating of nasal sebum so it looks a bit blurry.

Oh, forgot to mention, I mirror polished the blade twice and on the second time got no scratches, well only a couple. But everytime I used the blade, I'd get scratches, so I roughed it up with a 3000 grit belt so one doesn't see the scratches as well.

Towards the end of this project I bought a 3M 6300 half mask respirator with 2097 filters.

Overall I learned a few things.
-Don't sand the part of the scale that touches the metal
-Don't mirror polish a blade
-Sand the handle corners down alot!
-Do 90% of your grinding before heat treat(left my cutting edge at least 2/32 or 3/32 thick, thought it'd combat warping)

Thanks to all the great forumers here and at Iforgeiron for making this possible.

Next project this summer is to make a paring knife with some micarta and AEB-L(with professional heat treat of course).

 

[Varga Knives]

Congratulations and welcome to the club! As a recent first timer myself I can argree with you that the most valuable lessons are the mistakes. Great job and I hope you got an A.

 

[fumbler]

Congratulations. That knife is good for a first one and finishing the first can be a pretty big obstacle.

Honestly it's pretty rough looking. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that though as long as you improve on the next one. You're still young and if you continue paying attention to the details and soaking up info then you'll be turning out some good work.

How's it feel? Do you like the handle shape? Does it fit your hand as well as you'd like?
How's it cut? The edge looks thick but it's hard to tell without handling it.
Those are some of the things you should ask yourself as you design your next knife.

As far as your question about glue...put on enough that glue gets squeezed out all the way around the scale, however much that requires.
You can clean up the excess with acetone.

 

[sintro]

I like how wide the handle is, just not those top corners, they need to be taken down way more. Also the edge is thick, but more sturdy than thick, but it could be thinner. Right behind the edge is about 1/3 the width of the spine which is about 1/8. I wanted to keep it a bit thick so it'd have more weight to chop with.

Is there anything specific that looks rough to you fumbler?

 

[fumbler]

It's mainly the deeper scratches in the second to last pic. Also the corners on the scales, but you already mentioned that.

You could do some more handle shaping and just refinish the scales while they're on the knife if you want.

Have you experimented much with wood finishes? Polyurethane is excellent for its durability but it can be rather plastic-ish in appearance. If you use wood again try out some Tru-oil or tung oil on a piece of scrap handle material to see if you like it. Oil finishes are usually better looking and bring out the grain a little better. They're also easy to apply (though they need more coats). They aren't as durable as most polys but they're durable enough.

Don't take anything I've said the wrong way. I think you did a good job, I just want to help you out with some feedback.

 

[sintro]

How long do oil finishes usually last? I always think of them evaporating for some reason.

Yeah some of those scratches were from cheap chromium oxide, but a few from being lazy with sanding at the heel of the blade.

Don't worry, not taking anything badly. I just want to learn from someone who knows more than I.

 

[fumbler]

It depends on the oil. They don't evaporate and disappear but some do weather away easier than others (you could be thinking of linseed oil). The oils you want to use would be tung oil based like true oil, blended tung oil, or danish oil. You let them soak into the wood then they cure ("dry") into a hard finish. Basically the wood soaks up the oil, you wipe off the excess oil, then the oil hardens. Oils dry very thin so you have to apply a few coats before they start to build up on the surface. This is different than polys which penetrate into the wood very little and mostly sit on top of the wood and form a shell.

A good oil finish would last a lifetime unless you use it pretty hard. Have you ever seen a nice wood stock on a rifle or shotgun? Almost all nice wood on guns is finished with oil and the only ones I've seen that were worn out were used heavily for target shooting.
Touching up oil is easy too. You just make sure the surface is clean and wipe on another coat. Touching up poly can be tougher because the new coat often has trouble adhering to the older coats.

 

[Willie71]

Under heavy use, I have had to touch up oil finishes once a year or so. I find it takes 10-14 days to do an oil finish to fully saturate the oil into the wood and get the polish I like because each coat takes 24h to dry.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Good first knife.

After HT, sand the bevels down to about .010 or less before sharpening. The knife will cut much better.

Applied finishes on handle wood will rub off with use. Most folks use fine sandpaper and/or steel wool, and remove it down to the wood, leaving the pores sealed, but the wood exposed. 4/0 steel wool will put a nice sheen on the wood.

As you have discovered, a mirror finish is not going to stay that way. A satin finish is much easier to maintain. Sand up to 1000 grit, and then carefully sand back down the grits to the desired satin look.

 

[sintro]

Thanks for the tips on doing a satin finish Stacy. Once my handle gets scratches up enough, I might just sand it like you described too.

I actually got my heat treat process for 1084 from a post you made(even though now I know it's pretty generic, but still).