Follow up to Gathering Grind-In -- a solo effort

Col Defender

Col Defender

Joined
Nov 11, 2011
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As I've said I had a great time at the gathering and especially the knife making part. Thanks again to Ethan, Todd, James, Matt, Eric and others who taught us and assisted us. I am very happy with my little knife but also more than a little conscious of the fact that all the experts had a watchful eye on every step of the process, answered every question and at times, had hands on themselves. My conclusion therefore is that I cannot take a whole lot of credit for the success of my little "grind-in knife".

So i am going to try this on my own and see how it all comes out. About a week ago I got some 1084 and have roughed out two blanks. Today I got a couple of small tools and some cocobolo. Here it all is and we shall see how it turns out. If it turns out OK I hope to deer hunt with the larger of the two knives and the smaller one....well for now I am just calling it my sub-tweener since it is bigger than an 11/14 but smaller than the Becker 15, 16 and 17.



We'll see how it all turns out.:o
 
Here are the results from this afternoon. I'm reasonably content with the blade profile now but will try to slim it down a bit. I'm using a 2x42 Sears single speed belt sander and so far an 80 grit belt. I'm thinking I should now switch to a finer belt to get scratches out but all I have is 600. Nothing in between. One problem I seem to have is I tend to lose the point and it ends up blunted. So far I've done OK on restoring it by shaving the spine down. Obviously I don't know much about what I am doing so it's trial and error pretty much. ANY ADVICE FROM ANYONE WILL BE MUCH APPRECIATED!!! And thank you.


 
Col Defender said:
Obviously I don't know much about what I am doing so it's trial and error pretty much. ANY ADVICE FROM ANYONE WILL BE MUCH APPRECIATED!!! And thank you.
Click to expand...
You are doing great (IMO) all the same. I had a woodworking friend who referred to those "whoops" - as in "whoops! I took off a little too much steel..." - as "design opportunities". Everybody gets a couple, on most projects, wood or steel. Looks like you're gonna roll with it anyway. I only know (nothing about) you from BF, but you don't seem like the kind of person who wouldn't just forge ahead.

Still, that all caps part made me laff.
 
My advice is buy a belt or 10 between 80 grit and 600 grit and keep grinding!

(If you knew how sad the blade looked that I made, you would ignore any and everything I say about knife making.)
 
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Colonel, very cool that you ventured off on your own to do this! I'm eager to see how these turn out.
 
Colonel, I generally go from 60/80 to 120 then 220 -- all of which I'm out of, but i did pick up some 2x42 j-flex 320 grit belts at blade.
if you want one of them and aren't in a huge hurry, I could drop one off on Saturday, since I'll probably either be in KC at the highland games or at psyop's house working on the chicken coop of doom.
 
Wow - thanks vik but I talked Psyop out of a 220 and also have some on order so I should be fine. Thanks for the offer and please have safe travels.
 
First one is almost ready for heat treating. Plan is to improvise a little forge with charcoal in a tiny cast iron stove with my shop vac reversed. We shall see!
 
I'd guess the losing the point thing is a pressure issue. There's less metal around the point, and thus the belt will remove metal faster there. So you need slightly less pressure. You can also always use files to help true things up and clean up the plunge.
 
I find that when sharpening knives on a 1x30, it's very easy to both put a recurve on the blade, and lose the point of the knife.
I keep the point by taking the knife off when the point of the blade hits the middle of the belt, instead of drawing it all the way through.
 


So here's my second knife and the first one I did without expert supervision. Pretty happy with it and will call it a sub-tweener until I think of some
better name. Shown with a saber grind BK-16 for size comparison.

Any suggestions for a name for this guy?

Thanks

CD
 
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