Knifemaking PITA moments ;)

S

stezann

Joined
Apr 13, 2011
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Hi Gentlemen,
is there any particular step in your knifemaking flow that disappoints you every time?
I can bear (and sometime it is even relaxing) hand sanding, can stand drilling, digging and broaching through the handles...etc...
It is epoxy-time that i hate the most...that oozing restless resin that seems to never cease flooding from the joints upon my surfaces and materials!!!!!
I'm getting better in preparing mating planes, but is there any tip/trick to get that slime inside where it is supposed to be during curing time? :grumpy:

and by the way...what's your favorite PITA moment? :)
 
I learned here that if you grind(i use a dremel)a bunch on the part of the tang that will be covered by the handle it will create and area for the epoxy to flow into. You just want to leave an 1\8th of an inch of boarder along the edge so the scales fit flush with the tang.

I've been getting pissed off skeletonizing tangs lately. I'd prefer to just burn through them drill a bunch of holes but have been burning up bits lately using they method so its to e to slow down(or make a fixture for sharpening bits lol)
 
JG touched on a very important point. The surfaces being glued together should not be perfectly mated....or there will be no place for the epoxy. Such a joint is called a glue starved joint...and will easily fail. If you make it that way and clamp tight, the epoxy will ooze, and ooze, and ooze until all of it is expelled and the handle and tang are joined by .001" of resin or less. the slightest tap will break that bond.

The procedure is to rout out the handle to a depth of about 1/32-1/16", leaving a 1/8" border around the perimeter (use a 1/4" ball burr on a flex shaft/dremel). Then flatten the border and tang to be a perfect fit. This creates an epoxy reservoir that will assure a good bond. Now you can glue up and clamp away with little or no oozing and a perfect fit. I do the same on the ends of a hidden tang handle. You only need it to seat on the guard along the edge. Gaps are easy to eliminate if you take the center of the handle out of the situation.

Epoxy is where most folks have problems, too. Use the slowest setting resin you can get. Twenty-four hour set resins are best. T-88, G-flex, Acraglass, etc. Six hour set is the slowest you should use. This will allow plenty of time to adjust, re-position, disassemble if needed, etc. without having the resin set up in one or two minutes as with five minute epoxy. Even the one hour stuff is not workable in five-six minutes.

Apply the resin wearing disposable rubber gloves. Wipe of squeeze out and, then wipe off with denatured alcohol. Set aside and tidy things up, and then come back after a few minutes and check position, alignment, and look for drips and ooze. Wipe down with a paper towel and follow up with a wipe with denatured alcohol. Set aside for 30 minutes, or until the epoxy mix cup is just starting to gel. Wipe off one more time with alcohol and set aside for a day to fully cure. (I often check one more time after six hours just to be sure.)




My personal PITA moment is when you finish hours of work on a damascus blade and etch it only to find a bad weld or inclusion in the pattern. That is a real PITA!
 
I personally dislike profiling and rough grinding bevels. Really hate getting metal slivers in my feet or eyes. It's also your first good opportunity to send a knife to the scrap bin. Sometimes you mess up the bevel beyond recovery. To me it's easier to mess one up here than in the finish grinding stage.
 
Glue-up will keep getting easier with experience... after you mix your epoxy - put a dab on each scale, spread the epoxy on all, glue up all, clean all. This lets the epoxy soak in the scales a bit and also gives you more time as epoxy sets up faster in the mix container (in volume). Don't leave a lot of epoxy at the front of the scales so a ton does not squeeze out. Clamp very lightly.

With 24 hour epoxy you want to let it go to the end of your working time, about 15-30 minutes after glue up before really cleaning everything up. Use acetone on an old T-shirt scrap.



PITA moment... 20+ hours into a framelock something small like the detent or a counterbore is a hair off... and ruins all of the work so far.
 
1. warps from heat treat

2. Cracks in the handle (though if its a crack south of the bolster and north of the top pin it can be fixed , and if its stablized it could be invisible when fixed)

3. OOPS with the grinder on the edge of the full tang

4. working on a knife so long it mysteriously loses an inch or two in length.
 
For me, getting good straight holes in my handle material is the usual PITA step. Broaching is the second PITA.

The holes are a problem because I have a small, cheap and flimsy drill press. The broaching is a problem because I am worthless and weak. However, I counter that weakness and worthlessness with determination... which sometimes results in unexpected holes appearing in the side of the handle material, and that inevitably incites a bout of cursing and throwing things about.

