Oh no...I've gone and done it.

Thanks guys! That Jantz piece after exchange would probably only cost about $60...but after taxes, duty and shipping would probably have cost me $100? Which would definitely have been cheaper, but then I would have had to wait to get started and the idea just sort of seized me so I kind of skinned myself with my impatience.

That's okay, I can deal with the cost. But I have to admit Talfuchre is right...so far the slicing ability is terrible although the bruising ability is probably very high!

Anyway thanks for all your thoughts on this, guys...there are some pretty big names in here which (you might all think this is dumb) I find a little intimidating but it's very cool to get feedback from people who I look up to already! Some of the knives I've seen made around here are just incredible so just to warrant enough interest for a comment from some of you is a pretty big deal to me!

I'll keep you posted...probably get more done on her this weekend!
 
siguy said:
looks like a pretty sweet big blade there.

are you grinding entirely on a slack belt? i have found that its alot easier to take 50%-80% of the metal off on a flat platen, it goes faster and gives a flatter grind. then i take the rest off on the slack belt after that..

looks good though, i'm curious to see how it turns out!
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Hmm, that's probably good advice there. I have just been slack-belting it although to be 100% honest the belt tensioner on my machine doesn't slack off as much as I would like. I probably should have done exactly as you suggested but I was a little concerned that I would end up with an uneven grind if I didn't do things in a really uniform, specific way. Of course now I think I could have acheived this more easily doing what you said, but live and learn! I do have 19" of O1 left for a future project now, so that's probably what I would do next time. Thanks for the tip, that's helpful.
 
Good on you Bro! Although I am one of the Busse Cult, I think it's great when a fellow blade freak takes to making their own version. I love the Fusion Battle Mistress, but can't afford one myself. Choils don't bother me as much as it seems to others, but I would love to see more of the styles without them. Anyhow, keep us posted. It looks awesome so far.:thumbup::thumbup:
 
Excellent job on the profile. :thumbup:There are alot of different opinons on choils. The reason I prefer them on blades 7" or longer is the ability to move up past the handle to use it for finer cutting. Unless you have a handle length almost equal to the blade length, choking up without a choil will be difficult. Large knives with long blades are always front heavy with the balance falling forward. Awesome for chopping but hard to use for close up work.
siguy makes a good point with the grind. If you do slack belt only on 1/4" stock, your edge geometry will be too thick for an efficient cutter. I hog off 70% of my grind on the flat platen before going on to the rotary platen.
Look forward to seeing your finished blade.
Scott
 
Now that's a good project to have on the go. Looking forward to seeing this completed.
 
Gossman Knives said:
Excellent job on the profile. :thumbup:There are alot of different opinons on choils. The reason I prefer them on blades 7" or longer is the ability to move up past the handle to use it for finer cutting. Unless you have a handle length almost equal to the blade length, choking up without a choil will be difficult. Large knives with long blades are always front heavy with the balance falling forward. Awesome for chopping but hard to use for close up work.
siguy makes a good point with the grind. If you do slack belt only on 1/4" stock, your edge geometry will be too thick for an efficient cutter. I hog off 70% of my grind on the flat platen before going on to the rotary platen.
Look forward to seeing your finished blade.
Scott
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Thanks Scott, as you might have read your knives are a big influence and inspiration for me. I sure appreciate the tips too!

I definitely see what you are saying about the choil...I have never liked them much but this knife is so big that the balance is really far from the blade and fine work might well be difficult. For the time being I will leave the choil off (or on, depending on how you look at it) but it's possible I will want one later on.

One thing I have been going for here is no plunge cut and no ricasso...my plan is to run the handle right up to the blade so that there is a shaving edge right tight up to the grip. We'll see how that works. I will have to fit the handle slabs pretty carefully that's for sure!

I am also thinking I want some 40 grit belts for hogging some of this metal off...it is really taking forever with the 80 grit!

I have actually been worried about making the grind too thin rather than too thick (probably because I am using a much cheaper, smaller grinder than what you would have Scott - I am guessing one of those 4"x72" giants) so the grinds are almost semi-flat? They are convex like a Bark river is convex, definitely flatter than my axes. But I will keep you all posted and I will definitely keep my ears and mind open for any comments or feedback or tips!

I haven't really made many knives so this is a real learning experience for me!
 
