New guard slotting machine

congrats! i have the second smallest mill grizzly makes. i had wondered if $800 was really worth it for something i can do by hand. it takes me about 2 1/2 hours by hand, and about 14 minutes with the mill for a guard slot. over the last 100 knives it would have taken about 230 hours by hand, but with the mill, 23 hours. they are a bargain.
 
Those little mill/drill machines are great. I started with a $500 geared head Rong Fu bench mill, and even after moving up, its still my go to machine for drill press drilling and small work.
 
AVigil said:
I would but those 90 degrees scream stress risers so I do not mind tapering the guard for radius of the shoulders.
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It took me a while to get back to this comment.
What stress risers are you referring to?
The only cut from the mill is an 1/8" radius. There is nothing 90 degrees.
I've never understood folks with a mill not milling their guards to fit the knife.
You can literally get the slot to within a 1/2 of a thousandth.
After filing a bit of a radius on the top and bottom of the slot, you can usually just tap the guard on.





 
Karl B. Andersen said:
It took me a while to get back to this comment.
What stress risers are you referring to?
The only cut from the mill is an 1/8" radius. There is nothing 90 degrees.
I've never understood folks with a mill not milling their guards to fit the knife.
You can literally get the slot to within a 1/2 of a thousandth.
After filing a bit of a radius on the top and bottom of the slot, you can usually just tap the guard on.
Click to expand...

I was talking about need to file the guard to fit the shoulders, you said to mill in the shoulders and thought the only way to do that without file work on the slot would be 90* shoulders, which we do see quite often.
I thought you were saying you could mill the shoulders to fit the guard with no file work on the guard.

I did not realize you were saying to do it exactly the way I do it :)

It is the file work on the guard that I was talking about, not milling in the shoulders that takes time

We all do it on every blade with a guard, it is doing it without buggering the guard up is the challenge.
 
i agree, everything can be going great, and when you go to put the radius on the ends of the guard slot to fit the shoulders, thats where things go can go wrong. i use a needle file with two opposites sides ground smooth, so there is no possibility of chewing into the side of the guard slot accidentally. i make a flat 45 degree angle flat spot, then two 22 1/2 degree flat spots on the edges of the first flat spot, then round them off. you can also color the inside of the guard curves with a magic marker so the first time you press fit it, if it does not go all the way on you can see exactly where it is touching and just file where the marker is missing.
 
AVigil said:
I was talking about need to file the guard to fit the shoulders, you said to mill in the shoulders and thought the only way to do that without file work on the slot would be 90* shoulders, which we do see quite often.
I thought you were saying you could mill the shoulders to fit the guard with no file work on the guard.

I did not realize you were saying to do it exactly the way I do it :)

It is the file work on the guard that I was talking about, not milling in the shoulders that takes time

We all do it on every blade with a guard, it is doing it without buggering the guard up is the challenge.
Click to expand...


I'm not sure, but I think we're losing each other a bit in the communication.
I do not do any filing in the guard slot to make it fit the knife. That's what I use my mill for.
I mill the guard shoulders on the blade and then harden and temper it.
After clean-up of the blade, I measure the thickness of the ricasso and mill the guard slot to that thickness/dimension.
Tap it on the knife/blade.
The only thing I file is a bit of radius at the top and bottom of the slot to match the guard shoulders.
The two photos of the guard shoulders I posted up above were from a knife I am doing today. Those were taken just before lunch when I made that post.
After lunch, I slotted the guard to that thickness/dimension.
What you see below is the result.
I did absolutely zero - none - filing inside the guard slot. The only thing I filed was the small radius at the top and bottom.
The first time I slid the guard on the tang after removing it from the mill was to see where everything stood.
I thinned the tang down behind the guard .003-4" to remove it from the equation, slid the guard on and tapped it to slightly mark where the shoulder radius hit inside the guard slot ends, filed the small radius you see here, and then tapped it into place. (This is a take-down knife)
Where you see the guard here is where it is after the third time I put it on the tang.
This fit time was maybe 2 1/2 minutes after milling.

