Handmade knives - symmetry and precision

Great question!. Check out wuerts machine works ,he has posted some pretty good stuff on youtube, He makes the TW90 belt grinder that has taken the knife industry by storm.
 
I first rectify the blade with a surface grinder.
I then go to a 90 degree disc grinder and make the spine at a perfect 90 degree from the sides.
Given the geometry of the blade (thickness of spine, thickness of edge I want to get, and hight at the choil) I use some high school trigonometry (SOHCAHTOA) to calculate the angle of the bevels, usually around 85 degrees.
I put my grinder base at that angle from the platen and start working, trying to get a good spine-table support (its hard to explain this in english for me! Lol).
If you do this and make the bevels go up is boths sides slowly and evenly, and respect the centerlines symmetry comes naturally.
 
I'm not a maker but just a mere collector :D

IMVHO some marker pen, some tape, a ruler or even a piece of steel or a nail etc etc can always be utilized to come out with a symmetrical and precision product!
Even the lighting and the shadow is beneficial towards that goal!
One has to be a bit creative and imaginative whenever he doesn't has a full set of tools and machines!
There's always personal tricks and methods developed by each individual maker and that's his arts in the steel craft!
I myself am not very sure how symmetrical and how precise the production knife which I have in my collection is :)

In the spirit of openness, anybody may just CMIIAW :D

mohd
 
In 2010, when working on my book "The Art Knives of Van Barnett & Dellana",
I watched in awe as Van did his amazing "Hands and Eyes" grinding of the tiny blade for
the folding dagger he made for the book.
He did it in one continuous run from start to finish!

Notice the size of the tiny blade in his fingers...

All the best,
David Darom (ddd)

Van-Barnett.jpg
 
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