Help With Flattening Tang

[Trout Hound]

Hello All,

I really need some help with a project I'm working on. I recently got it into my head to buy a Green River buffalo skinner blank, and to build myself a Nessmuk. I don't have much in the way of power tools, but I read on several old threads here that folks had been successful modifying these blades using only hand tools, so I decided to give it a go. Shaping the blade was slow (I wore out 8 Dewalt hacksaw blades cutting it off), but I was able to get it looking the way I wanted within a few evenings at the workbench. I went slow and didn't let things heat up.

Now I am ready to attach handles, but flattening the tang, which was obviously heat treated at the factory, is proving to be a painfully slow process. The blade has a slight warp from the factory, which is barely perceptible until you start trying to grind things dead flat, and then it is a giant pain. I realized pretty quickly that lapping with sandpaper on glass, or even on a DMT XC plate, was a bad joke. So, I even bought an Atoma 140 (don't tell my wife!) I can use it to lower edge angles and flatten water stones, so I figured it's a good investment. Even that is taking hours upon hours. I spent at least an hour on one side this morning, (cleaning the stone frequently), and a spot near the end that was less than 1/64" low when I started is still laughing at me.

I have now resorted to using an Avanti Pro Quick Strip disc in a cordless hand drill to try and hollow out the high spots in the middle, grind on the stone, rinse, and repeat, which is only very marginally faster.

I don't have access to a disc sander or a belt grinder, nor do I really have a place for one, even if I bought one. I do have a bench grinder, although I know that it's probably useless. Do I have any other options to accelerate this process, other than to a) glue up with dyed epoxy and just let it fill in the gaps, or, b) watch the entire Star Wars series two or three times whilst grinding by hand?

I really appreciate you taking the time to read, and offering any advice you may have. Thanks!

Trout Hound

 

[AF]

First off I'd recommend buying some 1084 steel and making a knife from scratch using hacksaw, benchgrinder, files and sandpaper.
Seems like with all the work you're putting in might as well make a true custom. You can send it out for heat treat if you don't want to build a basic forge.

As far as the warped tang - I would expect that to correct itself when you clamp/glue-up scales. If the blade is warped you could clamp with a shim against a steel or aluminum bar and temper in oven at 400 degrees for a half hour or so.

 

[coldsteelburns]

Instead of just hollowing out the high spits, hollow out the middle of the entire tang so that there is about 1/8" left around the perimeter so it greatly reduces the amount of surface area that you need to flatten. This is what most of us do before tapering tangs for the same reason. In the case of merely flatenning a tang, the hollow doesn't need to be that deep or even consistent as it's just a matter of getting the middle area lower than the perimeter so that is all that is touching the stone (etc.) while flattening.

I also agree that you could have probably made your own knife from annealed bar stock by now, as opposed to trying to greatly modify a hardened blank that was made to sub par standards to begin with, at least without any power tools to help.


~Paul
My YT Channel
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... (It's been a few years since my last upload)

 

[Trout Hound]

You know, you guys are right! I hadn't really even thought that far. Here I was thinking I was taking an easier route by modifying a ground, hardened blank, but that's obviously not the case. Well, the men in my family have a long history of choosing the hardest possible way to accomplish anything, so I get it honest. I also have a way of seeing something to the end once I start it, no matter what! I may just chalk this one up to experience. Thanks for the feedback!