Steel cutting bit?

[Jens Schuetz]

Not a knife maker. Mainly a family guy and still getting familiar with metal altering tools whenever I get a few minutes during the day or get up before the little ones.
In a few months I guess I'll tackle my first blade. Already got the steel. O1 since its supposedly soft as butter.
However I doubt that I can use my wood cutting router bits on it. Lol

I plan to include a fuller and thought a metal cutting router bit would be the way to go.
● Could I fix that bit in my drill press (would rig something that the steel bar doesn't fly and can slide left and right pretty accurate)
● Or would it be better to put the bit into my normal handheld router which I have only used in wood so far?
● Or is there something much better which I haven thought of?
● if a router bit is useful, where do I get it? My Armazon searches only find bits for wood and Aluminum. Nothing which cuts steel. I also guess that Home Despot wouldn't carry something like that?

Thank you.

 

[Rhinoknives1]

Jens,
You will most likely destroy your drill press trying to cutting a fuller. The router spins too fast and you would most likely toast that too.

I am not a machinist, but have made knives since about 96 so I suggest you pass on a fuller unless you have some machinist or other knife maker with a mill to cut it for you or as I have done on small hunters, make a fuller using a 3/4" or 1/2" small wheel with a small wheel adaptor. I've only done 2" -2 1/2" fullers with that method.

Make life easy for yourself and for the first one, concentrate on the blade profile and the bevel or hollow grind. That's my 2 cents for your first one!

 

[J W Bensinger]

[SUB][/SUB]Jens-Make yourself a manual cutter-that's how I do mine-take an old fileand do this (i do most of the grinding on the corner of a contact wheel):

You could also make such a cutter out of a piece of O-1, and harden it yourself. That would certainly be easier than working a hardened file. If you leave te cutter and bearing surface almost full hard it will cut annealed steel for a long time.
To use it, clamp the blank to the edge of a supported 2x4 and use the tool as a drawknife. Takes nice long curls out of the steel. I've been meaning to make an adjustable version using carbide cutters, but too many knives going out right now to mess with that.

 

[Jens Schuetz]

Thanks for your advice.
The manual cutter looks simple and effective. Thank you for sharing the design of it.

 

[J W Bensinger]

Make sure you rough cut the fuller before you get the blade too close to finished , so if you slip you can still remove the gouges.