How to make a fuller, besides forging?

[flatgrinder]

Anyone know how to make a fuller in a bowie without forging it in?

Can you mill it in? If anyone's tried this, how does it look?

Combination mill and modified draw knife?

Any other ideas?

Thanks! :thumbup:

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Mill it in.
Grind it in with a dremel.
Scrape it in (see don Fogg's site).
File it in with a round file .

 

[MSCantrell]

Grind it in with a dremel.

Maybe grind it in with an angle grinder, then even it up and smooth it out with dremel.
I've never done one, but it seems like it must be quite a challenge to get it smooth, even in depth, and straight. Yikes.
Mike
mscantrell at gmail.com

 

[butcher_block]

i just milled a kabar today
1 1/4 inch ball mill at 20degree head angle (many light cuts)
its in the kiln as i type
there are some things i just wouldnt want to try without my baby mill

 

[JCaswell]

I designed this fuller grinding attachment about 10 years ago. It's fast and works really well. As you might imagine there are a great many possibilities with this set up.
You can grind fullers before or after the bevels (I usually do it after).

Also, here are a couple examples of different types of fullers cut with this fixture on similar blade shapes.

I prefer grinding these rather than milling because you can feather the groove in and out deftly. A larger blade should have distal taper. I don't really have to worry about that on my fixture because it sort of self-adjusts as you use it, but getting a fuller in your tapered blade on a mill can be a pain.

 

[miden]

JCaswell,
that looks like a good piece of engineering.
Care to add a bit of info though? How does the device work? What machine do you use to grind with?
thanks,

Mike

 

[JCaswell]

JCaswell,
that looks like a good piece of engineering.
Care to add a bit of info though? How does the device work? What machine do you use to grind with?
thanks,

Mike

This is an attachment arm for my Bader BIII, though it would work the same with KMG or with just about any machine, I suppose, if you cared to modify it to fit. It allows the use of different-size contact wheels for different-size fullers. (There would be a belt going around that little contact wheel in the picture, but I left it off to show the fixture better.)

The shiny shaft at the bottom of the fixture is hardened linear shafting and there are ball-bearing/linear bearings in the two 'arms' that hold the knife (which in the photo is just a thin scrap of 15n20 between the 'arms').
This means the 'arms', when clamped on either side of a blade, become a 'stage' which slides both left-to-right and in-and-out (toward and away from the contact wheel).
The levers on the 'arms' are just locking levers--the type you can tighten down on the blade without tools, then lift out and reposition the handle portions where you want them. When you let them go, they snap back into engagement.

The micrometer head provides an adjustable 'stop' so when you're grinding back and forth, one end (namely the one nearest the guard) is not going to drift toward the guard area as you go, if you know what I mean.

One of the things I like about this apparatus is that you can cut a fuller fast and accurately and can go right on up to the finest grit without changing anything. So your groove goes from rough cut to polish, if you want, with one 'set up' for each side. This makes a clean, crisp fuller almost unavoidable.
One issue I anguished over before actually building it was that the blade approaches the contact wheel at an arc (rather than straight in), which could add a complexity to its use. I discovered, however, that this effect is essentially minimized to insignificance by careful positioning of the linear shaft in relation to the contact-wheel's location. (In short, you want the blade to finally meet the contact wheel at about 90-degrees.) This can be adjusted by shimming the blade in the 'arms,' but I have not found that to be necessary under normal circumstances. Just clamp lightly, adjust to center line, clamp firmly and go.

Hope this helps.

 

[miden]

JCaswell,
Okay, after a bit of head scratching I think I have it worked out.
That is, as I said previously, quite a clever bit of designing.
From what I see in the pictures of fullers that you posted you must make use of pretty small contact wheels to do the job?
I have a home made machine, the concept is nothing like a KMG or Bader.
I daresay I could make something like this work though, I would have to make an entire seperate device which I could fix to my rest though.
Until then, I will continue to make fullers on a milling machine.

Thank you though for taking the time to explain it so articulately, I will "steal" your idea if you do not mind.
I visited your site and you make some beautiful knives and your lady is quite the craftswoman too, and pretty.
What is your first name, BTW?
Thanks again.

Mike

 

[JCaswell]

JCaswell,
Okay, after a bit of head scratching I think I have it worked out.
That is, as I said previously, quite a clever bit of designing.
From what I see in the pictures of fullers that you posted you must make use of pretty small contact wheels to do the job?
I have a home made machine, the concept is nothing like a KMG or Bader.
I daresay I could make something like this work though, I would have to make an entire seperate device which I could fix to my rest though.
Until then, I will continue to make fullers on a milling machine.

Thank you though for taking the time to explain it so articulately, I will "steal" your idea if you do not mind.
I visited your site and you make some beautiful knives and your lady is quite the craftswoman too, and pretty.
What is your first name, BTW?
Thanks again.

Mike

Please make use of anything you see there.
I have a small wheel on the fixture in the picture and for knives, that's about the size I like.
This fixture is set up to accommodate Bader's off-the-shelf small-wheel attachment. I have an otherwise identical fixture, but for the larger wheels. It's modular so I can do knives or change out the linear shaft and use a long 'stage' and do swords.
The sword-length version will do fullers and (with a bigger wheel) hollow-grind sword-length bevels. (No examples of that on my site. It's pretty outdated, I'm afraid.)

 

[JCaswell]

I visited your site and you make some beautiful knives and your lady is quite the craftswoman too, and pretty.
What is your first name, BTW?
Thanks again.
Mike

Thanks for the kind words. My first name is Joe (I suppose that should be on my site somewhere, not sure how I missed that.

Yes, my wife is good with the glass. She's become pretty well known in her genre. I'm pretty proud of what she's accomplished there. She's also really smart. Makes you wonder how she wound up with a metal-slinging yahoo like me!:foot: