Take Down Fighter Progression!

Kyle Royer

Kyle Royer

Joined
Dec 6, 2006
Messages
1,109
Hi everyone!

This is going to be a WIP (work in progress) on a new knife I'm working on. It's a custom order for a fellow across the pond in the UK. It will be a fighter with a W-2 blade that will be double ground with the top edge being false. It will have a Sambar stag take down handle with stainless steel fittings and two little liners with file-work.

I hope you all like this and thanks for looking. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to share them here. Enjoy!

Here is the final picture of the knife my Brother Caleb shot. I think he did a great job.






Here is a sketch of the knife, my steel and the stag I'll use.





Here is a close up of the stag. I think it will look nice on this knife.


In this pic, I've welded a handle to my bar of W-2 to make it easier to hold and work with. This is some 2" W-2 that I forged down into a smaller bar of which I got from
Don Hanson III. Thanks Don!


Heating up in the forge.


Now I'm using my press to forge the bar down to about 0.340 thick and 1.250 wide. I am making this knife a little thicker because it will lose a lot of weight from the double grind so I have to compensate for it a little. I would like my finished thickness to be 0.285 to 0.310 thick when I'm done.


Here you can already start to see the taper I'm forging into the blade.


I have started shaping the tip here. So far I've done everything with my press. Next I'll start forging in the blade bevels.
 
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In this pic I've started forging the primary blade bevel, starting at the ricasso.


I have rough forged the top and bottom bevels in here. I left a good bit of material on the top bevel.


Here is a top view of the top bevel. I still have some refining to do on it.


Here is a view of the bottom bevel rough forged.


In this picture I've hot cut the bar so I can forge my tang out. I also did a little refining on the blade bevels.


I started forging the tang out here with my press. I'll forge the tang completely with my press and curve it with a hammer before I'm done.


The tang has been forged out all the way here, ready to be curved with a hammer so it will match the radius of the stag.


Here I've normalized the blade once by heating it up in the forge to a bright orange glow and then let it air cool.


Now I'm normalizing the blade a second time only I'm heating it to a low red color. This cycle of going with lower and lower heats helps relax the grain structure of the steel.



Now I am going to run a partial annealing cycle on the blade by heating it up in my Paragon to 1450F and let it cool on it's own slowly. This will further help relax the grain.


That's all for today. Thanks for looking.
 
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bluejaunte said:
Do I see an integral in there? :D
Click to expand...

Yip! The blade on the right is an integral I forged while I had the forge running. If I have time to finish the integral it will be for the Little Rock, AR show in February.



Thanks for the compliments everyone! I'm glad you like it so far. I'll post what I accomplished today later tonight.
 
OK, here is what I did today

Here is the blade after annealing in my Paragon oven last night.


This is the blade after being rough ground with an angle grinder.


I am surface grinding the ricasso and tang in this pic.


It's looking good so I'll flip it over and do the other side.


Here is a cool shot of the surface grinder sparks.


This is my 1958 Covel Surface Grinder made in Benton Harbor, MI. It is accurate to 0.001 in 6 inches and it has a 6" X 18" magnetic chuck. I love it



Here is the blade surface ground, ready for profiling. The blade is 0.280 thick which is about 0.005 thinner that I wanted it. However I think the weight will still be very good because 0.005 is not very much.




Now I've profiled the blade and it is ready to have the center line scribed in.


This is the center line on the radius of the tip.
 
This is a shot of the scribed lines at the ricasso.


Here are the lines on what will be the top false edge.


In this picture is the blade after rough grinding. It is now ready for heat treating.


First before hardening I must normalize again. This time I brought the blade up to about 1300F and I'll let it cool until I can't see any color in a dark room.


OK, the blade is cool and ready to be heated up for hardening.


The blade is hot at approximately 1500F ready for the Parks 50 full quench.




I'll quench the blade until I think it has cooled to about 400F and then I'll slap it on my surface grinder magnet to pull it straight should it have warped during the quench. This was a little trick I learned from Ron Newton. The blade did not warp however I did it anyway just to be sure.


Quenched and ready for the surface grinder magnet.


I put it on the magnet only as far as the surface ground flats go down the blade. If I were to place the whole blade on the magnet it would pull the blade where my taper starts, out of straight.
 
And last of all for tonight, I put the blade into my Paragon oven at 420F for two hours to temper it. Tomorrow I'll do the final grinding and I might be able to start hand sanding.


Thanks for looking.
 
Really enjoyable Kyle.
This type "WIP" is very educational as we actually see the knife being created step by step, as opposed to just a series of progress photos depicting work already done.

Thanks Kyle.
 
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