My first Bowie/present for a friend WIP (fingers corssed)

I usually start fitting the guard whle the knife is still soft , in case I need to do some file-work to square up the shoulders where the ricasso meets the guard.After that it depends on what type of handle its getting.If I go stacked leather I will often have the handle 80 to 90 percent done before Ive even started to grind bevels on the blank.If theres any holes to be drilled in the tang ,for example a "stub"tang that needs a pin through it,I leave it soft.If its a threaded tang with a pommel Ill H T it any time after the guard is fitted and the blade is done.
I like what youre doing , by the way.
 
Thanks Eric.

So speaking of guards I was a tad slow on ordering them but they came today. I ordered a basic one in case I want to attempt bending it (how I'll accomplish this accurately I don't know since I really have nothing to mold it around). And one kinda decorative looking guy should I decide to not be that ambitious and just put a flat guard on this thing. So I'm guessing the trick to this is filing out the guard to fit around the tang, then square everything up? Progress wise I'm still sanding I have one side done to 320 just about ready for 400 then going to tape that side and hit the other one. I don't know why I'm not doing both sides equally in the past I would. The whole blade got whatever grit I was at. Hoping the sanding will be done by the end of the week then it's onto I guess fitting the guard?? As far as the handle I don't know if I mentioned it or not but it's going to be a block of dyed blue curly maple. If my plan comes together it should look pretty sexy with the blue stingray skin I want to put on the sheath.

Now I'm far from an expert and maybe I was thinking they were going to be a bit smaller but do these things look too huge for this knife? To me at least, they look a bit on the thick side and stick out way too wide am I mistaken on this? I laid one on the blade to get an idea. What say ye?



 
Good effort on this blade Matt. Learning as you go along leaves a lasting impression, thats a good thing. Remember to keep the blade up against the bolt in the bevel grinding clamp so it wont snap the hardened arms.
This is a little late but take a look at this video on grinding false edges we shot last month. Its a fast and easy way to grind swedges. [video=youtube_share;ohA9ZJctAXY]http://youtu.be/ohA9ZJctAXY[/video]

You realize you owe us pics of the house wrecking project as well.

Regards, Fred
 
Those guards are made to curve.

Use a broken baseball bat, or a piece of pipe, and a hammer to curve it. Mark where the guard sits against the blade, and make sure you don't curve any of that area. I have seen people bolt two plates of 1/4" steel, that are the width of the blade, through the guard slot to assure it does not bend there. The best way is to use a torch and heat the part of the guard you want to bend red, hammer to shape on the bat/pipe, re-heat, shape more ,etc. You can control where it bends the most by the amount of heat applied .
 
I have a couple bits of advice, that you may or may not want. LOL

You will get much better definition between varying bevels by sanding them at different angles to each other... and then only sand them all in line with each other with the final grit.

You will never get a guard to fit as tight/clean as possible by fitting it before heat treat. I don't cut my guard shoulders in until I have the blade hand sanded to at least 320X. If you cut the shoulders in, and then start hand sanding the ricasso... you're going to round off the crisp guard shoulders and that will mess up your guard fit.

IMHO, those guards are way too big in every direction. You'd be far better off to start from raw stock...

It's coming along well, I applaud you for trying to get things right as you go. It seems pretty common anymore for a guy to finish something out even if he knows it could be better if he tried.
 
Nick I'll take advice from anyone especially someone who makes bowies like you. What to your mean by sanding them in different directions from one another? I'm shooting to keep everything dead flat do I'm doing all my sanding with my paper attached to my surface plate. So are you saying do the bevels the length of the blade then do the flats perpendicular then finish them all in one direction?
 
Okay been a bit of time but I THINK it's ready for HT. I have everything sanded to 400 there are only a few areas of concern unless you guys happen to see something else. First off, I'm not sure if the edge is too thin it's stainless ATS-34. A while back I picked up a Starrett micrometer and a Mitutoyo height gauge up off a guy for $20 (I'm still pretty damn proud of that :D) unfortunately I don't really know how to read the damn thing as it's not digital and I don't have much experience with using anything that is a Vernier scale :o. But here is what the thing reads I tried best I could to get the edge centered halfway between the caliper. I'm just wondering if it's too thin for HT as the ones I've done in the past have had a thicker edge.



