Going to attempt my first knife

[nzedge]

Hey guys, this is my first post here. My name is Chris, and im from New Zealand.

I have been lurking for awhile and figured it was time to sign up and say hi as im about to start my first knife build and will no doubt need some guidance.

Over the last couple of months I have really started to catch the "bug", which im sure your all aware of.
I caught it when I purchased a Norton IB8 India stone and learned to sharpen. I got it to sharpen a couple of knives I had. Well that couple of knives quickly turned into every knife in my house (including butter knives), then every knife in my gran's house, then i needed more sharpening equipment... and it hasent really stopped since then...(help?)

Enough about me, this is the knife making section...

So, im lucky enough to have a good friend who is a toolmaker and runs his own shop, he makes industrial press tools, dies and moulds.. so he makes heavy duty industrial tooling out of heavy duty materials. He has a CNC mill, lathes, normal mills, band saws, linishers, grinders (large industrual ones), bench grinders, even EDM wire cutting machines, so everything i could ever need to make a knife is there.

Over the months of me lurking here, I realised that the steels he uses everyday (and has heaps of off-cuts of) are considered to be some of the best knife steels around. He has many including D2, O1, A2 and CPM 15V. (those are just the ones i remember)

Hes given me a chunk of D2 tool steel for me to make my first knife out of, the piece of steel is approx 3inches x 8inches, and 4mm thick so its a substantial chunk.

I have made a couple of designs which I like (it took me about 60 paper cut-outs to get one that felt right that I liked) and im hopefully going to his shop after work today to start work on my first knife.

I know this post is kind of useless without pics, so I guess this is a hello!, great forum!, im getting excited about starting removing metal on my first blade!, and watch this space im attemping my first knife build.

Ill hopefully have some images tonight to show.

 

[12345678910]

Welcome to it, we would love to see the pics

 

[redsquid2]

Welcome! It sounds like you are addicted. My best advice is to check into rehabilitation. Since you probably won't do that, I will be interested to see what you make with your D2.

 

[nzedge]

Thanks for the welcome. Ill be sure to get a pic of my huge pile of paper knives, and some work in progress, workshop pics etc.

I couldent wait untill I actually had something to show to start the thread LOL. excited. If all goes well ill have some images up tonight or tomorrow

 

[Daniel Fairly Knives]

Sounds awesome and welcome!

As a paper knife maker myself I understand the art of the printer, paper and scissors, lol! Very cool you are working on design so hard.

 

[nzedge]

Sounds awesome and welcome!

As a paper knife maker myself I understand the art of the printer, paper and scissors, lol! Very cool you are working on design so hard.

I started out with a completly blank canvas. No preconcievied ideas at all about how i wanted it to look, only ideas about what I wanted it to be used for. Ill explain my requirements more when i have something to show
So i drew my basic design that I thought would meet my needs, and cut it out of paper, and it felt like crap! lol
I then continued to tweak my design and after literally 50 or 60 paper knives I finally had what i wanted.

My brother asked me the other day of he could throw away all my paper knives because they were making a mess. I said no.

 

[rjfm1972]

Welcome NZ. I'm fairly new to making knives myself. In 4 months time, I made a forge, acquired a ton of tools, a drill press, belt grinder, supplies (steel, wood, etc...) and even made Micarta for some handles. Its an endless addiction, that I find myself getting into more and more every day. As for the drawings....I found that no matter how good a drawing looks to me, I end up changing it slightly when I grind it out. Sometimes its due to the feel, and sometimes the look when the lines are actually ground out. Either way, good luck and welcome to one of the most informative forums on the internet.

 

[Daniel Fairly Knives]

I started out with a completly blank canvas. No preconcievied ideas at all about how i wanted it to look, only ideas about what I wanted it to be used for. Ill explain my requirements more when i have something to show
So i drew my basic design that I thought would meet my needs, and cut it out of paper, and it felt like crap! lol
I then continued to tweak my design and after literally 50 or 60 paper knives I finally had what i wanted.

My brother asked me the other day of he could throw away all my paper knives because they were making a mess. I said no.

It really does work! Once I get close I step it up to cardboard. I'm not joking either, an in hand template is very helpful.

 

[nzedge]

It really does work! Once I get close I step it up to cardboard. I'm not joking either, an in hand template is very helpful.

Thats exactly what I did! 3 prototypes made it onto beer box cardboard

So here is my progress. I got a whole heap done. Infact i pretty much got it finished lol. Oh what can be done with the right tools!
It goes off to heat treating tomorrow as my friend had some other D2 thats getting sent away so my knife is getting thrown in with that.

here is my design on my off cut of steel

here it is about to be cut out on the band saw

chopped out

smoothing it

all smooth

putting engineers ink on it and marking out pin holes & lanyard holes

holes drilled

putting it in grinder to make it flat and look nicer

grinding in progress

now its flat and smooth

this thing here was used to mark out the middle of the blade where we had to grind

here is the edge scribed (it is even, it was done with the above tool, i dont know what its called lol)

here it is with a bit of grinding done on the edge

I stopped taking photos here, but i got it looking a bit better and its off for heat treat real soon.

