Last Minute Gift Idea

philllll said:
Got my KLVUK #8 today and it is wonderful. Nothing better than coming home to a triangle box on the doorstep. (Nobody tell my wife I said that!) The satisal wood is so nice. Time to break out the sandpaper and tung oil!
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Khul Philll! Im about to do the same! Aint got no tung oil so linseed will have to work. Mine is pretty rough and its so dark you cannot see any grain. I think it will turn out nice. Cant wait to see yours! My mailman stuffed mine in the mailbox! Barely got it in there and then put a rubber band on the door to keep it shut. It sat there all weekend cause I expected it to come to my door.

And Cul4u01: Pretty Khul eh! Im polishing mine right now. Its the one Aunti gifted to me with my Friday 13th AK monster. Im up to 800 grit. going 1500,2000,3000. Overkill but we will see. I already polished the blade to pretty dang shiny. Dont know if ill ever get to HI water smooth? I took the metal tip off the sheath cause it was pokin in the wrong place:eek: Its my EDC for now.
 
ndoghouse said:
My mailman stuffed mine in the mailbox!
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Mine did the same thing!!!!! First time he's ever done it. Didn't even try to close the mailbox. He must be getting fed up with dropping so many packages at my door :D

The handle on mine is actually kind of opposite to yours. Lots of grain and there is a big light spot as well. Lots of character.
 
I got my KLVUK the day before Christmas, my handle needed some finishing work, which is fine by me, a little hit on the belt sander a wood file and hand sand to finish. I only sanded to 180 to keep a nice hold on it. Its now soaking in BLO, been 2 days now,gonna pull it tomorrow and let it dry. Will post up some pics when done.
 
I just finished cleaning up my KLVUK a bit and noticed the craziest thing. There is a greenish blue tint under the forge scale on one side of the blade. I can't get a very good photo but here is the best I could do. No color filter trickery here. It is wild in person.

IMG_1373.jpg


Also worked on the handle a bit. A very light sanding at 220 grit, several coats of pure tung oil and lots of hand polishing. I wanted to keep some of the "rough" look to it.
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Its likely just the color of steel reflecting the differential hardening. Carbon steel will be blue to purple color when tempered to spring characteristics. The harder straw yellow color will be near the edge which is ground off so that seems to make sense to me. Its just a surface oxidation. Some of them expert knifemakers could probably tell ya more but thats what makes sense to me. Looks good! How did ya remove the scale? Acid?
 
Just like ndoghouse said steel is very amazing when tempered, you can get it to be blood red or purple, blue etc. it's quite amazing what forging it can do. I've heard that if you ruin the temper on a knife there will be blue oxidation on the steel meaning the temper is ruined because you heated it up too much, but in this case it's probably just it's unique heat treat.
 
I didn't remove any of the scale, though I cleaned it up with some Rem-Oil gun cleaner.
 
keikuru said:
Just like ndoghouse said steel is very amazing when tempered, you can get it to be blood red or purple, blue etc. it's quite amazing what forging it can do. I've heard that if you ruin the temper on a knife there will be blue oxidation on the steel meaning the temper is ruined because you heated it up too much, but in this case it's probably just it's unique heat treat.
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Its not ruined so to speak unless you heat the edge to that color. You want the spine and the tang of the knife to be around that color which give it the spring character. If too brittle (towards the yellow) then the knife may break. What you want is the edge to be harder and the spine to be more flexible. There is a logical progression to the colors your seeing. You might have noticed the purple/blue band on a file tang. Thats because they heat it to spring temper so it don't break off in your hand. The rest of the file remains hard. As you heat the steel you will see black to very dark green/purple and progressively as the temp of the steel rises it will go through different stages of color like purple to blue to orange to yellow etc. I believe what the Kamis are doing is they heat the knife to above all these colors and use the water to cool it back down quickly starting at the edge making the edge harder (more brittle). They could then use the stored heat in the blade mass at the spine to flow towards the edge as they control it with water poured over the edge area. They watch the colors to ensure the proper color is in the proper place which tells them the steel has the right spring or hardness in the places they want it. This is what they refer to as differential hardening.
Another way to get the same characteristics is heat the knife as they do and totally submerge it in oil or water (quench) you will make the entire blade very hard and is not desirable as an end product. The edges will chip. It may even break if it is dropped. To solve this problem you can heat the blade from the spine area and watch the colors progress as they move towards the edge and when the right colors are there then stop the heating process. This is what they call differential tempering and is not the way the Kamis do it. Basically you can do the same job using cooling or heating. Just depends on...well.I cant answer that one. There may be benefits to each but I would think differential hardening would be preferable where minimal resources are available. Easier to use available water in a pitcher than to have to have torches and compressed gasses. 150 years ago the latter was not an option. Someone correct me if Im wrong. Im newbie and just learning this myself:foot:
From Wiki:
800px-Tempering_colors_in_steel.jpg

Left=cold right=hot​
 
I will take the 16 inch Salyan Special if it is still available.

Thanks,

John Malick aka Mr. Bowie
 
I had actually sent the email before I posted on here for it but thank you for letting me know I did the right thing since I wasn't sure.
 
I find it really rewarding to find out I did something right after the fact. Well I guess I'd have to reword that and say it must be nice to hear you did something right after the fact. It's never actually happened to me so I don't know the feeling first hand. Has to be good though, right?
 
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