Patrice Lemée;13285080 said:
Only thing I can offer is make sure there are no sensitive ears nearby cause you are going to use a lot of bad words.
That's the whole reason I started making knives... bad word free-for-all. Since I started making knives, I've uttered some curses that even impressed my fiance. I think even the cat has given me a second look a couple times.
You got moxy kid! Good luck. Seriously though, you seem to be pretty successful at the knives you've done so far [at least the ones you've shown us
]. I won't be at all surprised if you nail this one.
Maybe more like "You've got stupid, kid.", but I'll take moxy too. I'm going to take my time on it. The more gray hair comes in, the more I'm able to just put things down when they aren't going right. That way I can delay failure until nobody is looking.
A Kris? As ground?
Swing for the fences brother. What else? A fluted handle? Engraved pommel?
I don't know if the as ground part is going to happen or not. I think I can pull it off on a pattern with wider, more sweeping curves, but not some of the very tight ones I've seen.
Well, as said, your grinding looks great! Do you use two guild lines or just on center one? I suggest two will help on this project. I believe if you pay close attention to maintaining a consistent distance from the lines as you go, this will help loads with the "steering" to get what you want to see. Frank
I've been using two lines. I try to put them just inside where I want to go. Sometimes I'll use a single if I plan to take the edge way down.
Originally Keris were shaped with cold chisels, scrapers and stoning. These days makers in Indonesia use a 4 inch angle grinder and hand tools to finish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af3PCzdNCoQ Some top award wining Keris makers in the video
Thanks, great video. I don't plan on making mine historically accurate, but that doesn't mean I shoudn't learn what that is.
Grind slowly and in steps....sneaking up on the center line. I let the final edge somewhat determine itself, as the curve your head sees and the curve the grinder sees isn't always the exact same thing
It may be necessary to thicken the edge back in a few places that grind too sharp. These places will be in the inside curves. The outer curves tend to stay too thick.
Once you are close to the center line, start really cleaning things up. Switch to hand sanding when it is as good as you can get it.
Thanks for the tips. Two things have spurred me to attempt this, namely my success with some recurve and compound grinds lately, and my recent graduation to freehand finish grinding. Before, I never would have dreamed of trying one. I think there are some blades that just can't be ground properly other than freehand.
I did notice on the more aggressive recurves, the grind had a tendency to want to pinch in. I was able to recognize it and fight it off, but I'm still not quite to the point where I can walk down and fix as I go comfortably, like with some of the patterns I've done a good few of.
