First knife design critique / WIP (Almost Finished)

[wayneblocker5369]

What Hoss said , show us some dirty stuff! But a clean shop is a good
thing too. And safe. I must say, following along with your work it's been kinda like looking over your shoulder an cant wait for her to come back from ht. An......... I still hope you keep her. If not I am open for adoption. LOL.

 

[Ocelot85]

What Hoss said , show us some dirty stuff! But a clean shop is a good
thing too. And safe. I must say, following along with your work it's been kinda like looking over your shoulder an cant wait for her to come back from ht. An......... I still hope you keep her. If not I am open for adoption. LOL.

I've always been that way about cleaning up to be honest, part of it is my own OCD and part of it is from working in machine shops for years where you would get wrote up for not cleaning up every night so part of it is just habit. Waiting is hard to get it back, but I think the results will be worth it. I think with doing batch processing I should have the other ones complete by the time the first one returns. We'll see though I've been having life smack me with a big stick lately, hopefully I'll be able keep up with the progress.

 

[Ocelot85]

Dude, what we actually make as knife makers is dirt. After you sweep up, there should be a knife left. Let’s have a pic with some dirt.

Hoss

What Hoss said , show us some dirty stuff! But a clean shop is a good
thing too. And safe. I must say, following along with your work it's been kinda like looking over your shoulder an cant wait for her to come back from ht. An......... I still hope you keep her. If not I am open for adoption. LOL.

Am I doing it right now guys?

Roughed them all within around 1/16th of the scribe lines, have a good night gentlemen!

 

[wayneblocker5369]

LMAO,the top one is just great. Staying busy sometimes is the best way to hit life back with that big stick.

 

[Ocelot85]

So the knife is back from heat treating, I got it yesterday. Everything looks great, and Peter's are true professionals.

I started grinding of the blade to bring it to final edge thickness, it's around .030 thick at the edge now. During the process the plunge got pushed back too far on one side, so I evened the plunge out by pushing it back to the edge of the sharpening notch. I think it still looks good this way, though I had intended for it to bisect the notch before.

Thats after just grinding with a fresh 60 grit ceramic belt. Then I'll go to 120 ceramic, Trizact A30 / A45 and then hand sanding. Though I kind of like a belt finish on a user knife.

Sorry I didn't update with anything else, I didn't get a chance to work on the others over the last two weeks. I've been extremely busy at work, hopefully I'll have more time for this soon.

 

[wayneblocker5369]

The belt finish is great for a working knife, l only finish them up on higher end ones . I will but prefer not to do presentation grade. Like the full flat grind also. wayne

 

[JTknives]

Just tossing this out there if you need singles done agian. We do quite a bit of small batches. If you send just one blade it’s $15 but 2 or more is $10 each. We also offer surface grinding and cnc plasma cutting. Your blade looks nice

 

[Ocelot85]

The belt finish is great for a working knife, l only finish them up on higher end ones . I will but prefer not to do presentation grade. Like the full flat grind also. wayne

I have one half sanded it was slow going, so I decided to order some 60 grit redline paper to help get some of the belt marks out it should be here Thursday. I'm loading a dumpster now with demolition debris from tearing down all of the old wood paneling in the shop so I can have an electrician come in and replace my old box and run new 220 outlets. I also need to put some insulation and a vapor barrier up so I have a lot of work on the shop itself as well during this process.

Just tossing this out there if you need singles done agian. We do quite a bit of small batches. If you send just one blade it’s $15 but 2 or more is $10 each. We also offer surface grinding and cnc plasma cutting. Your blade looks nice

Thanks for the offer I'll consider it, one of the reasons I also went with Peters is because they're only 40 minutes from where I live and I can easily drop off batches to save on shipping charges. I'll think about it for singles though.

 

[wayneblocker5369]

How many apps will the upgrade b
Senior elect. for our county school disc. For 33years,glad to hear your doing work on the shop, you cant have enough of light, lol. LED?
wayne

 

[Ocelot85]

How many apps will the upgrade b
Senior elect. for our county school disc. For 33years,glad to hear your doing work on the shop, you cant have enough of light, lol. LED?
wayne

It's just a sub-box it'll only be 50 amps, it's 30 at the moment. All the lights I've put up at LED lights they're just 4 foot 4500 lumen ones with a 110 plug, I've chained together 4 of them together over the bench and then my swivel neck light at 300+ lumens works good enough so far.

In the process of hand sanding this thing, I got impatient and I was also curious what the B.T.E thickness of this would be so I put an edge on it. At 18 DPS it's .03 B.T.E. I'm satisfied with how well it's taking at edge at 60 RC. I have 7 more blanks after this so perhaps I'll progressively go thinner and find out the limits of this heat treatment and steel over time.

That's up to my .3 micron diamond lapping films, it push cuts recipe paper and phone book paper pretty easily. Good enough for most peoples EDC's or hunters. After I do some testing I'll either thin it out some more or continue with hand finishing it and then putting on the handle.

 

[Ocelot85]

I'm about placement for my etching my name, what do you guys think of spine etches for that?

 

[GoldSkula]

Maybe under the belly of the handle?

 

[wayneblocker5369]

I guess it must be a new thing, the ones I have seen look good. But I still am old school for the most part an prefer the Ricoso mark.