I appreciate the compliment. As far as a choil goes, the standard Tusker gets one but it is an option. I make the Tusker choiless also for those who don't like them. I use 36 grit zirconium belts for hogging on the flat platen. Aluminum oxide are woodworking belts. 50, 80 and 120 grit are my finishing belts. The grinder you have does make a difference on how your grind will turn out plus the more you do the better it gets. I use two 2x72 grinders and a 2x48 grinder. A higher HP motor makes it easier. 1 1/2 hp is usually the minimum. grinding steel is hard on grinders. A low HP motor will bog easily.
Don't get discouraged and it will be satisfying when it's finished. You're taking on a big project there.
Scott
 
Lol...yeah, I'm using a 1"x30" home handyman grade grinder!

I did manage to squeeze in a little work on it tonight...tried it with the flat platen back in as per your and siguy's suggestion, definitely quicker and helped me to sort out the second side, which had been grinding a little steeper than the first for some reason.

I thought I might spin by Lee Valley tomorrow and grab a couple of 40 grit zirconium belts, that should speed things along! My 80 grit belts are pretty slow, although they will probably make decent finishing belts, especially considering after half an hour of grinding they feel more like 200 grit!

Anyway I will keep at it and we'll see what I can do! A smaller knife would probably have been more suited to my skill level but I am never good at taking the intermediate steps.
 
WOW! 1 x 30 ??? dude, you have my admiration! I am putting the finishing touches on a 10 inch blade that I did on my 2 x 72, can't even think of what that would be like with a smaller belt grinder! Hope you get a bigger grinder soon....
 
The main way to describe it is "slow." No, but seriously, I don't mind because the slower I go, the longer it takes me to screw up!

But I just have to say this one more time...I feel very cool looking at some of the names in this thread!

Ray Laconico
Scott Gossman
Bryan Breeden
Mark Wohlwend

I feel like how I felt when I played a bit of street hockey in Montreal, and some of the Canadiens were there! They were all five thousand times better than me but I sure felt honoured just to pass the puck around with them a little.
 
Mis- way to go (what kind of handle scales for that bad one). I can feel for you on the grinder bit. I made 4 knives for me and the groomsmen, a cake knife and an ulu on my 4x36 grinder (and was 1/2 done a sword by the time I rebroke my leg) last year. But hey, you use what you have if you really want something.

Scott- I think I just had an epiphany with your description of why you like choils. If I need precise work with a big knife, I usually move the object to be cut along the edge, whereby it sounds like you move the knife (think of sharpening a pencil by moving a machete, or by moving the pencil). In your scenario the blade heaviness & balance would come into play moreso than if the blade is stationary. Hmmmm.... now I have something to think about while giving massages tomorrow.

(Sorry for the quick hijack but needed to write it down before I forgot)
 
I think it was the first or second knife I ever made was about 18" overall! I used a 4x36 belt sander. I know what you mean about not wanting to take intermediate steps.:D Best of luck to you and make sure you let us see how it turns out:thumbup:
 
Cool, will do!

I got some 40 grit zirconium belts today. Now who would have thought a 40 grit belt would cut twice as fast as an 80 grit belt? Maybe if I had some kind of math degree I could have figured that out beforehand...

Anyway the new belts are a lot faster! I have taken one side down by 0.100" now, and the other side is still at 0.075". I just finished taking down a couple of high spots in the bevel with some 180 grit paper on a glass lapping block so the grind is nice and even. I guess it's pointless to do this midway through grinding the knife but I am trying to keep everything nice and straight and even as I go so I don't have big problems to correct at the end.

I can't stop worrying about the overall profile though...am I making it too steep? Too shallow? It seems very shallow compared to an axe, but then I don't want to build a splitting maul in the form of a knife either! Currently it looks to me like about a 20 degree bevel, roughly. It might even be a little less.

I will probably try to finish the rough grind this weekend. I plan to leave the edge maybe 0.025" thick and then heat treat it because I am paranoid that if I thin the edge down it will warp in heat treat...any experts wanting to weigh in on this will be heartily thanked!

Anyway I will be sure to update you all as I go, I sure appreciate the encouragement!

Edit: I will be making some micarta for this monster, I think. We'll see how it works out...I have plans to make some patterned micarta that I am hoping will have a bit of a rattlesnake look but I have never made micarta before, so like everything else on this knife, the learning curve might be a little steep!
 
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Okay, little update here...I have been pretty busy all weekend researching the Canada France Hawaii Telescope and writing down my thoughts about John Updike, as most heavily tattooed guys with a lot of guns and knives are wont to do, but here is what I managed to do: the blade has been thinned out substantially. I BELIEVE that I am cutting about a 9-10 degree grind on the thing, and I will give you my reasoning and maybe somebody can correct me here:

I have left about o.o50" on the edge so far...I plan to take it down to about o.o25", then heat treat it, then take off the last o.o125" from each side. So the thickness on the centerline might not change much, but the three-quarter mark may thin down from o.140 down to around o.120" or so, I think. That is o.5425" back from the edge, so figuring a right angle triangle o.o60" on one side and o.5425" on the other...actually I guess I would need to know trigonometry to figure out the angle I've ground it at.

