First knife pics. Thanks for all the help and advice!

[steveo83]

Calling it my first knife is a little bit of a stretch, I've mucked around on the grinder before and put together a couple of kit knives. But this is the first knife I've finished all the way from grinding the blade, heat treating it, and adding a handle.

I need to give it an edge though... this scares the hell out of me. I'll do some searching and find out how to go about it. I would hate to screw it up now.

This whole knife was actually just a rush experiment - something to fill the time while the glue was drying on the main knife I'm working on. I wanted to see if the burl I had laying around was any good, and just wanted to try a few other things out.

I have a bunch of knife pics on my hard drive, I found one that I liked and drew inspiration from it. No idea who made the original and apologies if this is your design.

This is 3/16" O1 stock, all grinding done post heat-treat. I wanted to see how difficult/easy it was to grind small blades entirely after HT. Blade length 4.5", Overall length just shy of 10".

Far from perfect, but it was a good learning experience and I thought It worth finishing up. Hopefully I'll have some better work to show when I get around to finishing the other one.

Thanks for all the help and advice getting me to this point!

 

[David Wesner]

Excellent first knife ! :thumbup:

Good design, good job grinding, good job finishing :thumbup:

And clean. Nothing, imho, catches the eye faster than clean work.

Very well done.

And fwiw, grinding thin stock post HT is the only way to go :thumbup:


Keep up the good work Steveo.

 

[sunshadow]

Nice looking piece, how are you holding the scales on?

-Page

 

[steveo83]

Nice looking piece, how are you holding the scales on?

-Page

Thanks guys.

Holding the scales on with Araldite. Tang was drilled for mosaic pins + hollow ground for weight reduction but I ended up leaving the pins off in the end. Blasphemy I know. I'm hoping (foolishly?) that the holes + hollow grind will give a decent epoxy bond.

Cheers

 

[sunshadow]

Thanks guys.

Holding the scales on with Araldite. Tang was drilled for mosaic pins + hollow ground for weight reduction but I ended up leaving the pins off in the end. Blasphemy I know. I'm hoping (foolishly?) that the holes + hollow grind will give a decent epoxy bond.

Cheers

Epoxy will not hold through wood swelling and shrinking, nor is it good with shear forces, metal dimensional change with temperature, or flexing through hard misuse. Hold on to this one yourself, don't give it away, be prepared to re-glue it a few times. Pins are good for keeping everything put so that the things that break epoxy bonds don't get out of hand

-Page

 

[bobbywett]

Beautiful work for your 1st:thumbup:

 

[Dixieblade57]

I like it!:thumbup:
All except for the coil at the end of the blade edge, and that is a personal thing. I know alot of folks are doing that but somehow I just can't get past it
I think on the next one I would definitely use pins though! Epoxy is tough and the glue pockets help but when it comes to the force excreted with dropping something, sheer force needs to be countered by pins. IMO

 

[Hengelo_77]

Very well done, it looks nice and clean!
If you don't like the look of pins, you can use hidden pins to over come the problem of no pins.

Sharpening my first knive also scared the hell out of me.
I like diamond sharpeners. You'll get a 150/300/400 gritt set off ebay for a less then $10,-
I prefer to clamp the knife to a table and move the sharpeners at a 20-degree angle.
Make a reverence block, and every few passes put the sharpener on it to keep your angle.
If you have a triangle with one 90-degree angle and it's legs 1:3, the smallest angle is exactly 20-degrees.

 

[lonepine]

Nice, really, really nice. I look forward to seeing the "main knife" now.

I put choils on most of my knives. I feel they are useful for the sharpening process.

LonePine
AKA Paul Meske, Wisconsin