Frame lock WIP/how to.

[Jason Magruder]

I had to write a 30 page manual for a technical writing class I took this summer. I thought I'd write about how to make a simple knife. Things somehow got a little out of control though, and I ended up writing about how to make a knife the hard way. No grinder of any kind, no milling machine, no surface grinder, no lathe, and for whatever reason (I still don't know why) no vise. Just a hacksaw, files, a couple of clamps, and a drill press. The idea was to show people just getting into this craft that given enough time, anything that can be done with machines can be done with hand tools. What better knife to demonstrate my file-fu on than a frame lock flipper?

Making this knife took about three times as long as it would have if I had used all of my tools and hadn't stopped every five minutes to take pictures. Besides photos, the biggest waste of time by far was profiling. I was stupid and cut the parts out way oversized with the hacksaw so I had a ton of filing to bring them down to the right size. Luckily there are tons of super cheap tools that will make profiling much quicker and easier. Hopefully anyone that tries to follow my guide will be smart enough to at the very least buy a fifteen dollar angle grinder to profile parts.


Here's the knife as it sits today. I still need to send the blade off to Paul Bos for heat treating and do some final sanding and edge softening on the handle.

If anyone has any questions or advice on any step don't hesitate to tell me. Even if all you want to say is "Wow! That has to be the dumbest way of doing that I've ever seen!" That's cool too.

 

[Jason Magruder]

I used .140 cpm154 for the blade, .125 Ti and .125 carbon fiber for the handle.

Cut the design out and trace it onto the steel and titanium with a sharpie.


Here I've got the blade clamped to the bench to cut it out with the hacksaw.

Make a small notch with a file to give the saw a place to start when cutting shallow angles.

As you can see, I should have cut to the inside of the sharpie lines and not the outside because there is a buttload of filing to do now

My manual surface grinder. 220 grit wet-or-dry is used to take the mill scale off and flatten the blade and the Ti scale. Rub the parts forward and back using as much pressure as possible on the forward stoke to get it done faster. Surprisingly this didn't take much longer than it does to sand out the scratches from my surface grinder. I use water for lube and throw the paper away after only a few strokes. Basically as soon as the cutting action slows down even a little bit I chuck it.

"Surface ground" blade and titanium slab.

 

[Matt Brook]

Sorry I jumped in to quick.

Knife looks damn good for all done by hand too! Well done.

Matt

 

[Jason Magruder]

Use spray adhesive to glue the paper patterns onto the blade and titanium then center punch all of the holes except for the hole for the stop pin in the handle.

Drill all of the holes.

That's it for the moment. I'll post a few more after dinner tonight.

 

[Bailey Knives]

forget dinner!!! more posts. Who needs to eat anyways?

 

[Mike Davis]

Looking good so far! Great knife for a minimalist approach! I applaud you sir.

 

[wolffbite]

AWESOME!

Thank you so much for posting this, I can't wait for the rest of the how to and WIP, will be some great info for people without all the fancy machines

 

[thegeek574]

Holy. Crap. that is sweet. how does it flip?

 

[Pete84]

Subscribed and eagerly awaiting further...

 

[jonnymac44]

Great job on that folder!! I like the way it turned out a lot. Reminds me a bit of a Ken Onion Ripple.

Kudos for taking on this project with limited tools. You probably learned a few new things by doing it mostly by hand. Thanks for the WIP, I'm looking forward to seeing more.

 

[cbwoods67]

You're from Talent? Seems appropriate. This is an awesome thread, and you are giving me all kinds of horribly time consuming ideas.

Thanks

 

[Jason Magruder]

Thanks for the encouragement guys!

I hope some of this can be helpful to someone. I've learned so much from this forum over the years it feels good to give a little back.


Put the pivot pin through the blade and Ti slab then line up the stop pin/thumbstud hole on the blade with the center mark on the handle pattern. Clamp the two together and drill through the blade hole into the handle.

The blade and handle with all of the holes drilled.

Mark what will be the outside face of both handle slabs.

Drill the pivot hole in the carbon fiber.

put the pivot pin through both handle slabs and use the titanium as a drilling guide for the carbon fiber.

After drilling the first hole put an extra drill bit upside down in the hole to keep the two in perfect alignment

Oh yeah, always use a wood block on the drill press table to back up the material you are drilling. move the block for every hole so that you are never drilling into a previous hole. If you accidentally drill into a hole in the drill block that wasn't perfectly centered under the bit it will deflect the bit and ruin your hole.


With a drill bit the same diameter as the heads of the handle screws, set the depth stop so the the shoulder of the drill bit is 1/16" above the drilling block. Use a regular drill bit though. The pilot on this bit just happened to be the same size as the hole I wanted to countersink but they usually aren't. It's a pain in the ass to line these wood bits up perfectly with the hole.

With regular bits you can line up the hole perfectly with the bit by holding the part gently and slowly lowering the bit into the hole. When the spinning bit just starts to touch the material it will pull it into alignment. Once it's aligned clamp it down tight and drill the countersink. A more accurate method is to align the hole with bit the same size as the hole then change bits without moving the part but then it's hard to set the depth accurately and my way is still pretty darn accurate most of the time.

Countersink the pivot hole in the titanium and all of the holes in the carbon except for the stop/thumbstud hole.

 

[Jason Magruder]

Now comes the not as fun part.

Clamp the blade to the side of a hardwood 1x2 clamped to the bench. Or use a vise. I like to sit in a chair when I'm filing though so the board works fine for me.

I treat files like grinding belts. As soon as one starts to get dull I chuck it and get a new one. I mostly use Nicholson files and at about 8 bucks a piece they're actually cheaper than some grinding belts.

