I Will Never....

TekSec

TekSec

Böse Messer
Joined
Dec 8, 2006
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I will never complain about hand sanding again. Got these two sanded to 220 grit and ready for heat treat today. I spent from about 10:30 until 3:30 almost non-stop to get all the grind marks out of these. The tanto style blade (really more of a short sword) is the one I'm most concerned with surviving HT. It was ground from 1/8" stock and have a feeling it's gonna warp like a mother! We'll see. Hope I didn't waste all that time for nothing :D

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I send my stuff out to Peters'. It'll go tomorrow, probably be done in a week or so. Not worried about the Bowie style, it's 3/16" and rock solid. The tanto has a full distal taper and is very "flexy" :D Hopefully if it does warp, they can fix it prior to temper.
 
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Those are beautiful blades, Erik, so I hope they survive HT so we can see them finished. I'm still new at this, but I'm already starting to feel like knife making is 90% sanding and 10% everything else!
 
P J 234 said:
... knife making is 90% sanding and 10% everything else!
Click to expand...
Well...hand sanding wouldn't be so difficult (at least on these) if I had been able to grind them to the higher grits. BUT...I didn't want to risk screwing them up so I only went to 220 on the belts and not long enough to get all the 80 grit scratches out. Needless to say, I started at 150 grit on the hand rub. I'm going to 600 on the final but it will not take even half as long!
 
Ouch...that's a lot of sanding! I found out early on that hand sanding was one of the greatest incentives for me to improve my grinding. I'm usually able to start at 320 grit and sand before heat treat for about an hour to get the grind marks out and worked up to 400. But, that's on smaller blades. My first bowie should be happening this summer, and we'll see how long that takes :D.

Those look great, by the way.

--nathan
 
Thanks, Nathan! Yea, I usually take blade to 600 on the cork belt. If I had a variable speed or someway to slow down the Grizz, I might have felt better about it. I did, however, gain some some serious knowledge on how to sand quicker. The first side of the bowie took me about 1 1/2 hours...the second side about 45 minutes. Learning always makes a project more interesting :D
 
Knifemaking is about 75% learning, 10% experimenting, and 15% copying what you saw other people do.
 
:confused:
Why such a good finish prior to HT?
I usually do most of the grinding/finish after HT.
Even marquenching in salt, you still get some degrading of the surface ...
:confused:
 
I've found that, for my method of working, hand sanding to remove all deep grinding marks before hardening makes things go much faster after heat treating. It reveals any deep scratches left from early grinding, and they're much easier to remove while soft. After heat treating, I very lightly grind off surface degradation with no lower than a 400 grit belt and then take it back to hand sanding.

I guess it depends on how close you go to finished state prior to heat treat. I grind to 95+% completed prior to heat treat. Mostly I just remove surface degradation and hand sand prior to being done.

--nathan
 
On my last knife i took it to 400 grit on the grinder then to went to 320 hand three times before I got all the darn scratches out.
 
Man, looks taxing. At least if the tanto curves a little, you could play it off as "I meant to do that, it's Japanese style DUH!" They both look like awesome projects though.
 
silver_pilate said:
I've found that, for my method of working, hand sanding to remove all deep grinding marks before hardening makes things go much faster after heat treating. It reveals any deep scratches left from early grinding, and they're much easier to remove while soft. After heat treating, I very lightly grind off surface degradation with no lower than a 400 grit belt and then take it back to hand sanding.

I guess it depends on how close you go to finished state prior to heat treat. I grind to 95+% completed prior to heat treat. Mostly I just remove surface degradation and hand sand prior to being done.

--nathan
Click to expand...

You know, to each his own, I guess.
I've done it both ways, mostly with damascus, and to me, the trouble saved in elbow grease sanding a 'soft' blade is eclipsed by sweating out the little pits or slight warps (not to mention the loss of parts because there isn't enough meat left to pix some little problem) that will certainly affect a certain percentage of finish-ground blades.

Especially if you're doing a bunch of the same thing, it just seems safer to HT the blank, grind the parallel surfaces to finish, grind the bevels to finish, buff/corkbelt and then hand sand to get the lines running lengthwise, if that's the look what you want.

In the end, if you got a system that works for you, more power to you!:thumbup:
The OP did a great job on those pieces. I hope all turns out well!:)
 
wow thats a long time i like the machine to do the work my neck cant take the aggrivation of sanding. Ide like to see the end result. they look really nice right now kellyw
 
have you tried the round wheels that fit in a drill, they take a lot of the bigger scratches out quick.
vern
 
I do a lot of my "hand sanding" with a Micarta platen on a 1/4 sheet palm sander. Usually take that to 600 grit, then start hand sanding with 600 and finish at 1500. The palm sander uses up a lot of paper, but gets the job done quickly. The Micarta platen is radiused to fit the plunge.

I take mine to 320 on the machine before HT, do a bit of cleanup on the grinder at 320 after HT then start "hand sanding" at 220. I usually can complete the finish on a hardened blade of average size in about 1 1/2 hrs, from the tempering oven to taping it up for handle work. It takes me much longer to do a mirror finish, and I use a whole lot more belts! I only hand sand flat ground blades, and almost always polish hollow ground ones.

Erik, those are some cool looking blades! I hope you let us see them when complete. I particularly dig the tanto of course. ;)

As an aside, my son and I are taking "Sparky" for a workout in early May for a couple nights under the stars. I'm making myself a carry knife, and including a fire rod in a pouch on its sheath. ;) I love that knife, and so does he. He's already started a couple of fires with it. :D
 
Dave, glad you like the firesteel knife:D

To answer all the rest, yes I went through a lot more work on these than I normally do (pre-HT) for the simple fact they are such large pieces. Most of the time I will take a piece to a rough (80 or 220) pre-HT then finish grind / hand rub post. However, especially on the tanto, I wanted to level it out and post-HT grinding was out of the question. If I ever do a long piece out of such thin stock again, I will grind 90% of it post-HT. Like I said, learning process. Oh, as far as the sander / Micarta block, That's just never worked that well for me. I seem to use more paper like that than just doing it by hand. However, on the bowie I think that may have been a better option :D
 
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Yea, me either! :D I'm still a little torn on the tanto. Not sure what I want to do for the handle / guard...
 
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