Which takes me back to my very first statement in this thread, is that I'm a it confused when I see guys with mills still struggling with guard fit!
Seems like so many guys mill the slot short of where it needs to be and then spend time filing. That confuses me.
Just mill them to fit.





 
I will admit to being a bit confused when you mentioned milling a 90* guard shoulder.
If there's an end mill that can do that I'm not familiar with it.
 
Karl B. Andersen said:
I will admit to being a bit confused when you mentioned milling a 90* guard shoulder.
If there's an end mill that can do that I'm not familiar with it.
Click to expand...
Stand the blade spine side up in the vise, and set a stop against either the tip or the tang. Mill the first side. I use a radius corner endmill to avoid a stress riser.
Flip the blade over to edge up, and seat your reference point against the stop again. Mill the second side.

It's a lot more of a pain setup wise, but is doable. Easy to get the shoulders at different angles without some careful setup and a bit of measuring.
It's not optimal, but occasionally it's the only option short of hand filing.
 
The biggest problem I think people have, who don't mill to size, is getting their mill trammed properly. Even in a single setup like Karl showed, side milling the shoulders, a little bit of angular run out in the head will make even a size on size fit look like hell. Especially if it gets doubled based on the orientation of the guard slot relative to the run out.

At least that's the problem I've had, using a mill at work and not checking the head before milling. That's the biggest reason I want one at home. So if I tram it in, it isn't going to get moved by someone else :D
 
Hah, at least when it's 45 you can see it was moved. Worse is when someone moves it to 45, then moves it back until it looks straight and walks away. :confused:
 
At one of my jobs people would use the mill and take the vise off and then put it back and just finger tight the bolts. Very frustrating, it's held down enough till you go at it with a 1" HSS rougher, facepalm.
 
Also the removing the trammed in vise to do something, and torquing it back down when they're done without saying anything or tramming it in. Always close enough you wouldn't notice without an indicator..
 
Geoff Flato said:
Stand the blade spine side up in the vise, and set a stop against either the tip or the tang. Mill the first side. I use a radius corner endmill to avoid a stress riser.
Flip the blade over to edge up, and seat your reference point against the stop again. Mill the second side.
Click to expand...

I guess I could never see any reason to do it that way. Way too much thinking involved to get them lined up in line with each other.
I just mill mine laying flat. No errors that way.
 
Karl B. Andersen said:
I guess I could never see any reason to do it that way. Way too much thinking involved to get them lined up in line with each other.
I just mill mine laying flat. No errors that way.
Click to expand...
That is very much the smart and easy way of doing it.
Just after doing enough obscure parts you'll figure out all sorts of creative setups.
 
Karl B. Andersen said:
What about the way I do it?
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You cut off the part of my quote qualifying that statement. I've had a few blades where geometry or not paying attention and doing things out of order will prevent being able to get a solid hold on the knife for your approach. In those times (which are usually a result of screwing something up) you'll either have to set up the knife a different way in the mill, or hand file it.

The way you describe is the way I'll do it whenever possible. But it never hurts to know alternative setups incase you run into an unforeseen issue
 
What I don't get are makers that cut or file ALL THE WAY around the tang, effectively rebating it, so they get a clean guard fitup. The weakest part of the knife made far weaker simply because it's easier to make it look nice. Worse still, the customer will have no idea that the knife they just bought will have reduced strength right where it needs it most, and a bunch of nice hard stress risers to boot, because it needed to be pretty or they wouldn't buy it. I'd prefer it if the maker just worked on his guard fit until he got it right, and left some as 'good enough', but kept all that steel where it ought to be.


...I'm sure I'm just being cranky now.
 
That looks great Karl.

How did you get 90* corners for that slot on the guard without a file?
 
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