Just started a blog on knifemaking

matus

matus

Joined
Apr 24, 2009
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After long consideration I have decided to give it a try and started a blog on knifemaking. I am at the very beginning and though that it could be interesting fo others who are in similar position or are considering to try to see how my story unfolds.

For me knifemaking is just a hobby, something a find a few hours per week to enjoy in a tiny workshop.

So far I have only a few introductory & general articles. I will post projects as soon as they are finished, first hopefully by the end of this week (I have currently 7 projects in different stages of completion).

http://matuskalisky.blogspot.de/

Your feedback would be most aprreciated :)
 
Interesting file jig. You're more patient than I am!

Your blades look great BTW.
 
Your Blog looks good.

I spotted an error on your bevel file jig info. It says kitchen knives get down to 1°. That would be the bevel angle for a knife 1/8" thick with a blade over 7" wide. Most tall kitchen blades have a primary bevel of around 4° to 5°.
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
Your Blog looks good.

I spotted an error on your bevel file jig info. It says kitchen knives get down to 1°. That would be the bevel angle for a knife 1/8" thick with a blade over 7" wide. Most tall kitchen blades have a primary bevel of around 4° to 5°.
Click to expand...

Thank you. I probably did not express myself right int he article (I will have a look and add better explanation). With 1° I do not mean a single flat grind from spine to the edge - that would of course yield edge way too thin and weak. Those 4-5° as you say are close to the cutting edge. Higher up the blade (towards the spine) the angle usually gets smaller (either continuously or there is a destinct change in the angle - like on wide bevel knvies).

With that 1° I only ground the blade down to certain distance from the edge. Once I will post a complete article on the knife shown (that will be Project #5 in a couple of weeks, the blade is finished for HT now) I will include a sketch for better expalantion. In other words - for grinding certain parts of the knife bevel one may want to go as low as 1°, but not necessarily at the edge.
 
I managed to post a few simple general articles, but more importantly - finally finished first 2 projects. I will post aticles on these soon as they are nearly finished. Both knives are far from perfect, but I have learned a lot in the process and it was a lot of fun to make them and even though there is a lot to improve it still feels great :)


Smaller kitchen knife (Project #3) in O1 steel with curly birch handle with stabilized oregon maple ferrule:








Birch bark handle on a Polar whittler blade (Project #4):





 
I have just published a detailed article how the Project #3 (the small kitchen knife) was made. Should you find the time (it is a long one) I would appreciate your feedback/comments/critique.

Thank you :)
 
Oregon Maple -- I assume you mean " Big Leaf Maple " which is actually a soft maple. Dramatic figure .The wood was originally used for firewood !! until someone realized it had value for better things ! As a soft maple some think it should be stabilized .
 
mete said:
Oregon Maple -- I assume you mean " Big Leaf Maple " which is actually a soft maple. Dramatic figure .The wood was originally used for firewood !! until someone realized it had value for better things ! As a soft maple some think it should be stabilized .
Click to expand...

I think that the sticker from the seller states Oregon Maple, but I have to admit I do not really know the difference since I am from different continent. It was a big block - this is the handle that was made from it (by Ian Haburn his F&F is incredible) about 2 years ago:

 
I have finished another project - a large gyuto in D2 steel. This one was a LOT of work. You can find a lot of details about the process in my new article.

Here a few photos of the finished knife:







 
Your knives look awesome. Can't wait to see what they look like once you have 20-30 knives under your belt. Keep up the good work!

Jay
 
Thank you Jay. 20 - 30 knvies will take a while. But I should have a 2x72" coming in after summer, so I may be able to get a little more efficient :)
 
I have recently completely re-finished a 225 Gesshin Hide blue#2 gyuto including thinning and grinding in some distal taper towards the tip. It turned out to be a LOT of work, but it came out ratehr well. You can find all the details about it on my blog

Before




After

 
I need to apologise to this fantastic community - I have had hard time to keep my presence on all the fora I am member of. I have loads of open projects at the moment (which is good, but it also means that they move forward rather slowly). Only when a BF member (who was so kind to help to put together an etching machine which I have yet to test) asked me whether I have abandoned BF I realised that I have not been here for quite a while.

Let me just pick up where I left and post the updates that have happened recently.

Project #10 (article) - Making WA style handle for 2 165 mm single bevel funayuki knives

Last year I bought a 2 rather cheap (about 70€ each) 165 mm single bevel funayuki (something like a slimmed-down deba) knives - one for me an one for my friend. I new these are going to have far from perfect F&F and very basic handles with plastic ferrules - at that price point that was OK.

I have decided to make WA handles with thin (5mm) brass ferrules - a first for me as these handles needed to be shaped when already glued onto the tang. This was new for me and I was very curios about it. I again learned a lot, but also did some mistakes (the biggest of them was gap on one of the the handles - the one I kept). The handle material is Mora wood and Purple heart wood. I have to say the Purple heart is lovey, but the Mora feels just fantastic in hand and was also very nice to work with. I will be using it more often.

This are the knives as they arrived:



And here with new handles and rounded spines and choils:



 
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