stock removal/lawnboy

R

rhettfcr

Joined
Oct 8, 2002
Messages
28
Good morning all,
After making a few knives using the stock removal method, my wife asked when I was going to make her a knife. I asked her what she had in mind and she said a big a** bowie. Not for edc, but just to keep around the house. I had a few lawnboy blades and decided to use one for her bowie. Steel was very hard to work with but got the blade roughed in to the shape, thickness and length she wanted. I wanted to use stag handles and use welding rods for decorative purposes and to hold the handle material with adhesive to the knife handle. Well, I cannot get a hole drilled in the tang. I have tried every drill bit that I could get my hands on and still cannot make even a small dent in the steel. Wondering if you all have any ideas as to how I can get the holes drilled as I am anxious to finish this knife. I do have and use a drill press. Any suggestions would be welcome. As it stands, I have wrapped the handle in pink paracord but this is just temporary.

Rhett
 
just to give you a heads up, nobody in here really recommends using mower blades. There is a reason why they are easy to sharpen with a file after it gets nicked from hitting a rock. As long as you understand that and you just want to put together a knife that will not get hard from a HT then that's okay.

You had not mentioned speeds and if you use a cutting fluid. Or how old your bits are. I drill at the lowest speed my drill press can operate at, use pilot holes for anything over 1/8, and I use a lot of cutting fluid every time, no matter how big or small. I use rapid tap tapping fluid, some peeps use an actual tool coolant, others WD40. I use one of my wife's (not hers anymore, she said she did not want it back, wonder why...) brownie pans to catch the coolant and chips under the press, you can recycle the fluid pretty easy.
 
You can put the blade section in a vise to act as a heat sink, heat where you want to drill, red hot, and use any bit. It will go through like the steel was butter.
 
I've tried drilling 1095 and had problems like that before. Get some masonry bits with the carbide tips and use a small diamond file just to sharpen up its cutting edges a little bit. That should drill it no problem. In fact, for drilling high carbon steel, I don't even bother wasting my money buying regular bits anymore because the masonry bits work better in my opinion, and last longer. Even a cheap masonry bit with a carbide tip I find will drill through more steel more effectively than one of those expensive cobalt bits. Kinda wierd I know, but whatever works works.
 
Last edited:
I've used the solid carbide bits for stuff like that, problem is they are really expensive. R.C. I need to try the masonary bits, good tip.
 
LRB has the right idea, you can anneal (make softer) carbon steels by heating to 1700f and then cool slowly. You can try to heat a small area and then drill while hot, or heat and place in vermiculite (from garden store) to cool slowly. Wrap what you want to keep hard in a wet towle so it does not overheat.
 
Slow slow speed and a Cobalt bit seems to work good. I suppose the brute force method would be to blow holes through it with a O/A torch.
 
Have you tried the really short "metal" rated drill bits? I just bought a couple and they drilled a tang that I kept burning up other drill bits on. They were only $5 at Menards.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top