KITH build thread

[Geoff Flato]

I'm starting on my knife for the summer KITH, and thought I'd take the time to make a build thread to share at least how I make a kitchen knife. I've never really been one for following trends, so instead of something Japanese I'm making my take on a French peasants knife with a 5" blade.

I started with gluing a sketch of the knife to a piece of 1/4" Baltic birch plywood. Cut it out, and shaped to the line. Now is when I'll make any refinements if something doesn't feel right.

I applied dykem to a piece of 3/32x1.5 154cm, and scribed the outline of my template.

After cutting within about 1/16 of the line it's time for profile grinding. This step is somewhat debatable. If I really lean into the grinder with a 36 grit it's probably faster to just grind entirely to shape. But this is so much quieter and less unpleasant I find it worth the time.

I tend to like using a contact wheel wherever possible, mainly due to it being quieter and the belts lasting longer. I've put on a 60 grit VSM ceramic for the main profile grinding, a half dull one leftover from cleaning up bevels. With enough practice and tracking the belt 1/8-3/16 off the edge of the wheel, you can follow even the inside curve lines of the handle quite well. I'll take it right until I just barely kiss the scribe lines with 60 grit.

Off the 60 grit, time for an X30 Norax

Here it is with the final profiling done. In addition to the outside curves with the X30 on the 12" wheel, I also cleaned up the handle profile with a 5/8" small wheel and a 2" contact wheel.

A quick deburring on a fine convolute wheel, and it'll be ready to layout the handle holes.

That's all for now, my internet is painfully slow and I've already spent an hour on this.
Hope you guys like it, and I'll update it as I progress along

 

[timos-]

nice! thanks for sharing, now this is getting me motivated to get something done!

 

[john april]

looking forward to it. nice profile so far.

 

[wkfl]

Way cool, def following this!

 

[Robert Erickson]

Looks great, thanks for taking us through your process!

 

[coldsteelburns]

Wait, so I'm following a trend because I wanted to make a Japanese style kitchen knife?! Doh! Time to toss it in the scrap bin and choose a different design!

I'm looking forward to seeing your process and result. Thanks for sharing

~Paul
My YT Channel

Lsubslimed
... (It's been a few years since my last upload)

 

[Geoff Flato]

I took these pictures earlier this morning, and finally have the chance to post it. I really need better Internet and a better computer eventually....
Anyways, the next step is laying out the handle and drilling the holes.

Here are the tools I'll use. Centerpiece, scribe, hermaphrodite caliper, 6" combination square, and a diemakers square. I use these because I have them, but it could be done with any combination of tools that can measure, transfer an angle, and scribe a line from an edge.

First I'll transfer the angle of the front of the bolster. The exact way I do this whole process depends on the specific knife and how I want things to flow. In this case I'm going to have the plunge line, the front and back of the bolster, and all of the pins follow the same angle.
This is where a diemakers square comes in really handy. They aren't too easy to find, but I'd definitely recommend picking it up if you ever see one for sale somewhere.

To prevent spending my entire day taking and uploading pictures, I decided not to show every step of the layout as it's rather simple. I started by scribing where the front of the bolster, and the back of the bolster will be. I then marked out spots for 4 pins on the bolster, making sure to stay far enough away from the front and back as not to run into then with either the front profile or the dovetail/angle cut. Then measuring from the back of the bolster I'll evenly space 3 lines for the rows of pins. If you recall in the drawing I layed the pins out differently. I often change my mind in the fly if I think something will look better. Anyways after scribing those 3 lines I set the hermaphrodite to the distance from the edge of the tang I want the pins, and scribe around the outline. Put a center punch mark where all the scribe lines cross, and you'll have perfectly spaced handle pins. From there it was drilled (drillco 300N series nitro gold screw machine drills are well worth trying if you haven't yet) and everything deburring with a countersink (another tooling note, I've stopped using everything except MA Ford uniflute countersinks. They are consistantly better than everything else I've tried, and affordable enough not to bother cheaping out)
I'm using 3/32 bronze pins for the handle scales (yet to be determined, I've got way too much laying around to make an easy decision) and 1/8 brass pins for the brass bolsters.

I added in a few 1/4" weight relief holes to get it balancing how I like, and once again deburred everything.

The next update will be a ways off yet, this knife is joining my current batch of 154cm now. Once the new VFD is on the surface grinder I've got about a days worth of descaling to catch up on, and then 50-60 blades to HT. Rest assured though I will update this the next time I work on the knife.

As a side note, I generally don't do any beveling on kitchen knives before HT. Especially with the Norton belts I've been using lately, grinding the blades hard is fast enough for eliminating dealing with warpage to outweigh the slower grinding.

 

[Jrmysell]

Nice design!

 

[Geoff Flato]

A bit of an unfortunate update. A slight surface grinding mishap (last blade of the day, some bozo forgot to turn on the mag chuck) has caused me to scrap that blade and start over. I don't have any more 3/32 154cm on hand, so this blade will end up being aeb-L instead.
I just need to get a new blade caught up with the batch, and then I'll resume the build