Knife #5 WIP - Wish me luck (PHOTO HEAVY)

[bobbywett]

Looking Good so far, can't wait to see how she turns out.

 

[Erin Burke]

Ok, I need to ask a stupid newbie question here. Back on the first page where the heat treat was done, you said you ran it thru 2 stress relief cycles, then applied clay then heatreat.
Are the stress relief cycles really necessary for a stock removal blade ? I was under the impression that this was the samething as normallizing and really only needed for forged blades.

Thanks Rick

Rick,

I'll attempt to answer your question to the best of my ability, but everything I know (or think I know) about the process of heat treating steel I learned from this forum. I recommend you do a search on "normalizing" and "stress relief". There is a great deal of good information in the eutectiod and hyper-eutectiod stickys at the top of this forum.

I'm also going to botch the terminology no doubt... but bottom line is stress relief and normalizing are quite different and serve different purposes. Stress relief cycles are exactly what the name implies. It is my understanding that the simple act of grinding can introduce some level of stress in the steel. A stress relief cycle for simple carbon steels (like I am using) takes the temp up to the 1200F range (below non-magnetic or critical or whatever the correct term is for the crystalline change in the steel).

My understanding of normalizing is that it involves a series of heat above critical (but at successively lower temps) to refine the grain size within the steel. This can be beneficial after the repeated forging heats and extensive beating that a forged blade takes. It is my understanding that in most cases normalizing would serve little purpose in your typical stock-removal knife.

I'm sure that somebody else can explain it better than I.

Erin

 

[little mac]

Admittedly I have avoided those stickys because the titles just sounded a bit over my head. Now I guess I need to give them a shot. I did notice the temp was well below the critical temp used in normalizing.
After a couple of years of reading these boards, this was, I think the first time I had seen anything about stress relief in stock removal blades. That's exactly why I have been taking the time to learn as much as I can before I start my first knife.
Thanks for the answer. I look forward to any additional explainations.

 

[Erin Burke]

Friday rolled around and I got the chance to spend the last several hours messing around with this guard. Since my last progress post, I filed the guard slot for a nice fit, and I ground the ricasso slot to seat the guard. Both took a lot of time. This knife is turning out to be tougher than my other knives by a magnitude of five. Per Nick's recommendation I did take my torch to the tang of the knife to draw down the hardness, but it was still a bee-otch to make the slot in the ricasso. It seems like the pearlite/martensite line runs right through the middle of the slot, so one end filed fine while the other would hardly scratch. I ended up using a cut-off wheel in my dremel to make the notch. It actually turned out fairly well. Once I got the guard seated in the slot where I wanted it, I drilled the four pin-holes through the ricasso. Stacy was 100% right, carbide was required... but fortunately I have some carbide bits stashed away here and there. Carbide is awesome.

Below is a snapshot of the guard fitted to the knife with some temporary brass pins.

Next I took a stab at some preliminary profiling of the guard using my band saw, my flat platen and my 1/2" small wheel. Below is a photo of the knife in its current condition. It's midnight and I need to go to be now.

To be continued...

 

[TekSec]

Admittedly I have avoided those stickys because the titles just sounded a bit over my head. Now I guess I need to give them a shot. I did notice the temp was well below the critical temp used in normalizing.
After a couple of years of reading these boards, this was, I think the first time I had seen anything about stress relief in stock removal blades. That's exactly why I have been taking the time to learn as much as I can before I start my first knife.
Thanks for the answer. I look forward to any additional explainations.

Little Mac,

No it is not critical to normalize a stock removal blade unless you overheat during grinding. Depending on the steel, you can gain some benefit but I haven't ever normalized any of mine.

 

[Erin Burke]

I feel like I've been skipping some steps along the way in writing this thread. It's tricky to set up the camera to catch everything... or to even want to when you're really cruising, or covered in grit, dust or epoxy. But I did take a few more shots along the way.

Since my last post, I was able to finish the preliminary shaping of the guard. I pinned & peened it and sanded everything down. I did have some minor trouble with parts of this process... but learned a couple things so the process will go much smoother next time.

Below is a photo of the knife with the guard attached and the handle-scales pinned, epoxied and clamped. This is my best handle-tang fit to date. There are absolutely no gaps between the scales and the tapered-tang. :thumbup:

This next photo shows me shaping the sides of the handle (palm swell, heel, etc.) on my 8" wheel w/ an old 50-grit belt. You'll notice that my small wheel attachment is mounted to the same tooling arm as the contact wheel. When I'm handle shaping I end up switching back and forth between the two fairly frequently, so it's easy to have them both mounted on the same arm and just flip it 180-degrees when I need to.

Another method I use for shaping the handle is "shoe-shining". Basically I take a length of spit shop-roll (either 120 or 240 grit) and pull it back and forth in a "U" shape... kind of like shoe-shining I guess. Probably a poor and confusing description, but the photo below illustrates things fairly well.

