Steveuto

Joined
Jun 11, 2010
Messages
29
so my buddy chef steve liked using my gyotus and knows i make knives. enter my christmas present: stuff to build him a knife! he wanted a laser, so i started with a 3/32 sheet and some new blaze belts and went crazy (very carefully)

this was a lot of fun, here's the specs:

OAL 15in
length on edge 10in
flat grind all the way up
blade: CPM-D2, 61-62HRC (tested) choil/spine rounded
handle: buffalo horn, 1/4" steel from frank's hardware, black fiber, stabilized mesquite, 2tn epoxy (lots).. tang was burnt into the stabilized wood, NOT an agreeable smell.

i built a portable 3v etcher with 30 bucks or so worth of parts from radio shack and i think it worked pretty well. i'd be happy to post some info on that if anyone is interested, but i think i found most of the info here on BF. also messed around with PCB etchant which gives a bit of a different effect, will be playing with both more in the future.. anyway here's the pics.. they are NOT super high quality :D

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(these are the two sketchbooks i have to fill for school this semester, part of why i dont have much time for slinging steel at the moment :p)

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as usual it's tough to see the effect on the blade but i faded the etch from the dark around the JMT mark to barely etched at the tip, i had the last 2" or so of the tip polished but it just didnt look right so i hit it with some ferric chloride at the end

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i think my ghetto etcher did a pretty good job, resist was clear nail polish. this took less than 10min with a few saturated-saltwater soaked cotton balls, and it's definitely raised a bit off the surface, but the lines are still fairly sharp. i'd like to figure out a way to place the resist with a bit more precision, nail polish doesn't flow like ink. this photo has kind of an odd effect on the bevel, the grind is slightly uneven about an inch in but it doesn't actually angle up that much at the heel.

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the grind, it's hard to see but it's more acute than my kikuichi. scary!

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stabilized wood smells like sh!t on the grinder! so does buffalo horn! the shop spiders raced outside like lemmings.

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i think im going to call it "Mrs. Fangs", we had joked that i should put a giant, deadly finger trap of a heel on this one so of course i did. he's hoping it keeps anyone else from touching it, and he's probably right. i'm going to tell him to just go ahead and cut the crap out of himself, because then it will be over with. all in all, not a terrible attempt at my first dedicated kitchen knife. (it wasn't a total failure, which kind of surprised me :cool:) the last step, should i have the time sometime soon, is to make a nice bird's eye maple saya, dye it pink and slap a hello kitty sticker on it. :D

ive got to give a shout out to peters heat treat over in pennsylvania, i sent in two blades thinking they'd kind of smirk at the size of the order and they were helpful and prompt, something that seems typical of this community. they also have a rockwell tester and tested each blade. good stuff!
 
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I like that knife, starting at 3/32 with a full flat grind I bet it is a laser. Your handle turned out really nice, too- clean straight angles looks good on a chef handle. One question, not to be a jerk, did you mean the tang to bottom out more in the handle? It kind of looks like the tang shoulder didn't come up flush to the handle when gluing. Other than that, it looks really good, especially if that's your first kitchen knife.
 
yep that was intentional. the spine transfers to the first shoulder which you see, then there's a second shoulder that is butted right up against the handle. i was going for kind of a ricasso effect, if you could call it that, after the bolster.. i like the fact that with most wa-handled japanese blades you can kind of see the workings of the tang-handle connection and was going for that sort of thing, also i wanted to be conservative with the tang height, as i wasn't sure how much the buffalo horn would take as far as thinning.

by the way, i've got a pretty thick skin, so feel free to tear this apart. no one's being a jerk til they come in and tell me i just suck (without any sort of reasoning, because i just might!)
 
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no one's being a jerk til they come in and tell me i just suck (without any sort of reasoning, because i just might!)

You just suck, at making a bad chef knife. :p

I like it, looks great and from the description sounds like it will work wonders..
 
You do suck at making a bad chef knife. Thanks for the explanation. Now I want to see some ginger or garlic sliced transparently thin.
 
Cool looking knife! I have a Japanese made kitchen knife that I like a lot that is very similar. It looks authentic, nice job.
 
thanks for the comments folks, next job is a paring knife for another chef friend. with spring break coming up and being to old to go get naked at south padre' ill probably be posting more soon ;)

as far as using it, i've decided to let him pop the cherry so to speak, because if i start messing around with food i've got a feeling i wont want to give it up.
 
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You mean you can get to old to get naked at south padre?......Dang foiled again:(:D
Nice knife though.:thumbup:
Stan
 
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