My Holy Grail- W.I.P.

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Good evening everybody!

Now that I've been a few months around the forum, I decided to make a ''milestone'' knife and do a WIP thread about it.

Usually my knives are meant to be users, simple but with an effective geometry and an even simpler blade finish. My goal for my Holy Grail is to combine that with a more polished blade and more ''special'' materials for the handle.

Unfortunately, I don't have pictures from the early stages of the knife, but I'm going to take more from now on.

The design is quite simple with a blade of 15.5cm/6.10'' , height 3.5cm/1.37'', blade thickness 5mm/0.196'' and it's going to be a hidden tang. The steel of choice is 80CrV2.

The knife so far has been differentialy heat treated with clay to make a hamon. Final ground to 400grit and one side has a dirty hand sanded 120grit finish.



For the time being, I've got to do a lot of hand sanding to reach a nice 3000grit finish before I start etching/polishing cycles for the hamon.

Thank you guys for looking! All comments are welcome.
I will have an update soon.

Tony.

 

Day 1 of handing is over.

Currently, one side has a dirty 800grit finish and the other one a 400grit.




This is the mess I made while sanding today.



Still a long way to go until 3000, tomorrow I'm going to get there.

 

Small update.

First side finished with 3000grit. It took me more time than I expected but I like it.



''Hello there!''


Joking aside, there is a visible hamon in there but it's quite hard to capture it with my cellphone. Also it's quite hard to get a proper picture of the finish, I will try to get some more tomorrow with the sunlight.

 

Early morning and I'm still hand sanding.

The second side was done up to 400grit and I took it to 3000grit.
Here is a picture when I was done.


Now that hand sanding is completed, I sprayed the blade with WD-40 and wraped it to protect the finish.

It's time to start addressing the tang.
It's current state. As a start I need to round and true up the shoulders, once that's done, I will shape it properly to fit the guard.


And here with the tang prepared. Rounded the shoulders and left a lot of ''meat'' in the tang therefore It's going to be strong.

 

With the tang finished, I drew a few sketches of the knife on paper and find a desired finish for the guard/handle.


Any ideas on material combinations? What do you think guys?

 

So, today was a big day. Once I finished with the hand sanding and started shaping the guard, the more I looked on the blade, the less I liked it. It was at this moment that I had a change of heart, I took it back to a satin finish. I know that many may find this strange, but I don't know, I don't feel like a mirror polished blade is my style.

With that being said, here is a picture when I made the groove on the guard. I'm sure there is an easier way to do this but just a round file worked out fine.


And here is the guard on the blade, soldered in place.


Not the best pictures due to light, tomorrow morning I will have more to show.

 

Still working with the guard. I've made two steel spacers prior to the handle.


Filed a groove and test fitted.



There is a lot of cleaning up to do, I can't decide if I want some kind of spacer between them or not.

 

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So, I took a step backwards.

I just re soldered the guard in place. It took me 5-6 times to get the result that I wanted, pleasing in the eye and strong. Why did I do that? To get rid of a scratch I found and couldn't reach.


Now I've got a ton of clean up to do again.

With tha being said, I've been toying a bit with the spacers+handle.

I like this concept, black spacer between the steel and an ebony/dark wood for the handle.


Originally I wanted to use deer antler but none of my pieces have the proper shape for the knife. That's why I'm also thinking of etching black the guard+steel spacers, instead of a black spacer use something white/bright (like bone) and do a frame construction with deer antler scales.