- Greg
 
I think my favorite is sharpening a finished painted blade and goofing up the edge bevel or otherwise spoiling the finish on an otherwise finished knife. You should see the pains I take now when sharpening to prevent this sort of thing.

Grit in a kydex sheath is the scourge of my existence. FML

Spit bubble rust dots on finished work from knife shows

wiping the Ren wax off a sharp blade and then leaking on it...
 
I agree with tryppyr. I don't enjoy the broaching or guard fitting part of knife making. Shaping the handle and guard post fitment are my favorite parts of the process though. Making sheaths is not a lot of fun for me. I think it comes down to having proper tools to do the job efficiently. With the mill, and good files, guard slots are a minor annoyance now, but I haven't invested in good broaches. I like much of sheath making, but the cheap leather knives I got dull quickly, and tough leather is a pain with a cheap knife. I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet.
 
Hands down the part I hate the most is epoxying. I used to shoot myself in the foot with the 5 minutes stuff (It was all I could find at the local borg). Finally got smart, well smarter anyway, and ordered some one hour stuff. WAY much easier, but I still hate the process.

Another biggee for me has to be sharpening a new blade. Invariably I would get some sort of scratch on the blade from a rogue metal shaving, or an accidental bump against the stone. Somewhat fixed that by taping the blade up when sharpening. A lot of these "damn I hate this part" frustrations, for me, can be solved by slowing down, thinking it out, and using the "right" tool for the job. I like to pay attention to the details.....but I'm always in a hurry to do them!

Kind of like, "Lord grant me patience right now."
 
I want to clarify that I don't think you HAVE to spend money on good tools, you just then need the patience of Job, which I don't have. Every step of knife making can be done with cheap equipment, but a good tool is immediately noticeable in efficiency.
 
To stop epoxy from oozing for hours, mix a thickener into it. I use milled fiberglass from West Systems. It doesn't take much.

Tim
 
Willie71 said:
I like much of sheath making, but the cheap leather knives I got dull quickly, and tough leather is a pain with a cheap knife. I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet.
Click to expand...

I used to hate sheath making for the same reason. I still see it as a necessary evil... The local leatherwork pro put me on to using a utility knife/box cutter for leather cutting. The blades are sharpenable and easily replaceable, and are thin. Try it. You'll wish you had thought of it earlier.
 
Goof-ups on the finish is the big one. Burning handle material. Not so much anymore, but overgrinding a handle.

The list used to be really long but I've since narrowed it down :)
 
For me it's stamping the tangs,every once in a while I stamp one too shallow or just little off center.The blade is just about ready for HT and it's still a good functional blade but from that point on you know it's never going to be they way it should be so your finishing a give away knife or a discount knife.
 
Jason Fry said:
I used to hate sheath making for the same reason. I still see it as a necessary evil... The local leatherwork pro put me on to using a utility knife/box cutter for leather cutting. The blades are sharpenable and easily replaceable, and are thin. Try it. You'll wish you had thought of it earlier.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's much cheaper than buying a good leather push knife, but I suspect I'll have to get one eventually.
 
Jason Fry said:
I used to hate sheath making for the same reason. I still see it as a necessary evil... The local leatherwork pro put me on to using a utility knife/box cutter for leather cutting. The blades are sharpenable and easily replaceable, and are thin. Try it. You'll wish you had thought of it earlier.
Click to expand...

This is what I do too. Stanley box cutter with "Max" blades. Resharpen or use a new blade when it starts getting dull. I don't use a head knife unless I have long straight cuts. All the other leather knives sit idle, except for my swivel knife.

Mike L.
 
My biggest disappointment moment seems to be getting straight holes drilled in my hidden tang handles. I measure everything three times and the hole is always a half degree off or so. I have a decent drill press but the thing doesn't spin dead straight. Seems to wobble just a teeny bit. I don't know if it's bearings or a bent spindle or what but it is annoying.

I don't mind gluing or sharpening. While I don't look forward to the work involved in making a nice sheath it's not that bad, just time consuming. Keeping the flawless blade surface free of scratches while I'm trying to finish up the rest of the knife is a pain. Cutting and fitting guard slots has to be my biggest PITA. I don't have a mill.
 
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