Use the biggest rat tail file you can find to remove material fast. Cut a groove every 1/4 inch or so almost down to the layout lines. Use the biggest mill file available to smooth out the grooves and take the profile all the way down to the mark.

Titanium sucks to file.

But it can be done.

Once both parts are profiled, put them together and check the closed knife to see if the tip is inside the handle.

Carefully file away material where the stop pin hits until the tip stops where you want it.

Time to make some ghetto washers because I'm too cheap to pay fifty cents a pair from the supply houses

That's .008 phosphor bronze from Ace Hardware. Alpha Knife Supply has sheets of the stuff for only a couple dollars too.

Clamp the bronze between two pieces of wood and drill two holes the size of the pivot.

Use something round centered over the holes to trace a circle then cut the washers out with scissors. The smaller one goes on the lock side to allow the lock to go past.

All right, that's it for tonight. I'll post more tomorrow night.

Thanks for looking everyone.

 

[Resist]

Thank you so much for posting this. I have been thinking about attempting a locking folder for awhile now and seeing you do it with nothing but simple tools has inspired me to give it a try. I look forward to reading the rest of your tutorial.

 

[Railrider1920]

I had to write a 30 page manual for a technical writing class I took this summer. I thought I'd write about how to make a simple knife.

That is a nice looking knife! Very nice. What kind of grade did you get on the instruction manual?

 

[BenR.T.]

This is awesome! I have been wanting to do a frame lock for a while, I think this is the kick in the butt I needed!

 

[Jason Magruder]

Thegeek, It flips pretty good now. When I first got it put together I was really disappointed but after opening it 50 or so times everything smoothed right out. Lube helps too. I forgot to lube it at first.

Railrider, I have no idea what grade I'll get on the paper. I turned it in Wednesday and grades should be in next Tuesday. I think it came out okay but, who knows? Content-wise I think it will be fine but there were very strict formatting and style specifications for the assignment that were easy to mess up.



Time to make the backspacer. I used Bloodwood to give a neat contrast and because I had a piece sitting on the bench that was already almost the right size. Cut a piece as close to final thickness as possible with the saw then flatten one side with 220 grit

Once one side is perfectly flat trap it on the bench with screws and file it down to a few thousandths over the thickness of the blade and washers.
Use the sandpaper and flat plate to get it perfect after filing.

Lay the handle slab over the backspacer and mark just one of the screw holes.

Drill the first hole then put a drill bit through it before drilling the other holes using the titanium as a guide.

Leave the drill bits in place and put the blade on and trace around the closed blade leaving about a 1/16" gap around the blade. Trace the outside of the handle too.

Mark for clearance of every part of the blade.

File to the pencil lines on both sides. With wood you can just hold it to the bench with your hand. Keep as little as possible above the surface to avoid breaking the wood along the grain.

Put the backspacer on the handle and double check the blade clearance. You'll notice that I used screws because I forgot what I was doing and tapped all the holes right after I drilled them. Oops. Don't do that.

Ok, now it's safe to tap the holes

Screw the two handle slabs together and use the titanium as a guide to finish profiling the carbon fiber.

 

[Jason Magruder]

Sand the carbon down to match the titanium using a sanding stick to back up strips of 220 grit. You have to be really careful not to over sand the carbon. Use a round something to sand any concave areas. I use everything from pipe chunks to markers and pens depending on what's at hand and or matches the radius.

Once the carbon is done, put the backspacer in and sand it flush.

Now that the handle is completely profiled and sanded to 220 grit all around put the blade in and check the fit both open and closed. File the blade until everything fits flush and the lines are clean.

Once the blade looks good in the handle, give it the same 220 grit treatment.

Ok, now is where things get a little weird and you guys get to see some things that I'm pretty sure no one else does.






Carefully centerpunch the center of the spine directly centered over the stop/thumbstud hole.

Clamp the blade to the side of a block and set the drill depth to about 3/32 past the bottom of the stop pin hole.

Drill through the spine with a 1/16" bit. This will make sense in a bit. Maybe.

Time to make the stop pin.
I use 3/16" or 1/4" titanium rod for my stop pins/thumbstuds. I drill and tap the pin for a set screw. The set screw is ground to a point that locks into the hole in the blade. An allen wrench fits through the hole in the top to tighten it down. -

Drill a 3/16" hole near the end of a block of wood and make a cut parallel to the hole from the end of the block to just past the hole.
Line a 3/32" drill bit up with the center of the titanium and clamp it in the drill press.

Tap the hole for a 4-40 screw. 2-56 works good too but the set screws are a lot harder to find and you can't torque them down as hard.

Use the split block as a guide to cut the stop pin roughly to length.

Then use it again to file both ends nice and square.

Chuck it in the drill press and soften the edges then polish the ends with sandpaper backed by a manly thumb. If you don't have manly thumbs then leave the thumbstud sharp and you'll have manly thumbs in no time

File a point on a 3/16" set screw. Well, a 1/4" set screw that's been filed down to 3/16" anyway. Check the length against the thumbstud/stop. The set screw has to fit completely inside the radius of the Ti rod in order to get the thing set in the blade.

Next up is shaping the handle slabs and cutting the lock.

 

[Lorien]

subscribed!

 

[unky_gumbi]

Railrider, I have no idea what grade I'll get on the paper. I turned it in Wednesday and grades should be in next Tuesday. I think it came out okay but, who knows? Content-wise I think it will be fine but there were very strict formatting and style specifications for the assignment that were easy to mess up.

I had a report similar to that in my first year of college, and the teach stressed that the mark was based 90% on format 10% on content. Being some what of a smarta*s I handed in a perfectly formatted report that contained nothing but Xs and got full marks on it. The next year he used my report as a handout example but stated that there would be no marks without meaningful content

When you get the report back you should make it into a downloadable PDF and get it linked to in the newb stickies