I wish I could take "real" knives to work

W

Will Leavitt

Joined
Jul 28, 2006
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A guy from the lab asked me to sharpen a knife for him since he heard I was a knife maker. No biggy except we have to do the deal in the parking lot during lunch like it's a drug trade due to company rules. When I returned the knife to him we were talking and he was griping about how he'd like to take the knife in to the lab to play with it.. I'm like ah what do you have in there? :confused: He starts naming off how many rockwell testers, regular microscopes and the electron scanning microscope. :confused: I didn't know that :( he was like yeah, I'd test your stuff too but you know the rules. Come to find out he's a knife nut AND metallurgist that they hired when they read a paper on palladium he wrote :confused: I thought palladium was a guy in shiny armor on a horse? :p Really cool to have someone to talk to.
 
Cool Will, always nice to have friends to talk the talk with, it's funny but always good when you find them nearby.
 
I'm only an aspiring knifemaker, but I know just how you feel... I'm at university, and I'm not allowed to have knives (other than kitchen knives, or artists with their snapoff razor knives...) on campus, let alone use campus facilities for knifemaking, despite my list of like a dozen ways in which a custom knife (straight, let alone folding!) falls under the purview of engineering or related fields.

TL;DR: I feel your pain.
 
Will,
I use palladium all the time, I'm working with some right now,if thats a published paper online I'd like a link to it if you can swing that.
Thanks,
Del
 
Will, maybe you could make up occasional sample squares of the material you're using and run them along with your blade heat treats. Your buddy might be able to let you know whats going on in the nonknife samples. If he sees something in the lab that he really likes, maybe you could make him a knife and let him know you'll heat treat it the same.

Take care, Craig
 
My last job I worked for a company with about 125 employees. As a mechanic I had access to the shop any time after hours for personal use. I did most of the fabrication of my forging press there, using scrap from their junk pile! The employee hand book said that "illegal firearms" were not permitted on the premises! That meant we could have "legal" guns at work. I kept a .22 there for shooting pigeons with bird shot. Two of the bosses shoot deer from their offices one year.The company was bought out by a company with 11,000 employees and times changed. The original owners also sold the land to Buck Knives for their new plant.
In a society driven by liability concerns, knives and guns being prohibited in the workplace is the norm. Oh well.
Invite you new friend to your own shop.:thumbup:

Alden
 
Well I work in a foreign trade zone so it's not just about liabilities at work. We've been begging them to let us hunt on the grounds but it's not feasible. Huge deer there and we usually wipe one out every year on the test track. The brilliant people there planted clover and rape for erosion control turning our track into a 2.4 mile green field. They finally got all the holes in the fence fixed to prevent deer from entering the track but the stupid contractors keep leaving the gate open :( Job is stressful enough without having to dodge deer from December-February on the night shift.
 
I thought palladium was a publisher that produced fantasy / sci - fi games to compete with the old D&D stuff
 
My bro-in-law is a chemical engineer at Dow, manages 100+ people, and by turning a couple of valves could blow up half of Michigan. But he can't carry even a teeny weeny folder. Its whack. I understand why they do it, but its still whack.
 
powernoodle said:
My bro-in-law is a chemical engineer at Dow, manages 100+ people, and by turning a couple of valves could blow up half of Michigan. But he can't carry even a teeny weeny folder. Its whack. I understand why they do it, but its still whack.
Click to expand...

That's one reason why I don't want to work at a place like that. I feel the need for defense, and cutting things is so much easier with a knife most of the time. I'm looking to go in the Marines once I get through High School and College.
 
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