Nick Wheeler- dial in plunge cuts- flat ground blades

NickWheeler

NickWheeler

Joined
Dec 3, 1999
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This might help some of you. :)

[video=youtube;fA4BVvfV3tQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA4BVvfV3tQ[/video]



I probably should have included this video in this post. It's the one that started the storm of questions. Since most of you already know/understand the why for and how come of finish grinding a custom knife, you won't need to hear me explain it (which makes up about half of the video)... So in that case you can skip ahead to somewhere around 9min 30sec to see the "plunge block" in use. My left-handed, slave-children robots were given the day off, so that was actually me in the video too! ;) :D

[video=youtube;vZE5P6TYCdU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZE5P6TYCdU[/video]
 
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Thanks Nick. Your contributions are always welcomed. I believe Will Morrison had a similar technique in his excellent WIP. Keep the great ideas coming. I'm borrowing all of them!
 
I take back my positive comment from above: Sorry, but it is cheating!!! Since you didn't show us that you actually were sanding the plunges, we can only assume you have robots doing the sanding for you. Or slave children. Or worse, robot-slave-children. Unacceptable.

;-)

I used this exact technique in sanding the plunges on my integral knives for both my J.S. test and M.S. tests. I used a long strip of scrap Corian.
 
Michael Rader said:
I take back my positive comment from above: Sorry, but it is cheating!!! Since you didn't show us that you actually were sanding the plunges, we can only assume you have robots doing the sanding for you. Or slave children. Or worse, robot-slave-children. Unacceptable.

;-)
Click to expand...

Classic!
 
Thanks Nick for another great vid. You sure you don't need a shop monkey for a week or so?
 
But... it's not cheating for the robots. ;)

Having robots is only cheating if they are ambidextrous robots. :p
 
I edited the OP to include the video that got all the questions rolling in to start with. I should have included it before, but just hadn't realized that.

Hopefully that will help tie it all together. :)



I have tried just about every method out there to get the plunges to match up "perfectly", and the method in these videos is what works BEST FOR ME.

Tim Hancock came up with a brilliant way to do it, but I simply have not gotten the hang of it... so I have been sticking with this method because I know it will work for me.

One of the biggest benefits is that you can go up to 220X or 320X paper, and then when you do your hand sanding, it's easy peasy to sand out the plunge.... And I know for a fact that is an area that MANY of us have had knives we spent hours dicking around with. :foot:


I see lots of guys talk about using diamond files, chainsaw files, etc. That works okay, but since you're working with a tiny little surface area, it's VERY DIFFICULT to use those tools and NOT have small facets, lumps, bumps, etc.



ALSO!!!! Please keep in mind that this method is for getting the plunge cuts dead-nuts on... It is a way to dial them in that last little bit. If you're still green enough with blade grinding that your plunges are 1/8" off from either side and/or with totally different shapes... then this isn't going to help you much. You need to be able to get the plunges REALLY close, and then tweak them with the block/paper.



:)


medium800.jpg
 
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