- Joined
- Dec 1, 2010
- Messages
- 161
So my school hosts this massive show for the seniors. We come up with an idea for a piece, write up a proposal, claim a space and then work your ass off untill you have several complete mental breakdowns and panic attacks and so on, and then people from all over come through and take a look at all the blood sweat and tears you poured into your work.
I have been kind of deemed the knife guy at my school, since i get fairly obsessive over creating knives so i figured that would be a great thing to do for the bfa show. As far as the concept goes i wanted to work some industrial design into this, as in i wanted to fill some sort of void in the world or point out something that i personally do not believe is right. To me, Pink knives, and guns, and tools seem like a very cheap way of saying hey this is woman friendly! buy me! This coupled with the fact that they are exactly the same design as any other knife or gun, just pink and labeled as a women's object.
To solve this i decided to talk to as many women as i could around my school (target audience was 21-35 which makes my school a perfect place) and saw what they thought a knife should be if it was going to be for a woman. The responses i got were;
-slim, but not dinky
-smaller for lady hands
-simple to use
-not threatening or tactical
-legal (2.5 inches for chicago)
-not a weapon but a tool
This was a great place to get started, and i immediately thought that a linerless slipjoint would be perfect. Not fast to deploy so it wouldnt be very weapon like, fairly simple if i was to waterjet cut the designs, and super slim and light. Next i drafted out some designs in solidworks and then made laser cut acrylic samples (with working springs made from acrylic)
From there i revised the laser cut proto type until i liked it enough to do the real thing. So i sent them to great lakes waterjet....and not doing that again because every day for a week i called and he said he would get it done tommorow. Instead of waiting and waiting for the design to get cut there i canceled the order, and cut out some blades and springs out of 1080+ i had gotten from AKS.
Then i cleaned up and flatened the blades with some super high tech and fancy equipment!
a surface grinder would have been nice, but as you will see i had to do a lot of stuff by hand. Even so, it got fairly nice results.
Next up was grinding in the bevels and hand sanding to 220 prior to ht
after ht (placed in oven at room temp, brought up to 1560, soak for 5 mins, quench in warm/ hot to touch canola oil. temper 2x2 at 425, great results by the way)
after ht i was worried about overheating the blades ( one overheated before ht and since they were thin i didn't want to risk anything) so i took down the bevels further, and cleaned up the plunge lines all with files
Then hand sanded up to 1200 ( not my best at all, but went back in and corrected most of the errors later)
Tried buffing for the first time, realized that i still had some scratches then re sanded, but this is them shiny and pretty
Now i also wanted the handle to be mustard yellow so i got some natural canvas micarta and ran with it. unfortunately due to the nasties in micarta i couldn't drill it in the shop, so i had to come up with a different method using a hand drill, some c clamps, and 2 pieces of wood that were pre-drilled on the drill press using a laser cut template as a guide. (paper would work fine too)
i just traced the top block and made lines on 2 sides that had to line up, this would keep everything consistent
Then i smashed and pushed all the pieces together which was arguably the worst part of the whole project because the spring was about 10X as thick as it needed to be
Finished assembling, then did some profile grinding. Oh and i forgot to mention that one of the 1/16th inch brass rods ran straight and cleanly through my thumb at some point in this whole process...hurt a heck of a lot less than you would think
I have been kind of deemed the knife guy at my school, since i get fairly obsessive over creating knives so i figured that would be a great thing to do for the bfa show. As far as the concept goes i wanted to work some industrial design into this, as in i wanted to fill some sort of void in the world or point out something that i personally do not believe is right. To me, Pink knives, and guns, and tools seem like a very cheap way of saying hey this is woman friendly! buy me! This coupled with the fact that they are exactly the same design as any other knife or gun, just pink and labeled as a women's object.
To solve this i decided to talk to as many women as i could around my school (target audience was 21-35 which makes my school a perfect place) and saw what they thought a knife should be if it was going to be for a woman. The responses i got were;
-slim, but not dinky
-smaller for lady hands
-simple to use
-not threatening or tactical
-legal (2.5 inches for chicago)
-not a weapon but a tool
This was a great place to get started, and i immediately thought that a linerless slipjoint would be perfect. Not fast to deploy so it wouldnt be very weapon like, fairly simple if i was to waterjet cut the designs, and super slim and light. Next i drafted out some designs in solidworks and then made laser cut acrylic samples (with working springs made from acrylic)
From there i revised the laser cut proto type until i liked it enough to do the real thing. So i sent them to great lakes waterjet....and not doing that again because every day for a week i called and he said he would get it done tommorow. Instead of waiting and waiting for the design to get cut there i canceled the order, and cut out some blades and springs out of 1080+ i had gotten from AKS.
Then i cleaned up and flatened the blades with some super high tech and fancy equipment!
a surface grinder would have been nice, but as you will see i had to do a lot of stuff by hand. Even so, it got fairly nice results.
Next up was grinding in the bevels and hand sanding to 220 prior to ht
after ht (placed in oven at room temp, brought up to 1560, soak for 5 mins, quench in warm/ hot to touch canola oil. temper 2x2 at 425, great results by the way)
after ht i was worried about overheating the blades ( one overheated before ht and since they were thin i didn't want to risk anything) so i took down the bevels further, and cleaned up the plunge lines all with files
Then hand sanded up to 1200 ( not my best at all, but went back in and corrected most of the errors later)
Tried buffing for the first time, realized that i still had some scratches then re sanded, but this is them shiny and pretty
Now i also wanted the handle to be mustard yellow so i got some natural canvas micarta and ran with it. unfortunately due to the nasties in micarta i couldn't drill it in the shop, so i had to come up with a different method using a hand drill, some c clamps, and 2 pieces of wood that were pre-drilled on the drill press using a laser cut template as a guide. (paper would work fine too)
i just traced the top block and made lines on 2 sides that had to line up, this would keep everything consistent
Then i smashed and pushed all the pieces together which was arguably the worst part of the whole project because the spring was about 10X as thick as it needed to be
Finished assembling, then did some profile grinding. Oh and i forgot to mention that one of the 1/16th inch brass rods ran straight and cleanly through my thumb at some point in this whole process...hurt a heck of a lot less than you would think
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