Sashimi knife how to

Sure brings memories-haven't done any of that sence I was about 11 or 12 yrs old
[with my papa of course]
But it was just acers of fun.
waiting for next session.
Thanks alot Sam
Jerry
 
OH I forgot
Papa told me that anytime that I had to leave the work pc. to heat it to non mag.
and leave it to cool.Would that do any good if you stress r x 2 at the very end?
 
Nice work Sam. Thanks for the peek at how you do things. Looking forward to the finished knife.
 
Thanks everyone, I am glad you like it!

69_knives said:
Great tutorial, Sam.

I just have one question/concern about the above quoted statement. Just about every text or video I've encountered says that annealing is the step that relieves the stresses from forging, or perhaps I am remembering wrong. Not sure.

Will research this more later. it's late.
Click to expand...

You forgot to quote the rest of it, where I say i go a little higher than non magnetic to REALLY bring everything into solution and relax. I find the whole burying in ashes thing to not be needed, but that is just how I do it there are many other ways.
 
Bah i'll call it a tutorial when Sam finishes the blade =D Sam never finishes blades ! =)

/tease

You've inspired me to make a sashimi knife though =)
 
OK here we go with part two! There will be a few more parts than I originally wanted, because I need to get some things so I can do this properly like drill bits and maybe a piece of horn or darkwood for the bolster.

Last time I left off we had finish forged our blade, and normalized it a couple times and it was ready to be ground. So there we start. Here is the forged and normalized blade. I ran it on my scotch brite belt to take off all the loose scale and smooth things over a bit.

Bevel side
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Flat side
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Taper
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So now we are ready to grind. there are many MANY ways to grind a blade, as many as there is to forge a blade so again, this is just my way of doing it. There are also many different grinders to use, I use my KMG, but draw filing would be a great way to do this also. I put a fresh 60 grit belt on my grinder. First step is to profile the blade, I forge very close to final shape so all I have to really do is profile the edge.

Also on a personal note, I like to show the hammer work in the finished product, so I will not grind the spine or anywhere I don't need to, so all of the outline/profile of the piece except for the edge is shaped from the hammer.

fresh 60 grit on the grinder
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start grinding on the edge profile, go careful and smoothly, you want your edge to be a nice smooth radius with no flat spots. You should be able to rock your edge on a flat surface and not have it go clunk clunk clunk when it hits the corners on a flat spot.
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The start on the edge, I wish I could give some more insight into how to do this well but I kind of go by the seat of my pants. My only advice I can give is to go slow, go carefully, feel the angles, grind edge up, take as much time as you need and watch what you are doing.
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Here in the next 3 pictures you can see how I hold my hands when grinding the bevel, note the position of my thumbs and index fingers. With more pressure on my thumbs I will grind more of the edge away, with more pressure on my index fingers I will grind the bevel line up towards the spine more, all at the same time keeping even pressure on the blade against the platen, that is as best as I can explain how I grind.
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And no that is not my fat gut, I like to stick my stomach out a bit to ummmmm.............help me balance, yeah.....that's it....help me balance :D .
 
With this type of knife the flat side is just that, flat. The technique I use for this was taught to me by Kurt Meerdink, it's relatively simple. Hold the knife by the tang vertically on the platen then press it evenly to the platen. This could also be used to flaten the back bevel on the bevel side (if I wasn't gonna leave it hammer finish).

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Here is the bevel side
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and here is the flat side
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As you are grinding, especially on a forged piece, you will see it will not grind evenly (atleast for me). This is due to some dents and uneveness in how flat the piece is from the forging. The high spots will grind first and leave scale in the low spots. You have to grind away the high spots until the whole thing is nice and smooth and even. Just keep going back to the platen (or keep filing) until all the scale is all gone. Here is a picture illustrating this.

The blue circles show the high spots
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An important thing for me to remember in knifemaking is both to follow tradition yet show some individuality and develop your own style. So here I add my choil arch. I am going VERY softly on the aluminum idler wheel as that is not really meant to be used as a contact wheel.


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And the end result with the chef's knife
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Back to the technicality of the project. I jumped up to 80 grit after roughing everything out on the 60. This is far as I will go before heat treat. If you are draw filing, by now you might be hand sanding and I would suggest going to 120 grit to make things easier after heat treat.

Here it is after 60 grit, the bevel side
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The flat side
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The hardest areas where I get a little squemish are the base of the blade and the tip areas so I move up to the slack belt and finish those areas there. I tip I read from Kevin Cashen (thanks Kevin!) on slack belt grinding, If you hold the blade flat against the belt edge up with light pressure, you can preserve the nice crisp bevel line and get pretty close to a flat grind (LIGHT PRESSURE is the key for as close to a flat grind as you want). I turn up the belt tension a good bit too and use fresh belts.

Working on the slack belt above the platen
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All the grinding is finished, got almost all the scale marks removed, all the grinds are nice and even and the bevel is straight, all the scratches are even 80 grit. The last step I do is to scotch brite all the polished areas(not for any particular reason).

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And the finished ground blade

The bevel side
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And the flat side
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WHEW another long day!!!! Our forged knife is now all ground and clean and is ready for heat treat. I kept a careful eye again here not to run any heat colors on the blade while grinding. I am not actually sure just what this does other than it is poor practice IMHO. If you are running a belt grinder and this keeps happening then you are running your belt speed too fast or are using abrasives that are wore out. Use belts like they are free and slow your grinder down if you can, if not dip your blade more often.

This is it for part 2, I will continue with part 3 which will include heat treating and finish grinding and polishing, might take a part 4 to finish it up with mounting and sharpening. Again hope you enjoyed so far!
 
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