This is my first knife made out of a nicolson file, g10 handle, some metal rods from home depot for pins and a 17 HMR bullet casing for the lanyard tube, epoxied with devcon 2 ton. I did the aneal and HT myself just because i wanted to do it on my first blade. I will be sending the rest off for proper HT and will be using either O1 or 1095 from now on.
After being in Afghanistan the first time I carried a pocket knife and a large fixed blade. I realised that i ended up using my pocket knife 95% of the time. So my goal for this knife was a small fixed blade that i could fix to my belt or vest. something small enough to be handy but stout enough to take some abuse. I am looking forward to using this when I deploy back to Afghanistan. By the way I was 11B( infantry) but unit recently transitioned into a 19D (cav Scout) unit.
This is what i ended up with. I took a few ideas from some photos I have seen and combined them into an ideal knife for me.
About the knife. I didnt get the plunge line as pronounced as I wanted. I left the blade a little thick towards the edge and I had to make a secondary bevel to put the final edge on, not a big deal but it just hurt the appearence of the knife IMHO. So far on some testing i have done the knife has a decent balance on hardness and being able to be sharpened fairly easy. It holds an edge decent but it is very easy to sharpen. I think if somebody puts a really good edge on it that it will hold better(im not the best at sharpening knives).
Tools I used where very limited. I had a 4inch angle grinder with a 1/16 cut off wheel and a 1/4 abrasive wheel. I borrowed my dads 4" x 24" hand held belt sander and set it upside down and used that for most of the flat grind(that is why my plunge line ended up tapered). The belts I had was a 120 grit and a 40 grit. Then I had a round file a double cut bastard and a triangular and a chainsaw file. It took me around 8 hours to complete and im still not happy with the edge and bevel.
I just want to thank everybody on this site for all the help and info I have been gathering over the last two weeks I couldnt have done this without you guys. This is the first of many!!!
Please feel free to ask questions and give me some constructive critisizm also. Thanks.
After being in Afghanistan the first time I carried a pocket knife and a large fixed blade. I realised that i ended up using my pocket knife 95% of the time. So my goal for this knife was a small fixed blade that i could fix to my belt or vest. something small enough to be handy but stout enough to take some abuse. I am looking forward to using this when I deploy back to Afghanistan. By the way I was 11B( infantry) but unit recently transitioned into a 19D (cav Scout) unit.
This is what i ended up with. I took a few ideas from some photos I have seen and combined them into an ideal knife for me.
About the knife. I didnt get the plunge line as pronounced as I wanted. I left the blade a little thick towards the edge and I had to make a secondary bevel to put the final edge on, not a big deal but it just hurt the appearence of the knife IMHO. So far on some testing i have done the knife has a decent balance on hardness and being able to be sharpened fairly easy. It holds an edge decent but it is very easy to sharpen. I think if somebody puts a really good edge on it that it will hold better(im not the best at sharpening knives).
Tools I used where very limited. I had a 4inch angle grinder with a 1/16 cut off wheel and a 1/4 abrasive wheel. I borrowed my dads 4" x 24" hand held belt sander and set it upside down and used that for most of the flat grind(that is why my plunge line ended up tapered). The belts I had was a 120 grit and a 40 grit. Then I had a round file a double cut bastard and a triangular and a chainsaw file. It took me around 8 hours to complete and im still not happy with the edge and bevel.
I just want to thank everybody on this site for all the help and info I have been gathering over the last two weeks I couldnt have done this without you guys. This is the first of many!!!
Please feel free to ask questions and give me some constructive critisizm also. Thanks.