As of now, I have completed sanding and polishing the handle. I have applied my first coat of tung oil. It's getting close enough to being finished that this will be the end of my progress photos... I don't want to ruin the big reveal. I still have to etch my name, but hopefully the next photos that I post of this knife will be the finished piece.

Thanks for reading along. I hope everyone likes the finished product.

Erin

 

[TekSec]

That's a great looking blade! Can't wait to see the finished pics.

 

[Salem Straub]

Can't wait to see the finished product. One of my favorite parts of making a knife is shaping the handle contours on the contact wheel, just like your pic there. I see that you are a man who appreciates the value of a comfortable grip.

 

[Erin Burke]

I posted some photos of the finished knife HERE. Thanks for reading.

Erin

 

[RMcClellan]

Another newbie question here, I am currently working on my third knife. And yes I do want to attempt to get a hamon on it. It's 1095, and I did use Satenite for the clay coating. I have hand sanded it to 400 grit. My question is the part where you said you "etched" it. Mind sharing the particulars how you got such a beautiful hamon line?
BTW, this knife is incredible, you need to name it, something mean, yet clean and sophisticated, how about the "Hannibal"? Oh never mind he was just crazy....but mean and very sophisticate! Seriously, a beautiful knife and incredible work. I just wonder how you got the nads to do a WIP on your 8th knife!!! All I can say is keep them coming. Thanks, Rex

 

[Erin Burke]

Another newbie question here, I am currently working on my third knife. And yes I do want to attempt to get a hamon on it. It's 1095, and I did use Satenite for the clay coating. I have hand sanded it to 400 grit. My question is the part where you said you "etched" it. Mind sharing the particulars how you got such a beautiful hamon line?

Rex,

I am very new to knifemaking... and especially new to 1095 and hamons (this being my first successful 1095 knife). Like you, I used satanite clay (from Darren Ellis). The first thing I did was apply a coating of thinned-down clay to the entire blade. The clay was mixed so thin that I used a paintbrush to apply it. At this point, my kiln was already heated-up from the stress-relief cycles and was ramping up to 1500F for final HT. So I took the blade w/ the freshly applied THIN coating of THINNED-DOWN clay and held it just inside the door of my kiln for 10-15 seconds. A thin coating dries fast. Then I tried to apply the clay evenly to both sides, maybe 1/8" to 3/16" thick. I have some odd edge pieces of foam anti-fatigue flooring here, and I cut a slit in a piece of it to help in shaping the clay evenly on both sides. I used a bamboo skewer (like you would use for making kababs on your grill) to apply some additional clay for ashi (I think that's the correct term). I made sure to apply clay to the spine of the blade as well, as I find that this helps hold the clay on better during quench. Then I put it in my kiln while still wet, let it soak for ~7 minutes and quenched.

On this knife, I was able to see the hamon under certain lighting conditions even at 400 grit. By 800/1000 grit it should be easily visible at certain angles (even before etching). I took the blade to about 2000 grit and etched in warm white vinegar... for several minutes. I tried to mask off the flats and other areas that I didn't want to etch with black sharpie... this worked OK but not great. This etch really made the hamon visible, but left the entire blade looking gray and dull. So then I cleaned things up with some metal polish. I think that there are a number of makers out there who could have brought a lot more life to this particular hamon, but with my limited experience, I am happy with the results.

I just wonder how you got the nads to do a WIP on your 8th knife!!! All I can say is keep them coming. Thanks, Rex

My main reasoning for doing a WIP on this knife was so experienced makers could chime in and say "Whoa... you may want to try this instead" or "maybe X would work better"... really any feedback that would help me do a better job next time.

Erin

 

[RMcClellan]

Erin,
Thanks for the pointers, I stopped at 400, tried to etch it in warm vinegar, it showed nothing, the only thing or things I see different in our process(es), is that you quenched for 7 minutes I quenched for 5 minutes, and I applied my clay a LOT thicker than you did, I also , covered my entire tang. I did an edge quench, then set it aside to cool. I stopped there, waiting for this email, (plus football has started and my shop rats are both playing, so my shop time has been cut to a bare minimum, like Wednesday night, and the weekend, until next week, then we only practice 3 days a week) I'm going to go back and sand it to 1000 grit, the attempt to etch it , I just want to try my best to get some kind of hamon line out of it, it's not a killer if it doesn't work, I just want to know how to do it, my patience is paying off!! You don't know how bad I wanted to get the handles on it and call it done. But I went to the trouble of claying it, edge quench, etc. (the etc. was actually hand sanding it to 400 grit). When you say your vinegar was warm, any idea how warm? I prefer to work in as many "knowns" as possible. Thanks for sharing, maybe I can make it happen, if not this maybe the next one!