New Knifemaker Questions!

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Wowndeye

Joined
Apr 15, 2014
Messages
88
Hello everyone,


I'm excited to be a part of this forum and looking forward to learning and participating in the future. I've already spent hours browsing and have found the knowledge here invaluable. That said I have a few questions on my first build. I've provided a few links to give a visual for part of what I'm inquiring about.


http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa45/wowndeye/Mobile Uploads/20140419_144549.jpg
http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa45/wowndeye/Mobile Uploads/20140419_144527.jpg
http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa45/wowndeye/Mobile Uploads/20140419_144806.jpg


So to start, I purchased some 1080 1/8 x 1 1/2 stock from Kelly Cupples (great guy BTW) and am starting with a "Drop Point Hunter" or at least some variation of it (not sure what qualifies as a legitimate DPH. Overall length is 7 3/8" and blade length is 3 5/8" He told me I didn't need to anneal it as it was hot rolled, picked and oiled so it should be about 28-30 on the Rockwell scale. I annealed it anyways just to give it a shot and see what kind of difference it would make in the steel. I drew on my template, rough cut the blank out with my angle grinder and Dremel then used my 1x30 to start cleaning up the edges. Dialed everything in and then started my grind for the blade. Got that to where I wanted and then planned on cleaning off all the scale with some wet/dry 220, but it's been a pain in the butt and I'm noticing some small pitting in the blade. Is that normal?


From this point my thought was to dial in the ricasso, get the blade dialed in where I want it w/ 220, normalize 3 times and then do the final heat treat for the blade. Should I just heat treat the blade edge or whole blade? I figured there would be more scale so why try and take it all off now. Am I on the right track? Any advise for dealing with the scale? Do I just need to sand really hard?


Also I'm using mahogany for my handle and want a durable finish for outdoors that brings out the color. Any advise? And how thick should the handle be at the thickest? It has approximately a one inch depth. I've got huge hands so don't know what's "normal"! :)


Thanks in advance!


Josh
 
If you are talking about the scale and pits on your handle and riccoso I'd go to a 120 grit sand paper glued to a flat surface like a piece of tile maybe even a nice flat board lay the knife flat on it and with the palm of your hand and some pressure sand the knife till the pits and scale are gone then switch side change the paper as needed this will help sand down the scale and pits while keeping your flats flat
 
Drill your pin holes prior to heat treat, otherwise sounds like a plan, looks good. Typically each side of a scale start out at 3/8", you can keep it that thick is you have long fingers (different that big hands). Round the edges a little bit and see how you like it. Sand down from there. I would suggest a bit tougher wood than mahogany, but it will work ok. You did not say how you are doing your heat treat, oven whole thing, torch just the blade.
 
Surface scale is a lot tougher than folks tend to think at the start. It's also thicker. Kelly's 1080 doesn't have much, but when you annealed it you created more. Honestly, that was wasted effort since he steel comes very soft as it is.

I prefer to have a nice finish but not FINE finish before heat treating, even more so if trying to work without a good grinder. Think about it this way. If you've got a 400 grit surface and heat treat you have surface scale that is at worst into 400 grit scratches. So you sand it off, sand down one layer of 400 grit and you're into bare metal. If you have 120 grit or even 220 grit you have much deeper scratches with scale that needs removed. That's a TON more metal to remove until you get down below that scratch.

I would heat treat the whole thing, or at least the whole blade and back into the tang a bit. As I mentioned, Kelly's 1080 is pretty soft without heat treating and you wouldn't want the knife to get bent right behind the blade during regular use. With a blade that length I'd probably wind up heat treating nearly the whole tang if not everything. It can be tough to get that last inch hardened if you have to hold it in your tongs while heating. I guess if I had longer tongs.... :)

My 1080/1084 knives literally look almost ready for handles when I heat treat them. Cleanup afterward is removing a very thin layer of scale and decarb, taking it to the desired finish level then putting on a handle, but if I'm going for a belt finish it's very little work between finishing heat treat and starting handles. I can't remember which of the more experienced folks it was, but I took their advice about taking the knife much further before HT to heart and it made a big difference.

With a higher power grinder you may find that profiling a knife, drilling any holes, breaking the edges for the bevels and then heat treating it before moving on with the rest of the grinding is easier on thin stock. The blade is less likely to warp, doesn't get bent as easily, grinds more slowly despite the higher RPMs and pressures that some of the better metal grinding belts prefer, and generally just goes more easily.
 
Thank you for the replies guys! I would have replied sooner, but for some reason I haven't been able to get my replies to go through for the past few days. Frustrating!

Evan, in regards to sanding down the scale, I should have thought of that. I don't know why I was expecting 220 to be faster than it was... Starting on that now. I was up till 1 the other night trying to sand it off. I kept thinking I was almost there, but was apparently slightly delirious! ;) I finally regressed to 100 grit the proceeded from there. Going better now.

I did drill the pin holes already as well Patrick. :) Sounds like the scales are on track because I think I've started with 7/16" each so it'll give me room for error I suppose. I found a picture of how I want to shape them so we'll see what happens. I'm hoping the mahogany will be okay. The knife is for my dad and it won't be getting a lot of heavy duty use. Any tips on finishing it?

