newb-balis

[boogerboy]

ive recently been thinkinga bout some ideas for a bali, can any one help me with the basics to maiking one? like where to get/what kinda of metal to make the blad/handels out of, and jsut tips on that. we have a good many tools in the shop, i think ill find one that will do the job. i plan on trying to get the weight the same as a nother knife, right now it looks like the cheetah fro the reason its the only knife i have i can take apart and i dont want to tear up my jags.

thanks for the help
clay

 

[insanity]

As a beginnner knifemaker and an ok bali manipulator my personal opinion is that this is not a good project to learn the basics on. To make a bali that works well takes very precise machining skills. If you have those then go for it. If they are out yet the kit (typhoon maybe) balisong would be a good place to start. That is what I plan on doing whenever I get around to that project. Otherwise choose a high corbon non stainless steel for the blade is you want to do the heat treat yourself, or if you're going to send it out choose whatever steel you want. The handles on the Cheetah are aluminum, nice cheep and easy to work with. The Tach and all new BM's use titanium, much harder to work with and more expensive but better suited to a bali handle. Traditionally they are made of brass. Do some searches in this forum for steel types and folder tutorials and you should get more than enough information to get started. Good luck

WS

 

[Matt Shade]

I tried this once, and in my opinion its something you have to play with and actually just make a few junkers to figure out the mechanics of it all. I guess if you actually have one, your off to a better start though as I was working from pictures.
I just made one out of cheap aluminum (whatever's in the rack at the local hardware store) handles are made from multiple peices rather than milled from solid, so its not exactly correct.
I would start off and just make a very rough one to use as a sort of template. From there, if you have the right tooling, you can figure out what steps to do when. Or if your in the same boat as me, well you can plan things out and do about the same as the first one only clean things up quite a bit.