Will get image of the paper knives at some point. Must go sleep, was a busy night

 

[nzedge]

almost forgot the coolest pic of all. heres what my mate was working on.
no idea what it is but it looks pretty sweet

 

[Tinbasher]

Not fair mate, you get to play with all the cool tools straight up most of us started off with files and sand paper.
Come and join us on Australian blade forums

Richard

EDITE: the tool you used to scribe the center line is a height gauge

 

[Daniel Fairly Knives]

Looking good! I like the process you are using...

 

[nzedge]

Not fair mate, you get to play with all the cool tools straight up most of us started off with files and sand paper.
Come and join us on Australian blade forums

Richard

EDITE: the tool you used to scribe the center line is a height gauge

yea i know, when i was filing some of that D2 just to get the edge at the end I did indeed spare a thought for those that have to do it the hard way.

Thanks Daniel, I only used that process as I learned it from this great forum

my friend has some s10v which he reckons is the greatest steel ever, and would never consider making a knife out of it as its massive overkill. Im keen to make a knife out of that lol

in regards to the handle pins, do you guys do it as a press fit or do you have it slightly loose then rivet the pins.
my mate reckons we should countersink the holes on the handle, then use brass rod slightly longer then the width of the handle and hammer the brass down to fill the countersink, then sand...

whats the go here? tutorials i read just used pins & epoxy

 

[nzedge]

Hello everyone, my knife didnt get sent off to heat treat today because the other job it was getting sent with wasent ready. This is good because i had more time to touch it up after work today, which im happy about because in reality it needed more work and it will no doubt be a bit more difficult after heat treatment.
here are some pics i took this afternoon
here is at almost the start of tonights work, the edge looks nice here but the convex is way to heavy.

knife in hand

now i think its getting there, knife sitting on big linishing belt

heres the other side. I managed to get a pretty good convex on it. No doubt this is due to the large size of the wheel at the end of the sander providing a large rounded surface area for you to work on.

some work with a small fine file on the top. its blade is 3.4mm thick

here is my knife on the hardness tester. didnt actually test it as its not heat treated. just photod it because we all like photos supposdly at the moment it should be at the minimum/just below what his tester is calibrated to test. Will test it after heat treat, but i told my mate to have it done however he thinks would be best he thinks is about 58Rc for D2. Im fully leaving that to him as he works with this stuff every day.

and here it is after yet more grinding.

now im going to give it a bit of a sand here at home before its goes away for heat treat.

here are some photos which i thought some may find pretty cool..its my mates steel colour code to keep track of his stock. I see some very sweet stuff there for me to play with

 

[tryppyr]

Are you leaving the grind line uneven intentionally?

 

[nzedge]

I wanted to leave a lot of point strength, so its got a heavier convex up at the front if that's what you mean.
if thats not what you mean then its just my amature skills lol

im not to worried about how it looks right now, ill buff it on a machine after its heat treated
going to make some kind of hilt also

 

[silver_pilate]

Ameature skills or not, I bet you could even up the grind line at the top of the bevel. At the very least, you could blend the convex bevel to meet the flat in a more consistant manner.

Also, don't think that buffing will remove much material. That would be a mistake. Buffing is one of the most dangerous operations you could undertake (even more dangerous than drilling pin holes without something to clamp the blade to the table). This is especially so with profiles like the one you have with pointy parts to grap the wheel. Buffing is a finishing process, not a machining process. Get it close now before heat treat so you have less work to do later is my advice.

--nathan

 

[nzedge]

Thanks for info, I will take your advice and will try to clean up the top of the grind line
I meant there is a buffing machine I could use, like a bench grinder with fabric wheels

 

[silver_pilate]

Sounds good. And, yes, the buffing machine is one to watch out for. It spins very quickly, and one moments lost concentration can see that fabric wheel snatching the blade from your fingers and throwing it away from or towards you faster than you can even process it's happening. People have been severely injured by buffers. Always buff with the top of the wheel running towards you, keeping the blade on the bottom 1/2 of the wheel. That way if it is grabbed, it will most likely be thrown down or away. I saw one user who posted the red mark/bruise he had after the buffer snagged a blade and actually carried the knife all the way around so that it slapped the back of his hand with extreme force (lucky for him, on the flat), before it spit it out away from him.

Just something to be cautious with. You'll thank yourself later as finishing is much easier with less material to remove after hardening.

I'm looking forward to seeing the finished results.

--nathan

 

[Fletch Helical]

You have some work to do before you ship it off to HT. Get the blade sanded to about 400 grit and make sure all the previous grit scratches are gone before you move up to the next grit. Trying to get deep scratches out after it's been HT is a beast. And heed Nathan's warnings about buffers. It's been discussed numerous times on here the dangers of them. There are some makers on here who wont even use them, and one member had one snatch a knife out of their hand and stuck it in a wall a not far away from his head.