This is the opening of it probably a moot point for anyone who knows how to read the damn thing LOL.



This is my other area of concern. I know when I put the edge on it, I MIGHT eliminate this spot, or I'm wondering if I should just put the edge on the grinder or hit it with a file to eliminate some of this, or not worry about it as it should disappear with the edge. For as much sanding as I did on the surface plate this area never really got touched.



And here is the full Monty of her. I missed my date of when I wanted this to be built it was a few days ago so it's a definite belated present but the good news is I can take my time and not try and bang it out for the sake of meeting a deadline. You can really see that ugly spot in the first pic.





Lastly since I've been out of the game what is my best bet to HT? I used Peters in the past and will use them again but I know their pricing changed since I last used them and sending more that one blade seems to be the best bang for your buck. But I've come this far with it I don't mind paying a bit more to know it's going to be done professionally.
 
Peter's is a good choice.

The blade looks good. Your micrometer says the blade is about .0218" at the edge. That is the upper side of the thickness you want for a stainless steel at HT. Since this is a Bowie, not a slicer, that thickness is OK. I usually go to about .100-.015" on my kitchen blades.

That spot at the plunge may be an artifact of my profiling the plunge. Another reason that appears is over filing on the plunges. In either case, the edge was ground/filed a bit thin there. I would leave it as is, and it will disappear in post-HT sanding and sharpening.
 
Well I don't want folks to think I gave up on this so here is the deal. The blade was sent out to Peters a month ago. I got a call from Brad about a week after I shipped it to go over everything as far as him wanting to drill a hole in the tang to hang it I also asked him to soften the tang so I can drill it easier etc. I was told he would send it out shortly, well I called about a two weeks ago and was told they got a little backed and he'll be sending it next week. I called yesterday to see try and track it turns out they shipped it to my old mailing address which I found odd because when I gave them my payment information I told them I moved and gave them my new billing address, I guess they never updated anything else. So I'm told by one of the girls there that it's sitting at the post office in my old town which is about an hour away because the mailing label got ripped and they couldn't read the address I need to go claim it. I call them and the clerk says "if we can't read the label we don't hold it we'll return it to sender" I call Peter's up and they tell me they are going to see what they can do.

To make a long story short I'm no better off now than I was the day after I shipped the blade out, I got a call from Peters telling me they don't know where the blade is. The blade was at my old post office a week ago so it should have been back at Peters as according to them it's only about 2-3 days for it to get from them to me. So it's taken over a month to try and get this blade to and from the HT and as of right now it's lost. Now I'm not a super fast maker and I put a decent amount of hours into this blade already. Pissed isn't even a good word to describe how I feel considering the time I've already put into this, the fact it was for a present which, albeit made a bit late to have delivered on time it's a month passed when it should've been delivered and I still have a lot more work to get done on it makes it even worse. I guess the only thing I can hope for is that at some point this thing shows up back at Peters and I'm able to get back to work on it.

I told the person I'm making this for what happened and she asked "what happens if it doesn't turn up? I told her "then I guess I start all over from scratch again" She said "well don't worry about it if it doesn't turn up I don't want you sinking more time and money into this for me" Which I kinda feel worse about because I know she said she's always wanted a Bowie and while it's really not my fault I know it's something she was really looking forward to. I showed it to her before it went out to HT and she almost cried and said no one has ever done anything like this for me before it'll be the best present anyone has ever gotten me. So I feel like I'm letting a good friend down here.
 
I empathize with your frustration. I have had this happen a number of times (not related to knives,) and the outright lying is poor business. I have always appreciated a business who states "I messed up, this is what I will do to fix it........." I set up my own heat treat system, my own wood stabilization system because I don't want these type of problems.

