- Joined
- Jun 11, 2010
- Messages
- 483
So I didn't start off taking pictures with the intent of doing a WIP thread, but I thought I had enough at various stages of the process to make for an interesting follow-along. This is going to be a little bitty dagger. OAL is about 10.5 inches. The blade was rough ground and heat treated probably 4 years ago with a batch of much larger dagger blades. This one simply used up the scrap piece of CPM 154CM left over from the larger blades. I originally flat ground it, but reground just prior to starting the complete project with a 1.5" wheel.
What triggered the completion of this blade was the acquisition of the right material for the handle. I LOVE blue, particularly the color of lapis, so I went hunting. Joe McNeely sent me a couple of large blocks of lapis TruStone composite, so I had to do something with it. For those who aren't aware of it, TruStone is a composite product made of 85% stone and 15% resin. It's REALLY hard, but seemed just right for this. Of course I had to iterate a few times. Here's an early sketch:
I'd already ground the blade and it needed polishing, of course. There's a reason I don't do hollow grinds much, and this was a good reminder of why that is. Here it is mid polish. I took it to 600grit:
It was time to turn the handle. I center drilled my piece on the lathe (wood lathe) and turned between centers. It sucked. A lot. I ended up running my lathe while rounding the blank with an angle grinder like the lapidary folks do. The details I cut in with a file, then polished like you normally would a pen. IT turned out (pun intended) like this:
Note that the tang is threaded. I did that before heat treat to hold the pommel. No in progress shots of that, but I turned it and the quillons with a handheld drill against a belt on my 2x72 grinder. Not ideal, but you gotta work with what you got. Here's a pic of the pommel and the handle on the knife, with the first iteration of the quillons laying by for scale. I didn't like this look, and ended up making larger ones. The keen eye will note that this side of the blade wasn't polished yet. I got ahead of myself and finished that later:
Here's a bass, just for fun:
I got the guard fitted and tapped for the quillons, and thought the quillons were too long. I shortened them. Here's a pic pre-shortening:
About this time I thought it was looking pretty good, but then I'm a glutton for punishment and decided to flute the handle. YEAH! So I made up this little jig that I saw on a Kyle Royer YouTube video and laid out the fluting pattern. Here's the jig. The toolrest on the lathe serves to keep the lines straight:
Draw those lines, then evenly spaced lines around the circumference, then connect the corners:
Looking good. Now the easy part is over. I cut the grooves in with a file. Tons of fun, but not as bad as it looks. I went with 16 of them. Here's the start:
And the finish before truing up the ends and polishing everything again:
And here's where we are today. I did a bunch of test pieces with fluting for the pommel and quillons, but I wasn't happy with those. I'm going to make the guard center piece narrower (almost round), maybe fiddle with the quillons a little more, and then I'll be done.
I'm gonna do a pretty ridiculous sheath too. I like the fancy ones with a metal throat and chape with leather around a maple core. I've done exactly one of those, and I was pretty happy with it so why not?
It may be a week or more until I update this again, but in the meantime, enjoy! And let me know what you think. I can still make changes if someone has a good idea.
What triggered the completion of this blade was the acquisition of the right material for the handle. I LOVE blue, particularly the color of lapis, so I went hunting. Joe McNeely sent me a couple of large blocks of lapis TruStone composite, so I had to do something with it. For those who aren't aware of it, TruStone is a composite product made of 85% stone and 15% resin. It's REALLY hard, but seemed just right for this. Of course I had to iterate a few times. Here's an early sketch:
I'd already ground the blade and it needed polishing, of course. There's a reason I don't do hollow grinds much, and this was a good reminder of why that is. Here it is mid polish. I took it to 600grit:
It was time to turn the handle. I center drilled my piece on the lathe (wood lathe) and turned between centers. It sucked. A lot. I ended up running my lathe while rounding the blank with an angle grinder like the lapidary folks do. The details I cut in with a file, then polished like you normally would a pen. IT turned out (pun intended) like this:
Note that the tang is threaded. I did that before heat treat to hold the pommel. No in progress shots of that, but I turned it and the quillons with a handheld drill against a belt on my 2x72 grinder. Not ideal, but you gotta work with what you got. Here's a pic of the pommel and the handle on the knife, with the first iteration of the quillons laying by for scale. I didn't like this look, and ended up making larger ones. The keen eye will note that this side of the blade wasn't polished yet. I got ahead of myself and finished that later:
Here's a bass, just for fun:
I got the guard fitted and tapped for the quillons, and thought the quillons were too long. I shortened them. Here's a pic pre-shortening:
About this time I thought it was looking pretty good, but then I'm a glutton for punishment and decided to flute the handle. YEAH! So I made up this little jig that I saw on a Kyle Royer YouTube video and laid out the fluting pattern. Here's the jig. The toolrest on the lathe serves to keep the lines straight:
Draw those lines, then evenly spaced lines around the circumference, then connect the corners:
Looking good. Now the easy part is over. I cut the grooves in with a file. Tons of fun, but not as bad as it looks. I went with 16 of them. Here's the start:
And the finish before truing up the ends and polishing everything again:
And here's where we are today. I did a bunch of test pieces with fluting for the pommel and quillons, but I wasn't happy with those. I'm going to make the guard center piece narrower (almost round), maybe fiddle with the quillons a little more, and then I'll be done.
I'm gonna do a pretty ridiculous sheath too. I like the fancy ones with a metal throat and chape with leather around a maple core. I've done exactly one of those, and I was pretty happy with it so why not?
It may be a week or more until I update this again, but in the meantime, enjoy! And let me know what you think. I can still make changes if someone has a good idea.
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