 

[Natlek]

0.03 BTE = 0.762mm BTE ???? It is way to thick for that small knife .Sharp knife is one thing , knife that cut good is another story . You grind plunge in almost straight angle which is very , very bad idea .You need RADIUS there not straight angle .You will never find anywhere part that when need to step in thickness have sharp step like your plunge on that knife ....Radius make that part of knife much stronger ,very much stronger ......That notch is in wrong place , too .It is used in knife /except for look / to get rid of that radius in plunge for easy sharpening ........

 

[Ocelot85]

0.03 BTE = 0.762mm BTE ???? It is way to thick for that small knife .Sharp knife is one thing , knife that cut good is another story . You grind plunge in almost straight angle which is very , very bad idea .You need RADIUS there not straight angle .You will never find anywhere part that when need to step in thickness have sharp step like your plunge on that knife ....Radius make that part of knife much stronger ,very much stronger ......That notch is in wrong place , too .It is used in knife /except for look / to get rid of that radius in plunge for easy sharpening ........

This is a starting point for thickness, I did mention already that I may go thinner on this knife in the previous post and I did say I would go progressively thinner in future knives to see what the heat treat from Peters can handle with this steel and design. Everything done so far is all subject to change as I experiment and continue learning.

As far the plunge line there are many other knives out there with this plunge design. This isn't meant to be a hard use survival knife. If it becomes a problem I'll change it though.

I mentioned in previous posts that the plunge was pushed back behind the notch because they became uneven during the course of finish grinding and no longer bisected the notch evenly. The choice to change it was made for aesthetic reasons since the plunges where not perfectly even at that point. Future knives will have the plunge aim to bisect the notch.

This design will see plenty of testing, and I'll make improvements according to that testing and feedback I get from others.

 

[Ocelot85]

I guess it must be a new thing, the ones I have seen look good. But I still am old school for the most part an prefer the Ricoso mark.

Ricasso mark is my first thought, but I have a long last name and if the font is too small it could be difficult to read. I've seen some people around here doing spine marks and the ones I've seen looked good. I might try both and see how they turn out on different knives.

 

[Natlek]

This is a starting point for thickness, I did mention already that I may go thinner on this knife in the previous post and I did say I would go progressively thinner in future knives to see what the heat treat from Peters can handle with this steel and design. Everything done so far is all subject to change as I experiment and continue learning.

Well , you do that the opposite way .To change BTE you need to grind whole side of both bevels . You don t need seven knives to find what kind of edge can handle your steel .Grind this one to zero edge and start from there ...............That way you can test different angles and different thickness behind edge because with every sharpening you will have +BTE thickness ..Do that till you satisfied how edge perform ...........
That's the way I do to find sweet spot on edge for my HSS knives .....
About sharpening notch ...... that thing is wise to do last , when knife are finished and ready for sharpening exactly to avoid that what was happened with your knife .

 

[Ocelot85]

Well , you do that the opposite way .To change BTE you need to grind whole side of both bevels . You don t need seven knives to find what kind of edge can handle your steel .Grind this one to zero edge and start from there ...............That way you can test different angles and different thickness behind edge because with every sharpening you will have +BTE thickness ..Do that till you satisfied how edge perform ...........
That's the way I do to find sweet spot on edge for my HSS knives .....
About sharpening notch ...... that thing is wise to do last , when knife are finished and ready for sharpening exactly to avoid that what was happened with your knife .

When starting thicker and with a more obtuse edge it's easy to continue removing material and going more acute on the edge angle. I can test multiple thicknesses and edge angles this way as well even on the same knife. I'm just approaching with this method out of caution, it's easier to fix mistakes when you leave more material. Both methods will work fine I understand what you're saying and perhaps I'll try that method in the future.

As far as the plunge line bisecting the notch, I plan on leaving the plunge slightly short now and only taking it back to the middle of the notch once I'm at the desired thickness.

 

[wayneblocker5369]

Grinding to zero is a full flat all the way. Yes, bte does become greater as you sharpen away material. The you lose being able to do convect or hollow.and you can grind any degree of angle for testing without grinding to ZERO.
Wayne.

 

[Fiddleback]

Made a new design template tonight, and once I finished that and got everything the way I wanted it I progressed and moved onto the real thing. Bottom right is my first 440C version, it's completely profiled and drilled. I verified that the holes are centered, they're within .01 of the handle center line and I'm satisfied with that. I'm going to take it to a surface grinder, and grind the decarb monday most likely. I want to get it precision flat before I start grinding the primary bevels.

I just want to mention too that I got all of the steel and handle materials from Pop's Knife Supply and I am very pleased. They shipped everything extremely fast, and they even refunded me a few dollars on shipping! The price was the best I could find as well!

Thanks for looking and all the feedback everyone!

Hey, love to see that Ameribrade. I use them as well. And also thanks for mentioning Pops. I am one of the owners, and I appreciate that as well.

I like the change you made to the handle. It needed to be longer. I like the design especially for a first. Its simple and repeatable and not ridiculous. Most of my apprentices wanted to start with a big bowie, and I made them make 5 pukkos first. Your grinds look stellar for a first knife. Nice work so far. Interested to see more.