messed up bevel in finishing stage

TomoGato

TomoGato

Joined
Sep 6, 2021
Messages
10
Hello New knife maker here.

First time posting, looking for advice. This is the first blade I have tried at this length, and I have been struggling with getting the bevel line straight. I originally put the bevel in with a jig, but now I am in the finishing stages, the blade has been heat treated and I am hand sanding, and finished up the guard. I had a wobble in the bevel line and it was really bothering me, so i decided to try and even it out on the belt grinder with a 120 grit. I ended up making it worse, and my edge is now really thin, hardly any room left to play with it.

Is there a way that I can straighten up this line, maybe with a trizact belt? or should i cut my loses at this point and just accept that it won't be a straight line. I have put a lot of hours into this piece, so I am heart broken, wish i could undo the brief moment of bad decisions.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks for your time!


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TomoGato said:
Hello New knife maker here.

First time posting, looking for advice. This is the first blade I have tried at this length, and I have been struggling with getting the bevel line straight. I originally put the bevel in with a jig, but now I am in the finishing stages, the blade has been heat treated and I am hand sanding, and finished up the guard. I had a wobble in the bevel line and it was really bothering me, so i decided to try and even it out on the belt grinder with a 120 grit. I ended up making it worse, and my edge is now really thin, hardly any room left to play with it.

Is there a way that I can straighten up this line, maybe with a trizact belt? or should i cut my loses at this point and just accept that it won't be a straight line. I have put a lot of hours into this piece, so I am heart broken, wish i could undo the brief moment of bad decisions.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks for your time!


25b8b5822065b99abd1d5828508551f9.jpg
Click to expand...
Like the above post said, take your grind up a little and try again. Also, pay very close attention to the amount of pressure your applying while grinding. Use very little pressure to take off a small amount of material so you can catch your mistakes early. This will allow you to make necessary changes to avoid ruining all of your hard work.
 
You can clean it up by hand with a hard backer and good grade 400 grit sandpaper. Clamp the blade down on the edge of a 2X4 and work slowly. Once it is established go to 800 grit.

I would also raise the bottom of the ricasso to the height of the choil, creating a slight step up. This will look much better than the very forward choil as it is. Normally a choil is not near that far away from the guard unless you have a stepped ricasso ( thing Bowie and fighter style).

As far as the thin edge goes, after fixing the bevel line, just sharpen the thin edge at 15° to 20° to thicken it back up. Before sharpening, it may be necessary to sand the edge dull by sanding with the hard backed paper going down the edge to make it straight.
 
I ran into similar issues on the knife I'm currently working on. If you have the jig, I'd do like was mentioned and use it to take the grind line up until you lose the wobble. Don't grind the edge, grind the shoulder of the bevel to move the grind line up.
Use dykem or majic marker and run the grinder really slow. With the knife in the jig, barely touch the belt, check the ink to see where it's grinding, adjust jig angle in relation to the belt to get the desired effect.
If you get it pretty close then hand sand to finish.
 
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