So looking at a math textbook now I see that the sine of this angle would be the hypotenuse divided by the opposite...hang on...hypotenuse is o.546"...over opposite o.o60 is 9.09.

So I believe this to mean that the general grind is about 9-10 degrees per side. That seems about right looking at the knife with a protractor.



DSC_0001-1.jpg


In the second pic you can see the fairly narrow front bevel and WIDE main bevel...I am still convexing this but have taken siguy's and Scott's advice and hogged off a lot of metal on the flat platen. You can also see the centerline I scribed with a pair of calipers on day 1.

DSC_0003.jpg


This next couple of shots show the bevels, but also the lengthwise scratches. What are they from? That is where I have been laying the blade down on a glass lapping plate and wet/dry 120 grit so I can see if I am grinding evenly. So far, so good!

DSC_0009.jpg


DSC_0011-1.jpg


And the last couple are from the tip down, showing the least finished part of the whole project! I am hesitating a bit about the tip as it's more difficult to measure and correct. I am spending nearly as much time with the digital calipers as I am with the grinder, but the tip is a little trickier. Fortunately by the time I am doing it my belts will be so worn out that mistakes will be made slowly.

DSC_0012-1.jpg


DSC_0014.jpg


I didn't have time tonight to set up a tripod and take nice pics, as it's about 1 am and I have to be up early tomorrow!

Anyway that's the weekend's work in the off hours...it is definitely coming along and all the advice has helped a lot.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. I feel like I will be approaching heat treat soon, although I will probably get the handle scales going first.

Also a quick hello to my dad who is not a member here but whom I sent a link to to come check out this thread, so if you're reading, hey dad, this knife was partly inspired by our machete discussion and has been made possible in large part by the digital calipers you gave me a couple of years ago!

Regular readers of my posts will recall that my dad was a prospector once upon a time and has been a big knowledge mine for me about the outdoors. He is also the same guy treed by black bears after he attacked them with an axe for stealing his pies in the Queen Charlottes, a remote set of islands off the Northern coast of BC, for those of you who remember me telling that story.

Anyway thanks dad and I hope you guys enjoy the update!
 
Looks good so far. You can even take the edge down alittle more. Remember after HT, grinding will take longer because you will need to keep the blade cool.
That's alot of blade to get all the heavy grind lines smoothed out. it's going to be tough to get it really smooth with that small grinder. It's a massive blade for a 1x30 belt.
Scott
 
Lookin great!! you got the grind much higher up towards the spine now. That was well done. I love that you didn't do a choil. One thing I do with big knives and no choil for fine cutting is to support the end of the knife on a picnic table, or stump and use the edge near the handle. Tada. No need for a blister causing choil.



180 dollars is highway robbery for the steel. I in no way believe they made ten percent on that. I just checked and at Admiral Steel 1/4" x 3" x 36" is 97 dollars. Shipping wouldn't have been more than 30. They shafted you hard. You need to call NWA (esteemed maker of the BF Survival Forum Knife) next time you need 01. His prices are awesome.
 
Gossman Knives said:
Looks good so far. You can even take the edge down alittle more. Remember after HT, grinding will take longer because you will need to keep the blade cool.
That's alot of blade to get all the heavy grind lines smoothed out. it's going to be tough to get it really smooth with that small grinder. It's a massive blade for a 1x30 belt.
Scott
Click to expand...

Cool, will do...yes, I feel like I am asking a lot of this little machine!

As far as O1 prices go, though, if it was $97 for the steel, and $30 for the shipping, there would still be possible duty charges at the border that would be another $15, plus customs brokerage which could be up to another $30...getting stuff over borders is more expensive than you think!

So after the exchange that $97 chunk of steel might well cost me $200. Anyway that money is spent and gone now, so I will try not to kick myself too much over it.

I will thin down the edge more, my next plan is to make a few careful passes on each side and put a couple more intermediate bevels on with the 40 grit, then convex it all carefully with a 120, hopefully removing most of the really deep grind marks, then I guess I will have to heat treat it!

I am thinking maybe I will need to get one of those thermal crayons that melts at 1450 farenheit to track the temperature accurately for the heat treat, seeing as I of course do not have a nice kiln or anything!
 
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