question for mrostov: info on your homemade chakma?

[Josh Muller]

Home Depot usually has a pretty good selection of Nicholson files. They make surprisingly good hones.

That chakma/file/saw/chisel I made a while back out of a Nicholson file has proven so far to be such a good sharpening surface that unless I really do a number on the edge, I seldom need to use the EZE-Lap Model M diamond rod sharpener I keep in a loop on the frog.

i did the search on any posts relating to it, and i found pictures, but not much info on it. i just recently smoothed out my 18" ang khola's chakma so that one side is rounded instead of rectangular. i cant come up with any logical reason why a corner is better then a circle - my limited experience has shown that the corner will stripp steel off faster then the circle. turned out really nice, but your file/stee/saw/chisel looks so much cooler

i have a set of nicholson files, and come monday im going to be order a couple of sheets of 3/8" micarta slabs for handle material, but i have a few questions about the chakma you made.

is the steel portion one of the edges? (the thin side of the rectangle), or one of teh flats? (perhaps flat+edge?)

are the saw teeth angled (into a pryamid, instead of a prism), or are they flat on top? (kind of like making the file marks that are already there bigger)

i assume that you didnt do any kind of annealing, but i thought id ask anyways: was there any kind of annealing performed on the file?

how did you attach the handle? if with appoxy, what type?

where did you get your handle material/what material is it?

it just seems like such a well rounded tool to have in your bag that i decided id have to make one to see for myself . i'll be carrying several stripps of sand canvas back sand paper (from harbour freight, the roll kind) for honing, so it should turn out to be an awesome hone/sharpener/steel...

thanks

 

[Yvsa]

i'll be carrying several stripps of sand canvas back sand paper (from harbour freight, the roll kind) for honing,

thanks

Seth, what you're describing is called Emory Cloth.
It comes in many different widths and grits. The finest grit that was once made was called Crocus Cloth. With all the new materials and abrasives out these days I don't know if it's still the finest grit or not.
You can rip very thin, narrow, pieces of, say 320 grit, less than 1/16" wide from about a foot length and then roll it on your pant's leg to get a thin, narrow round that's excellent for cleaning out the grooves in the khuk handles and such.

 

[raghorn]

Seth, here's a great idea that Sarge posted last year.

 

[Josh Muller]

thats actually exactly what i was talking about, except that mrostov's had a saw insteda of a square file on one edge . and for the first one id end up using the tang of the file for a handle.

 

[mrostov]

I've had a chance to use that tool quite a bit. So far that tool has turned into a pretty handy item. As soon as I have the time I'm going to have to make more for the rest of the family's khuks. I'm also pondering a couple of other tools to go with the khuks in the auxiliary sheath.

I started out with a brand new 6" Nicholson files from Home Depot. I cut it so that the tool blade would be 3" long, which is about what a normal chakma is.

I did no annealing, the whole thing is still file hard. The handle is a piece of oak hand carved from a $0.50 square block of small hardwood I also got at Home Depot. The epoxy I used was JB Weld. I used the original file tang with a couple of notches ground into it to hold the epoxy better as the tool's tang in the handle.

I did the rough shaping of the front into a chisel/scraper shape but stopped short of sharpening it till I was done with the rest of the tool.

I took care to not mar the file surfaces on the flats.

I thought about making one of the flats the sharpening surface, but it wouldn't work the best unless you also smoothed the side edges. Using the more narrow side edges works the best for sharpening anyway.

Using a power sander and a cordless Dremel, I smoothed both side edges. If I was going to use one side as a metal saw/square file, I wouldn't have smoothed it.

On side edge I polished smooth, eventually using a fine grit emory cloth. That is the sharpening surface. It's very hard and smooth and IMHO, works as well as a ceramic rod.

I patterned the saw off of one of the better saws I've used on the back of a survival knife blade, a Japanese knife made by Saburo in the early 1980's.

The saw teeth are flat across the edge, not pyramid shaped. They are 1/8" tall and 1/8" apart. There are 15 teeth. They are angled both vertically, and horizontally.

Make a mark every 1/8" down one side of the edge, then do the same down the other side, but a bit offset, so when you connect the lines they are angled but uniform. I also marked a line down each side of the flats roughly denoting the 1/8" depth for the teeth. They came out to be a smidgen deeper than that, but that was the general guideline.

Then I took a Dremel with an abrasive cutting wheel and made cuts straight down on the angled lines I drew across the edge. Since the material is too hard to file with jeweler's files, I used the flat of the Dremel's high speed cutting wheel as kind of a sander/file to shape the saw teeth.

 

[Josh Muller]

awesome

thank you, very very much. the pictures are a world of help. im going to do pretty much exactly that, but i think i'll coupletely round off the steeling edge, and i'll probably mirror polish it

 

[Josh Muller]

well, i finished up the blade portion, and it looks exactly like mrostovs, but about an inch longer, and not nearly as clean in execution , the steel portio is also rounder, plus one flat is smoothed out.

im currently trying to figure out how to drill past a knot in the direct center of the peice of wood i chose for my handle....


once i have the pics up - i bet none of you will be able to identify the wood

 

[mrostov]

Found another use for mine. The chisel/scraper end makes it a very good tool for scraping out the meat from a fresh coconut.