Singing blades

RokJok

Gold Member
Joined
Oct 6, 2000
Messages
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Over time I've bumped into blades that ring, what I call singing, when exiting into free air from a diamond rod (with a handle, like a chef's steel) as I stroke them rapidly on the rods to sharpen them. I suppose my physics friends could explain it as a harmonic frequency within the blade. All I know is that it's a thing of beauty when it happens. It seems to happen moreso on thin, pretty much parallel sided blades that feel reasonably to extremely hard sliding along the diamond rod's surface. Extremely soft steels that feel smeary and more heavily tapered primary grind blades don't do it.

In the attached picture the unmarked aluminum handle knife with a very short hollow ground secondary grind sang a fair bit and the Ikea knife to a lesser degree. I've got an old nakiri that is very inclined to sing.

Anybody else hearing the steely music?

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Over time I've bumped into blades that ring, what I call singing, when exiting into free air from a diamond rod (with a handle, like a chef's steel) as I stroke them rapidly on the rods to sharpen them. I suppose my physics friends could explain it as a harmonic frequency within the blade. All I know is that it's a thing of beauty when it happens. It seems to happen moreso on thin, pretty much parallel sided blades that feel reasonably to extremely hard sliding along the diamond rod's surface. Extremely soft steels that feel smeary and more heavily tapered primary grind blades don't do it.

In the attached picture the unmarked aluminum handle knife with a very short hollow ground secondary grind sang a fair bit and the Ikea knife to a lesser degree. I've got an old nakiri that is very inclined to sing.

Anybody else hearing the steely music?

View attachment 2635158

I have not, but you can bet I'll be looking for it until I do. :)
 
As far as "singing" knives, although the blade of the knife below doesn't sing, the knife itself does.

This is a switchblade I made. The one-piece spring/lock only contacts the knife at the holes, and when the knife is fired, and the blade hits the lock, the impact causes the spring to react like a tuning fork emitting a very noticeable, high-pitched ping that remains audible for about 5 seconds. "Sing" is the exact word I've used to describe it, and it's a rather pleasing note.

I've included a picture of the spring/lock.

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Wow! That's awesome. You should make more of those and sell them (save one for me though!).

Thanks :).

That knife was very labor-intensive, so I switched to making the one below to sell as it was a lot less work. But I don't make these models anymore, I've since moved on to other switchblade projects. This knife and the previous one were both sold.

Apologies for going off-topic.

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Prince Valiant had a singing sword, allegedly the sister to King Arthur's Excalibur. Even made a movie, the Singing Sword.
 
Prince Valiant had a singing sword, allegedly the sister to King Arthur's Excalibur. Even made a movie, the Singing Sword.

I was thinking Excalibur the movie this entire time :) There was one famous singing sword sound byte that they used in so many different movies.
 
The knife I made, that I seem to recall had the most audible resonant frequency, was a golok, four years ago. Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me. fishface5 fishface5 may be able to tell us more.
 
Okay well I never actually watched the movie, so now I don't know what that one means..... (for those wondering, I had to have the oldmanwilly explain the huckleberry one to me a couple years ago, and it took a bit for me to get it 🤣 )

ETA: Ah, found the answer.

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I have definitely had some that do this. I had a Boker folding hunter with 440c I got back in the 80's that had that distinct ring to it you described. Never really thought about what would cause that, a very interesting thought.
 
I had a machete that emitted a ding-ring whenever I struck certain types of underbrush. Like an aluminum bat hitting a baseball. The ring would fade after a few seconds.

No, I don't know what steel type the was, I just know it was a very thin blade.

I have no idea what happened to that machete. Don't have it anymore.
 
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