First Knife

G

Guilo

Joined
Aug 30, 2007
Messages
181
Ok, I am making my first knife out of an old rusty file. I have used a bench grinder and cold water to shape it into a tanto blade. However, I have run into a few problems. The is going to be a folding knife, and I want to either use a liner or frame lock because of how simple these mechanisms seem to be to make. I am leaning towards the frame lock because it is more durable than the liner.

Questions:

1) I have a drill press, but what size bit should I use, and what material drill bit should I use to drill the pivot pin's hole?

2) Will some thick sheet metal work well for making the handle/framelock?

3) What should I use for the pivot pin?

4) What size should the stop pin be, and should it be a screw or a piece of an old drill bit?

5) Is there anything I should know?


I know, I should've started with a fixed blade, but the truth is, I prefer folders, and would never use a fixed blade anyways.

Thanks,
Guilo
 
Good luck on drilling a hole in the file, not sure it can be done. If so I suggest you start with what you can find for pin material and thickness. Typically on a small folder you may want a 3/32 pin larger 1/8. The same material can be used on the stop. The lock on the liner needs to be heat treated to work properly and to spring back more than once. This means a high carbon steel or a stainless that can be tempered to a spring. You may want to consider making a friction folder which does not require a liner or lock. Maybe search the forum for some ideas.

Good luck.
 
Heat is your friend
you will want to look into setting yourself up with a "one brick forge" or something like that, anneal your blade, do your drilling etc. then heat treat it and temper it, Practice on another piece of same material so you don't ruin what you have a lot of work into. Drilling a file as hardened will eat anything but a diamond drill bit. Drilling an annealed file can be done with a normal sears bit and oil. I don't yet make folders (really should get up the balls to try one) so I am not the best person to answer your other questions (I'm probably not the best one to answer this one either, but I haven't seen any of the experts chime in yet) :D

-Page
 
Ok, thanks. I forgot to mention that the blade is around 3 inches long. Heat treating could be a problem... I don't think I have access to the right equipment to do that... would a backlock maybe be easier?

EDIT: 1 brick forge... never heard of it. I just looked it up on yahoo, and have one question. Will a propane torch work well enough?
 
The problem is you will not be able to drill a hole in the material you currently have. I doubt that you can temper a blade with a propane torch, you may be able to heat treat a carbon steel like o1 or 1095 you only have to achieve about 1500 F. Email me your address and I will send you a piece you can cut out for a blade, I have alot of small pieces sitting about. You may be best to try a friction folder, just a block of wood or stag with a blade. Search this forum and you will most likely come up with some examples.
 
Guilo, welcome to the forums. Filling out your profile will help.

You need to learn more before you proceed.

Get some books on making knives, and one on making pocket knives. There is a lot that you don't understand right now (as is obvious by your post) and you need to take your time and prepare for the job, which includes study. You will be far ahead in the long run to approach it that way.

Think of a surgeon who was doing an operation and after he had the patient cut open went to post a question on www.surgicalforums.com , about how to procede..... See where I'm going. Bound to be a problem if not a complete failure.

BTW, one of the classic rules of knife making is to drill holes and make notches prior to HT.

Stacy
 
If you like videos, then watch these 4 video's by greenpete.

part one
part two
part three
part four

You will want to anneal it or just get some tool steel. as well as being really hard, wide files for the most part are thick. If you want a nice folder, befriend someone with a surface grinder!

good luck!
 
It is too thick, I know of someone with a belt grinder and he may have a surface grinder, I don't know, I will ask him. It is currently .095" thick, I am going to probably get it down to the width of my Buck 503, which is .085" if he has a surface grinder. Those measurments were at the thickest part of the blade.

What books would you guys recommend?

Thanks for the videos.
 
"Wayne Goddard's $50 knife shop" is a good one.

I checked out "Step-by-Step Knife making" by David Boye at my local library and fount it to be useful.
 
Jim Hrisoulis' book Complete bladesmith is expensive, but had some good info. Start with Goddard's book.

-Page
 
Agree with PCR knives that drilling a hole will be practically impossible, I ruin enough good drill bits drilling annealed steel but drilling a file will be futile. Most are hardened to around 62 Rockwell I believe. Unless you can figure out someway to anneal it first you are going to go through a lot of difficulty and frustration. I would do what some say above and get a good book or two to read first. Another thing is I started with a bench grinder as well and let me tell you it is not as easy as it looks to grind a blade on it. It will take some major practice even if your learning curve is really fast.
 
Yeah, already used the bench grinder, and it was difficult, however, I used the flat side of one of the wheels, so that made it a little simpler. It is still too thick though, so I am going to try to work on that soon. The flat side of the bench grinder actually works well on this. I am now at the point, however, where I about have to set up a forge and anneal the blade to get any farther.
 
Guilo said:
Yeah, already used the bench grinder, and it was difficult, however, I used the flat side of one of the wheels, so that made it a little simpler. It is still too thick though, so I am going to try to work on that soon. The flat side of the bench grinder actually works well on this. I am now at the point, however, where I about have to set up a forge and anneal the blade to get any farther.
Click to expand...

Don't mean to call out any method a knifemaker uses but let me point out that using the flat side of the bench grinding wheel can be extremely dangerous. When you start wearing off the side of the grinding wheel that can weaken the wheel and throw off the balance and possibly cause it to break off throwing fragments at you at extreme speeds. Super dangerous! I know it's very tempting but I would be very careful doing that. Just my 2 cents!
 
I totally agree with Ray. Maybe there is some sort of steel disk that can be inserted over the threads, so that abrasive can be glued to it.
 
If you really don't want to spend a lot of money starting up this knifemaking hobby you could try using the bench grinder to take off a good amount of the metal (on the end that's made for grinding :-) and then use a file to smooth it out and take off the remainder before hand sanding the finish. It's a lot of work but depending on the amount of knives you are going to make it may be the best method for the money. On second thought filing a hardened file will probably not work too well though. You are going to have to sand and sand and sand and then sand again to finish a hardened file. I truly would just buy a piece of stock for the blade. Texas Knifemakers Supply is fairly cheap and you can send it back for heat treatment. With what you are trying to work with, the extra time you are going to spend making the blade would probably be better spent putting in a few more hours at work and just buying better materials ;-)
 
Ok, thanks for the advice. The wheel is about 2" thick, and I barely used the sides at all, but it is good to know and I don't think I I'll be doing that again.
 
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