Kind of a Persian fighter build, final pictures, for now

[byoffcr]

I had the same stupid humor idea - that is a nice drawing but won't it waste a LOT of steel to cut it out of an anvil?

the techniques with the abalone are cool. This is a great thread, and I am eager to see how the knife comes out.

kc

When I first sent Mark this design I asked about the materials I wanted to use in the handle. the abalone was a must for me and he said no problem . At that point I realized there is nothing he cant do with a knife except make a BAD one. This is so much fun watching it come together. Thanks Mark Terry

 

[Mark Knapp]

Thanks Mark, I made the ends 1/16 inch longer. Terry

Got it.

 

[Mark Knapp]

Thanks everyone for the nice comments, I hope the build meets your expectations.

After cutting all the pieces, each stack is laid out, ready for laminating.

The pieces from this stack were cut a little longer than the handle section I needed. The width of the widest one is a little wider than the handle section I needed, each one after that was cut a little narrower because each side of my "box" will be mitered. This stack represents one side of one handle section.

This is how the pieces in this side of the "box" will be oriented when they are laminated together.

The slices of abalone are laid into a small baggy.

A small amount of clear casting resin is put between each slice in the stack. I use clear casting resin because epoxy does not harden up hard enough to polish nicely on the finished knife, it erodes away when polished. I tinted the resin lightly with blue tint, this helps the joints blend together better and makes for a nicer looking knife.

After all seven slices in the stack are laid in, the baggy is pulled snugly around the stack and the bundle is rubber banded together to hold the resin in place while it cures.

After the resin cures, the baggies are taken off...

and we rough grind the pieces to shape, roughly the shape of the roof of a house.

The table on the disk sander is set at 90 degrees so the sides of each piece, each get ground to 45 degrees...

like this.

After each piece is ground roughly to shape, they are sorted into piles of four, each pile of four is a handle section for a knife.
Now we finish grind the miters of each piece and dry fit them to form a box, the ends are left to run wild till the sections are assembled then squared off.

More to come. Thanks for watching.

 

[Mark Knapp]

OK, the handle sections are assembled and cleaned up. I'm pretty happy with them. they are all roughly 1 1/8 X 1 3/8 with varying lengths depending on how they are going to be used on the knives. They all have a center hole that is roughly 3/16 X 1/2 or 5/8th.

Thanks for looking, next, we get the rest of the handle materials ready and rough grind the blade.

 

[Pete_H]

Wow, those handle sections! Just WOW!!

 

[byoffcr]

Mark that is just plain OUTSTANDING.. KT Terry: :thumbup: Thanks for showing.

 

[Idlewild]

Terrific WIP posting..thank you!

 

[Bigjohn]

Way cool thanks

 

[Mark Knapp]

Thanks everybody.

After the blade was annealed, I cleaned up the profile some but left the blade just a little large all the way around.
Here I'm grinding it flat on the surface grinder. I could do it on the Bader, but this way it gets perfectly flat.

A little layout bluing on the edges and the height gauge is used to make the center lines on edge and the spine. I silver soldered some carbide onto the end of the height gauge pointer so I wouldn't have to sharpen it as often.

Two lines on the edge .020" apart...

and one line down the center of the spine to help make sure I keep the distal taper centered along the whole length of the blade.

I have a good start to the grind with a 24 grit blue zirconium belt on the Bader.

Sneaking up on the grind line at the ricasso.

That's enough for the first side.

With the rough grinding done, ready for heat treat.

I normalized it three times.

Then I quenched it into the parks 50 quench oil. This is how it looked after the quench. The figure in the damascus is coming out good already. The blade is in the tempering oven right now, I'll temper twice at 375 degrees.

More to come.

 

[byoffcr]

Mark great work. Thanks for the WIP. KT

 

[Rhinoknives1]

Coming along very well! Thanks for going in-depth on the Abalone work.

 

[kevin -the professor]

Mark - that work with the abalone is one of the neatest things I have seen in the past couple of years. Very creative, and wonderful understanding of how to use your tools with your materials. Seriously, that was a great idea, and it came out really nice.

looking forward to the rest.

 

[Mark Knapp]

Thanks Everybody

 

[Mark Knapp]

Now we are into the hand polishing of the blade.

Here it is with 120 grit polishing finished. I will go all the way through the grits to 600.

I finished up the hand polishing and etched the blade in ferric chloride to get an idea of how the damascus will look. I think it will look great when it is heat blued.

here's the other side.

There will be some tune ups to do on the polishing and etching, and then the bluing (I will do that after the handle is completely done so I won't scuff up the blade while I work on the handle).

 

[David Stifle]

That is some pretty Damascus!

 

[byoffcr]

Mark that is so nice that for once I don't know what to say.Terry KT

 

[JParanee]

Very nice

What wood was the bowl you were turning made of

Blavk White Ebony ?

 

[emptym]

Beautiful blade. And I love abalone. So I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out. Thanks for all the pics of the making.

 

[Mark Knapp]

Very nice

What wood was the bowl you were turning made of

Blavk White Ebony ?

Hey Joe, it is spalted birch.

 

[Mark Knapp]

Thank everybody, for the kind remarks.