Talking about mills...

Brock Cutlery

Brock Cutlery

Joined
Jan 10, 2015
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Just a little tip, if you haven't tried it.
I have a lot of blackwood or ebony in really irregular shapes and sized.
So it's always a challenge to get a really close fit for bolsters due to all the weird angles.
This morning I put a chunk in my mini-mill and planed off a flat side with a 1/4 inch end mill.
Flipped it, rested that flat in the vise base and then had two parallel flats. Woohoo!
Locked those in the vise and milled another flat.
Flipped and milled.
In the end I had a really nice squared bolster blank to work with. Tolerance within .001 or so.
That is the sweetest material to work with to cut out your tang slot.
 
On that note, to get it more square (squarer?) rather than flipping 180 degrees your first milled face down, rotate 90 degrees so it's against the solid jaw of your vise, and then put a dowel between the block and the moveable jaw. This will allow the block to index against the jaw without any other influence. Putting the face down can sometimes cause the two edges being gripped to lift that face off the bottom.

To continue squaring, rotate the new face into the solid jaw again, and again use the dowel, now you have 3 faces that are 90 degrees and the 4th can be done without the dowel.

But, doing this with wood is a really handy thing that I sometimes do for the same reason. Makes layout and everything else a lot easier when your wood block is square.
 
i do the same. i also mill micarta flat. when scuffing it for glue up on a granite plate with sandpaper i noticed sometimes there are pockets that are lower than the rest of the surface. i also have a mini mill and i can get away with using a 5/8" mill. fewer passes :D
 
I learned another little trick this morning, not to do with milling.
So I've cracked two bolsters for this gyuto I'm trying to finish, of course right about when I got the tang fit up perfect.
So this last one was a hairline crack in ebony. Hard to see.
So if you squirt a little alcohol on the face, it will dry quickly, except where the crack is because that holds and doesn't evaporate quite as fast.
Shows you the crack for sure.

Now dang it, back to making a third bolster. :mad:
 
So I have to ask, being a mill noob. Can you do a tapered tang with a mill? Can you sent a blade bevel with a mill?
Mine is just a manual mini-mill, so ... ?
 
Like most questions in machining the answer is in the setup. Tapering a tang I can think of a couple relatively simple fixture ideas, but they may not hold every knife you make. Setting bevels, sure, with angled vise jaws, but not the compound tip angle. I'm not sure either are worth the effort unless you're making a lot of duplicates. Tapering the tang maybe, more than the beveling.
 
I'm with Butch on the fly cutter. I can do each face in one pass. I also index off of the solid jaw of the vise.
 
Get some scrap and play with it. I have no problem making .050"-060" passes on dense hard woods up to 2" wide. Sometimes I do a clean up pass approx. .003"-.005" deep depending on the finish I get on the first pass. Just be careful that the cutter doesn't tear out/splinter the material on the edge. You can control that by cutting depth & the angle that the cutter leaves the material.
Like I said, just experiment with cutting depths, feed rates, & angles to find what works best for you and your machine. Once you get it figured out you'll be glad you did.
 
as to the wood fly cutting looks covered well tearout and chipping being the problem with some woods but the grind on the cutter can be ajusted (i have one ground for brass and copper and one for wood and mycarta ) huge key to using the fly cutter is the mill has to be dead nuts in tram
 
Geoff, I'd like to see your fixture. Tapered tangs is an aspect I need to get a handle on. :)

Butch, thanks for the info. I don't think my china mill can even get dead nuts trammed. I'm shopping soon....
 
Brock Cutlery said:
Geoff, I'd like to see your fixture. Tapered tangs is an aspect I need to get a handle on. :)

Butch, thanks for the info. I don't think my china mill can even get dead nuts trammed. I'm shopping soon....
Click to expand...
I'll take one when I'm at the shop tomorrow
 
Brock Cutlery said:
So I have to ask, being a mill noob. Can you do a tapered tang with a mill? Can you sent a blade bevel with a mill?
Mine is just a manual mini-mill, so ... ?
Click to expand...
The most repeatable way is with a "Sine Bar or Sine Table" mounted to your mill table it's basically an angle plate you can adjust to suit the amount of material you need to remove.
 
Busto said:
The most repeatable way is with a "Sine Bar or Sine Table" mounted to your mill table it's basically an angle plate you can adjust to suit the amount of material you need to remove.
Click to expand...
Man, I had one of those and sold it on ebay. Wasn't sure what it was for. LOL
 
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