My first knife design. Critiques and Comments welcome

Nothing majorly exciting to report. Last few days I haven't had a chance to do much work. Still getting the 120 lines out, which I have done in the middle width of the blade. However it appears I still do not have the blade perfectly flat. I have lines near the spine and edge of the blade which means it's still slightly rounded.

I've been working through quite a bit of 220 sheets trying to get it all done. I thought I was pretty flat after doing the 120 however obviously not the case. I could cheat and just sand at the angles to get the 120 scratches out of there. But would prefer to have the blade flat. How long that is going to take at 220 on an already hardened blade I'm not sure. :o
 
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A long time brother, believe me :( but dont give up, ehen tyuo get it it will be that much better a feeling
 
**VENT POST**

Ugh... tonight was my worst night with this knife. Frustration set in and I wanted to see just how out of whack the bevels were as far as being flat. So I cheated and used the one thing I know will give me a flat grind. Fred's jig and a 2.5 degree wedge to get everything from the edge up flat. That in itself was depressing, I realized there was basically no part of this blade that was flat. It took me hours on the grinder with 120 (going slow making sure not to get the blade too hot). My bad side still isn't to my satisfaction and I had to walk away for a while.

I'm definitely making this knife again (once I finish up the other 5 or so I have in limbo). There is so much I like about it.... except the way it's coming together. I'm not even sure how things are going to turn out from here. Getting the bevels flat is changing everything I've done basically since I got it back.... Alright vent is mostly over, thanks for reading.
 
Matt,
I think you are trying to over-perfect this knife. While it is commendable to want the best you can do, also remember that it is your first attempt...and it will be a micarta handled camp and hunting knife.
The temptation is to keep re-grinding it to make it better, and as you are finding out, it just gets worse and worse.If you don't pick a point and decide to go from there, you will end up with a toothpick that has a 4.5" handle. Seriously, you may be working too hard on your knife. I have often thought that a blade was not right, but decided to go from where I was, and the problem I saw would work its way out in the finer grits.
If you have it reasonably flat, you should leave the 120 grit as is and start going to finer grits by hand. Work it down to 400 grit. If there are spots that don't seem to be getting sanded evenly, switch the backing block to a softer piece of wood, like a piece of fir 2X4. This will help blend in slight imperfections in flatness. Go to a satin finish at 800-1000 and quit. Then tape the blade up and start on the handle.


On the advise end:

You can't mix wine and milk and get a good tasting drink...even though both taste good.
You started this knife by hand, and now are trying to speed things up with a grinder. A grinder is faster than hand....but will never equal the flatness possible by hand sanding. The grinder is probably the culprit in the new unflat spots. It will take a good while to gain the grinding skill to grind really flat grinds on a grinder.

There is only so much metal on the blade once you get to HT. After HT, you should only be smoothing the metal that you have down to the final finish. Extensive re-shaping and re-grinding after HT are going to change everything...and that means a lot of hard work on hard steel. Once the blade is through HT, finish it pretty much as is. The lessons learned on that blade will make the next one better, but trying to improve them may make this blade worse.

Stacy
 
I'll second Stacy's post. At some point, you have to go with it. My first and 50th knives were all far from perfect. The main thing is that each one was as good as I could make it with my skill at that time. The crazy thing is, each one was better than the last.

You have a perfectionistic drive that can be a good and a bad thing. The good thing is that it will drive each successive attempt to be better than the last. The bad thing is that on an individual knife, you may end up holding a scalpel with a full sized handle if you don't stop at some piont. In fact, there will be many times when it's much easier to just toss the partially done knife in a box and move on to the next one. I'm not suggesting that with this blade. It's your first, and you should definitely finish it, but don't grow old, get arthritis, and have a stroke over this first one. You've got many more blades in front of you.

I can tell you that it's a lot easier to make mistakes than to fix mistakes with powered equipment until you've ground out a whole bunch of knives. The up side to that is that the better you get with the powered equipment, the faster and nicer your hand finishes will get.

--nathan
 
Yeah good points, I can be a it of a perfectionist when it comes to things like this. Seems like the more I'm working on it the more faults I'm finding with it. Which I guess like Unky mentioned a little while back is because I stare at it for hours on end. I just don't want it to suck.

Alright so from here on out, what it is, is what it will be. I'm leaving it as is and just doing what needs to be done to blend everything together.
 
I think something that should be mentioned is that Stacy isn't advocating doing a half-arsed job (and I'm not suggesting you would, Fletch). It's just that you should do the best you can within your skill set. That skill set has to start somewhere, and it WILL improve if you make effort at it over time.

And the thing to remember is that when you start off assembling Hyundai's (as 90% of us do), you shouldn't expect to end up with a Ferrari. However, remember that Hyundai's can look good, work fine, and be very dependable. Work on improving those Hyundai's until they match or beat Ferrari's in both looks and performance.

