southwetern bowie part 2....aaarrrrggghhh

jdm61

jdm61

itinerant metal pounder
Joined
Aug 12, 2005
Messages
47,357
and no, thats not a pirate growl. It is the sound of frustration. I'm almost done with this thing and it has been a painful experience:D Tried etching with FeCl for the first time. I don't think that I will try that again until I see someone do it who know how.....lol. Ditto for bluing 1018. I still have to fine tune the handle and glue it up. Hopefully it will turn out ok.:thumbup: If it does, I will post some real pictures, warts and all:cool:
 
Looks pretty good from where I'm sittin'. Could you explain the difficulties you've had, for the benefit of us newbies?
 
looks good man. but having that horror picture show person holding the knife doesnt help any. :D HEHEHE!!!!
 
Ahhhhhh.....where shall I begin?
The forging of the blade went almost flawlessly. The grinding went ok too. Nothing more than the typically slightly rounded off edges on the plunge grinds. Heat treat went well as far as hardening went. It holds rather nice edge. After that it went downhill fast. My Uncle Al handle broached started twisting loose and I was having a lot of trouble getting the bottom of the hole routed out. I originally tried to use a $35 piece of ironwood that I had been saving. I managed to grind through the cord of my big drill press with the 6 inch stroke and now it won't turn on even after repairing the power cord, so I had to use the old small one and the hand drill. I couldn't seem to get the hole filed out deep enough, so I shortened the tang, which is a no-no and a sign of impatience....lol. The ironwood cracked for the same reason. On to African blackwood. Messed it up too. On to some of my English walnut. Messed it up drilling the pin hole. On to a piece of Don Hanson's Ozark black walnut.......pin hole again........do you see a pattern here? lol. On to a second piece of black walnut. Worked out ok as you can see.......well, kinda. After much work and cursing getting the ferrule just so, when I hammered into place with the JB Weld applied, it turn out that it is a tiny bit too high........hence the AAAAARGGGHHHHH. Got it fixed sorta, but suffice to say that I would get gigged in judging for that and a couple of other warts. So........what did I learn from this? GET ANOTHER FREAKIN' HOBBY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:grumpy: Or just be patient and learn from my mistakes and rememeber that in most areas, this knife is better than the one that came before it and the next one will hopefully be better than this one.:thumbup:
 
It looks very good as far as I can tell Joe. I make mistakes all the time. That's why I don't use really expensive handle material! You'll always make mistakes no matter how long you've been doing this. Keep at it. Hopefully with practice you'll make fewer mistakes down the road.
 
Could you explain what problems you had with the pin holes in the other materials? Looks good!
Matt Doyle
 
mdoyle said:
Could you explain what problems you had with the pin holes in the other materials? Looks good!
Matt Doyle
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combination of the block no tbeing perfectly square, the cheapo drill and my eyeballs. The pin holes were not square with the block.
 
Mace said:
I like the never give up attitude.:thumbup: :D
Mace
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Ditto :thumbup: I am constantly screwing up too but I aint quitting.Just think of it this way Joe, 7 years ago I didnt know what an Iron worker was....now I build high rises :D
 
jdm61 said:
combination of the block no tbeing perfectly square, the cheapo drill and my eyeballs. The pin holes were not square with the block.
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A disc sander would remedy this. I think you deserve new tools. A man that obviously does not give up easy. Best thing to do, when things go that far south, is go shopping for new tools:eek:

I have built a nice shop around this kind of thinking.

I like the knife. Fred
 
Joe it looks just fine. I like the rounded belly, just fits the overall length and heigth. You've done a good job here.
 
Fred.Rowe said:
A disc sander would remedy this. I think you deserve new tools. A man that obviously does not give up easy. Best thing to do, when things go that far south, is go shopping for new tools:eek:

I have built a nice shop around this kind of thinking.

I like the knife. Fred
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:thumbup: :)
 
Fred.Rowe said:
A disc sander would remedy this. I think you deserve new tools. A man that obviously does not give up easy. Best thing to do, when things go that far south, is go shopping for new tools:eek:

I have built a nice shop around this kind of thinking.

I like the knife. Fred
Click to expand...

I bought a disc sander and, like a number of the ORIGINAL tools that I purchased, it was a cheapo. A 10 inch sander that was on sale at HF. As you may know (and I didn't at the time) 10 inch discs are not all that available, particularly in finer grits. Plus, thing only has one speed.........."go so fast that it tries to rip the piece out of your hand". I eventually want to get a VS 9 inch with one of Rob Frink's convex discs, but I can't spend the cash right now. I buy pretty good size pieces of wood, so I also want a small surface planer. Withthose two machines, I can buy large peices of wood whihc I have found only cost about 50-60% as much as cuthandle sized blocks do by weight. Unfortunately, I first have to figure out how to fix my drill press. I weighs around 200 pounds, so I'm not soing to be sticking in th bak of the BMW and taking it somewhere:D My next toll purchase is going to be one of John Perry's handle broaches. They are very expensive, but, as you know, you get what you pay for.
 
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