Sarge knife projects

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Both of my sarge knives were blems. One was poorly ground with the ricasso only cut in on one side. The other had a very short antler handle, but the grinding was good. I got them for a great deal, and intended to rehandle them. So I removed the handles. Then I sanded and cleaned both blades up and etched them. The heat treat on both of mine wasn't gonna work. Only the tip was hardened on one, and on the other only a very small area was hardened. So now my rehandling project turned into a re-heat treat project as well. No problem. Wednesday I fired up the brick forge and re-tempered the blades. A subsequent etch showed a very nice result. The pics of that turned out terrible. Anyway then I reground the one with the bad ricasso, changing the shape of that blade a lot at the ricasso area, and rehandled them. Here are some pics.

One handle is Walnut (from the farm) with a spacer of aluminum, copper, acrilic plastic, copper, and aluminum. It also has a thick copper guard. The other is Teak with an antler and brass spacer. Anyway here is the results. I'm much happier with the knives now.
 
Like night and day Andy! I _really_ like that teak one. Very cool. I am puzzled why many of the heat treats come out so poorly. We're talking about pouring water in the right spot, no? Do the kamis think we are not going to be using these? I etched my crow knife and found about 2.5" of the cutting edge, the back half, unhardened, and splotches in the middle of the blade fully hardened. I don't get it. I don't want to lose the handle which I would do if I tried to retemper the thing. However, I have successfully reground the whole blade basically and sacrificed the first 3/4" of blade and the reprofile turned out nicely.

The one sarge knife I etched showed good hardening along the edge though, as did a couple of kumar kardas by kumar and sher.

Great work. BTW, if you didn't have the forge is there another way to do it? I think I mentioned MAPP gas once and I believe Sarge said it wouldn't work too well.

I believe Steve heats his (not sure how) and then quenches them in oil.

Thanks,

Norm
 
Nicely done, Andy.

The entire edge should be treated on slicers.

I believe Yangdu has recently contacted the kamis on this issue.

Really pretty work on the sheaths, as well.

I remember when you were only this high and now you're all...(sniff)...and gonna have another baby (sob)...and I'm so proud of you....(gasp)....and where does the time go??????????????????????
 
Yangdu has contacted the Kamis on this issue. Thanks to one of you for running it by Yangdu. She really listens, doesn't she? Conventional knives should have the entire edge hardened.


munk
 
Let me stress that I wasn't disapointed with these knives. They were blems that I bought for rehandle projects, and they served the task well. The ones Dick sent me were significantly nicer, so this is not indicative of HI quality. The heat treat issue did need to be addressed, so thats good. I also wish the tangs were a little longer, but as you see in the picture I added support with a piece of copper clad stainless steel wire we had in the shop at work. I don't forsee these coming apart. I made several mistakes on the Walnut handled knife. The Teak handled one is a gem though, and I can see it becoming a favorite. That antler is just sweet in there. Right now I'm working on a Nessmuck knife. Its been a lot of fun to work on too. Should be done by weekend end.

Norm I haven't forgotten your sheath, I'm just having trouble coming up with another distressing scheme that looks professional enough to send out.
 
The teak one, well both, came out super nice, Andy.

I like the Sarge for the false edge; one of mine has a wierd bend in the horn handle (but it was cheap) and would benefit from a rehandling like that. Sarges are lighter than a JKM for EDC, for sure.


Mike
 
Ad Astra said:
The teak one, well both, came out super nice, Andy.

I like the Sarge for the false edge; one of mine has a wierd bend in the horn handle (but it was cheap) and would benefit from a rehandling like that. Sarges are lighter than a JKM for EDC, for sure.


Mike
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Mike, funny but I have the same thing with a chandan one. Great slightly longer than average handle but mounted at a bit of an angle. Has no effect on use though. I actually have an older Gerber Mk II fighter with the same "feature" intentionally, so it works for me. I have seen a couple of other great Sarges on the DOTD with various curves and bends in antler handles which look cool. One had a definite drop to the rear which looked amazing.

All Sarge knives are "cheap" in that they are very reasonable priced. About the only thing I can think of to really improve in the Sarge knives, assuming they are hardened correctly, is the scabbard, which is a bit bulky and hard to work for such a small knife. I see Andy has that covered. :D

Norm
 
aproy1101 said:
Let me stress that I wasn't disapointed with these knives. They were blems that I bought for rehandle projects, and they served the task well. The ones Dick sent me were significantly nicer, so this is not indicative of HI quality. The heat treat issue did need to be addressed, so thats good. I also wish the tangs were a little longer, but as you see in the picture I added support with a piece of copper clad stainless steel wire we had in the shop at work. I don't forsee these coming apart. I made several mistakes on the Walnut handled knife. The Teak handled one is a gem though, and I can see it becoming a favorite. That antler is just sweet in there. Right now I'm working on a Nessmuck knife. Its been a lot of fun to work on too. Should be done by weekend end.

Norm I haven't forgotten your sheath, I'm just having trouble coming up with another distressing scheme that looks professional enough to send out.
Click to expand...

Andy, absolutely no problem and don't go to a lot of trouble, especially considering the price and your time. I assume you are dropping the firesteel loop a bit, a good tweak IMO, so I can tell them apart that way as well. I liked that border edging very much and would like to keep that the same, so it's just a change from the hammer I guess? If you can't come up with something then just keep 'em the same.

Thanks very much.

Norm
 
Its in glue now dude. Lemme just say how much I love using my 2 brick forge. Heat treating knives is super neato. For 30 dollars why not make a forge?

Andy
 
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