I'm a big fan of doing the absolute best you possibly can with what you have. Whether that's skill, equipment, money, etc. It just takes time for what you have to equal what you want to have.

--nathan
 
silver_pilate said:
I think something that should be mentioned is that Stacy isn't advocating doing a half-arsed job (and I'm not suggesting you would, Fletch). It's just that you should do the best you can within your skill set. That skill set has to start somewhere, and it WILL improve if you make effort at it over time.

And the thing to remember is that when you start off assembling Hyundai's (as 90% of us do), you shouldn't expect to end up with a Ferrari. However, remember that Hyundai's can look good, work fine, and be very dependable. Work on improving those Hyundai's until they match or beat Ferrari's in both looks and performance.

I'm a big fan of doing the absolute best you possibly can with what you have. Whether that's skill, equipment, money, etc. It just takes time for what you have to equal what you want to have.

--nathan
Click to expand...

I realize that too, it's just frustrating because I feel as though I can do better. Not that it's based off of any kind of previous experience in this art mind you, just that my mind says I'm capable of better. However I just lack the result of it being possible atm.

I look at it and say "this is wrong, that needs to be fixed, this is off, etc" and I want to correct it.
 
I know exactly what you are talking about, I asaw my knife looking much better than it does, in my mind it is horible, yet everyone else that has seen it in person thinks its great. I think we just have to live with it and accept that we are not going to make a knife as good as someone thats been doing it for years onthe first attempt. Now these people that we respect think we are doing a good job on our first knives, we must be doing something right. We just have to say to our selfs, "this as good as I can do at this time, but the next one is going to be better". I actually hid mine away for a few days and didn't look at it. I look at it now and I still see the imperfections, but they don't bother me as much and I know the next one will be better.
Simple example, I spent 4 day sanding and trying to polish out the WIP knife, the sister knife I had to the same point in an evening, thats a huge improvement right there. I don't think I can get it done any faster than that by hand
 
Well I have one side just about sanded up to 400. There are a few scratches left but they'll come out fairly easy, then just have to hit the other side. I was planning on doing a satin finish up to 1000 grit however the way it's worked out when I got from 400 to 800 I'll be sanding with the blade so I'm guessing it's best to just stop there. I want to try the Mobil one technique I've heard so much good about so that will likely be where I finish up. My only other real option would be to go to 1000 across the blade, then use the 1200 polishing paper Stacy sent me. But I don't think it's really worth going that route. Unless anyone would advise otherwise.

Now here's a dumb question (think I know the answer but...). If you do a satin finish on the blade you pretty much have to do the same thing on everything else right? I'm assuming yes, but thought I'd ask. I mean it would look fairly strange to have a satin blade and a mirror finish everywhere else right?
 
I agree it would look off to me, but my opinion doesn't matter as its not my knife. If its what you want then do it, if you don't like it it doesn't take much to change it
 
Matt,
It is not necessary to make every grit change perpendicular to the last one after 400. Nothing wrong with doing that, but most folks do all wet sanding parallel to the blade.
However, If you methods end up with the last grit going the wrong way, you can just re-sand that last grit parallel to the blade. Using oil or soapy water will help a lot with the grits above 400.
Stacy
 
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Well tonight I started working on the satin finish. Picked up some Mobil 1 and spent most of the time just doing the little part of the ricasso. Tough to get into a good rhythm when I was only moving the sand paper about 3/4 of an inch :). Got all the 400 grit lines basically out and moved onto the blade for a little bit. Nice to see it all starting to come together, I started on the "good" side and really liking the way it's starting to look. It seems like it's taking forever to get this knife finished, and it probably might have been further along had I not had my little "mishaps" post HT and wasn't so anal about trying to make it perfect.
 
Gee wizz man!!! Make it and see how it turns out and how many more it will take to satisfy yourself? Maybe dozens of different ones. Frank
 
I know Frank... I'm like a girl and wanted my first time to be "perfect" :p. There is a good chance I'll never be satisfied. Content maybe, but not sure about satisfied. ;)
 
Matt,
There is nothing wrong with working slow and getting it right. If it takes six months of slow and steady work, that is fine.

Don't worry about taking your time, as long as you are actually doing something - Several years ago we had a new guy who talked ,and talked, and talked about the first knife he was going to make. He did sketches, changed his mind on styles, started designing some specialty knives he was going to sell to sportsmen, was building equipment, getting steel, came up with his business name and logo, got stencils and stamps, etc.,etc., etc. - but he never actually got around to starting the knife. After over a year several people posted that he should just shut up and make a knife. I think recently he made his first knife ....three years after he started.

I'm glad it is coming along.
Stacy
 
HA never satisfied, you must be a girl:p I am one to talk though I am on my 3rd sheath now. Think I like this one enough to post it when its finished
  1. complete fail on this one
  2. it worked, not that good looking and right handed
  3. gave up on pouch style and made a 3 piece, looks ok and is left handed
 
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