And as far as the heat treat goes, my plan was to heat up the blade and then insert it tip down into jar of olive oil. All I have at the moment is a redneck, homemade forge using charcoal briquettes and using a hair drier tied into a pipe to stoke the flames. Making plans for a small homemade propane forge, but if I spend any more money on tools for this my wife may end up stabbing me with one of the knives! ;)

Thank you for the input Remy as well! Makes sense as far as the annealing goes. I'm sorry I wasted the time on it, but lesson learned. That stuff is hard. Do most do a quick sanding of the surface to make it easier to work?* I will be doing a lot of experimenting as I go along here to get a better understanding of the nature of the different steels. I like your thoughts on bringing the blade up to a higher grit before heat treating. I never would have thought of that. It makes a lot of sense and am almost halfway there. I have one side left. When it comes to the quenching part, will a quart of olive oil be enough? And I've read both to immerse and hold the blade for about a minute or to immerse it and then pull it in and out of the oil for about a minute before letting cool to room temp and then tempering.

Also when it comes to tempering, are two, 2 hour cycles at 400, allowing it to cool to room temp in between, recommended?

And in your last comment are you referring to 1/8" stock?

Thanks again and feel free to offer any other input! Hope to be updating soon. I need the knife done before this coming weekend for my dad.
 
Haha Greebe... I was just typing stuff in because I was irritated that my posts weren't going through and of course, that one is one that made it through! ;) Looks like things are working now though!
 
Okay... So providing everything goes smooth tonight, I'll be normalizing and heat treating my knife so I thought I'd look for a little input as I'm preparing for the final steps because I need to finish before Sunday.

For the tempering, is two cycles at 400, cooling to room temp in between the recommendation? Will 50 degrees one way or the other make that big of a difference, or 2 hours vs. 90 minutes? I've seen varying info and am wondering how critical it is to hold the right temp and duration to get the most out of the steel.

I've been wondering after cleaning up the blade following the quench and sanding it to the desired finish how to put on the final edge for the blade. It has a very narrow taper to the spine so was wondering if I just take the grind all the way down to an edge or to I add a small additional bevel to create the cutting edge.

If I'm putting an additional edge on it, what angle would be desired for the blade style? I was planning on using a modified version of a hand made bevel jig I saw on Youtube using an eye bolt and attaching a file to a stick of 1/4" round to my file as a guide to help keep a consistent grind and angle for the initial shaping, then following w/ some diamond (400, 600, 1200) files attached to the same setup and then finishing w/ green polishing compound on a leather strap. I'm scared to use my 1x30 to put it on due to free handing it and risking a big mistake when I'm so close to the finish line and I don't have any time to spare. I'm shooting for a razors edge! :)

Thanks again!
 
Hey there, I just thought I'd pop in and comment. A lot of folks on here recommend using Canola oil to quench your blade, if you can't afford a "real" quenching oil like Parks or another brand. Also the oil should be heated to around 140f before you quench. I'd stick with the recommended time and temp for the temper, why chance it? After tempering it, test it with the "brass bar test" to see if your heat treat went well. Basically take a brass bar, sick it horizontally in a vice so that about half of it's diameter is above the jaws. Place your blade so that the bevel is flat on the brass, and the length of the blade forms a "t" with the brass. Lift the spine of the blade a little and then press the blade into the brass. If the blade edge bends and pops back to normal after you let up the pressure, it's right on! If it chips, it's too hard. If it stays bent, it's too soft! Adjust your temper temperature accordingly. Lower if it's too soft, higher if it's too hard. 25f is a good amount to change to start.

Edit: By the way, I'm a complete amateur, if someone more experienced comes by and stays
everything I just wrote is wrong, believe them over me!
 
Just came back and looked at this and thanks for the suggestion h20oni. I did do that brass bar test as well as cut a few aluminum cans, chopped some wood, cut some rope as well as some paper. I think that was all. It held an edge very well, at least in my experience this far! :) Before I did all that, I could shave with it, now I can't, but it still can cut wood and rope. I've got a couple more in the works so we'll see how they all compare! Thanks again!
 
One interesting way of judging your knives is to purchase a knife from another maker or a good factory, do some cutting tests and see if you can get your blades as good or better. Just provides a benchmark to test against.
 
h20oni said:
After tempering it, test it with the "brass bar test" to see if your heat treat went well. Basically take a brass bar, sick it horizontally in a vice so that about half of it's diameter is above the jaws. Place your blade so that the bevel is flat on the brass, and the length of the blade forms a "t" with the brass. Lift the spine of the blade a little and then press the blade into the brass. If the blade edge bends and pops back to normal after you let up the pressure, it's right on! If it chips, it's too hard. If it stays bent, it's too soft! Adjust your temper temperature accordingly. Lower if it's too soft, higher if it's too hard. 25f is a good amount to change to start.

Edit: By the way, I'm a complete amateur, if someone more experienced comes by and stays
everything I just wrote is wrong, believe them over me!
Click to expand...

Do a quick search for brass rod test to see what it determines - or doesn't!
 
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