I would start a new one right now. If the old one shows up, then finish it and you will have your own matching bowie. (I wonder if a romance might be brewing here anyway based on what you have said.)
 
Thanks for the input willie, nah no romance just very good friends. We're both in relationships, we have kids the same age that play together fairly regularly etc. She's just hasn't gotten a lot of breaks in her life yet and yet you'd never know it if you spoke to her.
 
That really sucks, Id contact the post office and double check that they actually did send it back to Peters. Just them stating that is what they "usually" do does not mean that is what happened. I am of course biased against the post office because well, I have been screwed over by the USPS more than once.
 
I feel your frustration man. I'm north of the border but I think we are worse off even. I have about as many packages lost or damaged by Canada post as I have delivered on time in good shape. It has gotten to the point that the last time I bought some stuff, I spent more on fuel picking it up than the item cost, simply because I actually wanted to receive the item this year and in one piece.
 
Bummer dude! I feel your pain. You have to remember that the USPS is just another department of the Government. Just as inept and corrupt as any of them. Many of my in-laws work either at a PO or at a distribution center and the stories they tell make me shake my head in disbelief.

If it were me, I'd start a new knife. If the old one shows up, just send it to me after you've finished it :) Good luck bro!
 
Okay after a long drawn out process thanks to the USPS I finally got the blade back a couple weeks ago and get back in the groove a bit. Last night got it sanded to 320 to get all it all shiny again from the HT. Per Nicks instructions I'm probably going to take it a little further than his instructions and go to 600 before I start fitting the guard. In the meantime I've decided to attempt going with one of those guards I showed. I have one of two options: If I want to just keep it an oval guard I can just keep grinding the thing down to make it smaller and retain its shape or I can go for gold and attempt to make it an "S" guard. I'm opting to go for gold what I did since it's too thick IMO I decided to spend some time on the belt grinder thinning it down a bit. I have a piece of 3/4" galvanized pipe I can try using to bend it around unless anyone has any other suggestions I'm open. I want to sand it down a bit more to maybe 220 or 320 before I attempt bending it this way I can get the deep scratches out easier on a flat surface.....Then again I'm sure whacking it with a hammer is going to require some decent sanding too but whatever.

Here is a pic comparing the difference in thickness to what it was to where it is. Since I have to guards the same thickness it served as a decent reference. Do you guys think I should go a bit thinner on it or is this good? The sanded down one is on the right, kinda hard to tell in the pic but more noticeable in person.


 
Matt,
You can probably bend it now. It will end up thinner after clean up.

There are two ways to do the bend...cold or hot. I would go with hot.
Get a 6" piece of solid 1" steel rod, not galvanized pipe. Drill two 1/4" holes near the ends. Screw the rod down to a piece of 4X4 to make it rigid. If you tied to hammer against the rod in a vise or on the bench, it would jump around more than a 14 year old girl at a Justin Beeber concert.
Heat one end of the guard to dull red, and shape on the rod. Take additional heats if needed. Go slow, and remember, you can bend it more easier than you can un-bend it. Then shape the other end. You can do fine tuning of the shape cold from here. When the guard is shaped as you wish, make sure you flatten the center part so it will fit the blade right.
 
Is it better/easier to fit the guard over the blade before bending it out does it not matter one way or another?
 
Long guards like that hamper the way the knife can be used, and like to get bent while their at it. From a strictly visual standpoint, having the guard drop down below the edge gives it an "off" appearance, though I know there are plenty of examples of just that. Jutting high over the spine gets in the way of moving the thumb forward to the spine for a saber grip which can come in handy.

Were I to go that route, I'd want thick stock, not thin. I'd start at something like .250" at the tang and use files to taper the stock so it can have a thin appearance from the side. Maybe even some decorative filework to brighten up what is going to be billboard in the middle of the whole.

That little bit of "missed" steel at the ricasso looks to me to be the perfect place for a spanish notch. It is a bowie, after all!
 
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