- Joined
- Dec 29, 2016
- Messages
- 754
Hey guys, finally got some time off work and put in around 3 days shop time to get this guy turned around. I now see the value in doing batches - and not having to do a single tool setup, etc. just one time. I'll learn from this, and move forward, but i wanted to document and do a complete type up of what i struggled with during this build, issues, and just the process.
So - this blank was cut out of .136' and sent of to JT for heat treating. It was sent with an absurd designed nikiri that i absolutely hate now, and some other blanks. I've been really struggling to get a grind decent enough to move onto the next steps, and this has really stifled my progress and learning experience. It's hard basing everything off youtube, and what you read, doing it is something completely different, which is why i've reached out to some local and not local people to see if i can buy some shop time from them to better learn the tools of the trade. If you're in AZ, or close, and this interests you, let me know!
So onto the story of this little guy, which had 3/32 pin holes drilled into it prior to HT. Learned real quick that planning ahead does loads for the finish result. I was rushed to produce something because a co-worker bought a 1x30 and started making some stuff outed old files and heard that i had purchased the tools and was starting to try to learn to walk myself. He kept telling me that it will never be perfect the first go, and you just need to keep moving on, something that really resonated with me and that you guys have been telling me from day one. The old saying is something like - knifemakers don't make mistakes, they just make smaller knives? Boy oh boy is that true, ha.
1.) Grinding - still really struggling to get something useful here, i tried to freehand it but even getting the rough 45's in to the center line was proving to be really difficult. I really struggled with this, and it gets me so worked up. I moved onto using a jig to get the large portion of the flat done, then made a swap to the bubblejig to allow myself to correct the issues i made on the jig. This worked well enough to get something workable. Took the blade to 90% with 60 grit - moved onto 120 and refined the plunges as best i could (made a movement error on one side and messed a plunge up a little, was able to correct it when hand sanding a little but was still there). After grinding the blade down i moved through the grits 220 - 400 trizact - 600 trizact to try to lighten the load of hand sanding. I also used a very fine scotch brite belt to see what it would look like and i loved how it blended everything but it blurred the top of the flat so i was forced to had sand given how i had ground the blade. The blade was left super thick, i was terrified to fuck it up, i should have set a steeper angle and worked the blade thinner but i had reached the spine of the blade and it LOOKED thin enough to move on, but i knew it was to thick to be something i'd be proud of and it is. It also bowed when grinding, and i don't have a HT kiln to shim correct this, i could have tried creating a device and using the kitchen oven, but i didn't want to wreck the HT and just wanted to move on, again in a rush. Just another learning experience here but it is an EDC so thick isn't THE WORST thing to happen. This also means that the angle that i made the secondary bevel or cutting edge at is incredible shallow (27 ish degrees on my wicked edge - would really like a tormek system after having to do about a million passes with the 100 grit stone to get a bur built up).
2.) Handles - i had some stabilized madrone from K&G that i decided to couple with some black g10 scraps. This worked out pretty well but i wanted to have the dovetails flipped so that the g10 portion looked much larger than it does currently. ALSO now that it's finished, i would have taken the handles all the way to the plunge, it looks really small, and the handle proportions looked very off imo. I cut the dovetails with 120 on the grinder with the platen set to 45* using a angle cube. I clamped a square onto the work rest but it seemed to still grind at a slight angle, still managed to work out, but i think i can come up with something more accurate. The reason i didn't use the g10 in the orientation i wanted was because i ground the dovetail wrong on one of the scales that i wanted the show side to be on (hard to explain, but i made a planning error AGAIN, it was late in the shop and i was rushing to try to get everything ready for glue up. Everything was roughed up on 220 paper then cleaned with iso before i went for the glue up. I should have used a liner piece in between the wood and g10 to add some accent, but ended up not doing it out of rushing and not having a color i feel would look good with the overall blade. After getting them shaped after glue up, which was quite the task to make sure everything lined up, i drilled holes, and cut the 45* in on the front of the bolsters. For finishing i went up to 2500 grit - i don't have a buffer or and tru-oil but the finish was good enough for me and was what i decided to do for the handles when i moved onto that step.
3.) Blade prep - if you own or have purchased a hand sanded satin finish knife and you didn't pay 1,000,000 dollars for it, you rubbed that mother****er blind. I'm always stunned at how long and hard this takes, almost an entire day was spend sanding the blade, and the results i got weren't the best. I learned that pressure and not trying to press the weight of the world on the final passes really helps you get a clean finish, but i didn't spend enough time on the final passes and it shows. Also didn't know how to address the plunges & flats (as i was trying to not have flats). So i moved on, i took the blade up to 600 grit, then dropped back down to 400 grit for final strokes. I etched the blade before the final passes and inevitably did 10,000 final passes losing the darken on my etch (i've purchased some brass black to hopefully help this mark stay black after etching - note i picked up from the newest Kyle Royer video on youtube). After the final passes i used a kingspor fine sanding block with passes to try to smooth everything out, but it didn't save my atrocious finish (it's really frustrating only liking hand rubbed finished when i suck at them so bad, and i just seem helpless). Since i didn't file in a spanish notch, i had to borrow a dremel from my grandfather and use it to grind the notch - which ended up being to far forward so i took it back a bit and made the notch a little oblong shaped. After hand sanding late last night i took it in for glue up, and boy did i not plan this out well. It was again late and i yolo'ed it and didn't have enough clamps and was to lazy to walk back into the shop. Didn't get all the squeeze out cleaned up good and ended up having to exacto out some off the bolsters but you can hardly tell, i know have learned that planning is key to success for all of this ha. There is also a small gap on the left side of the bolster and it was made more obvious when i made the grinding mistake stated down below. I also wanted to taper the tang, i have a TW surface grinder but with the time crunch decided against it. Bummer because it is handle heavy.
So - this blank was cut out of .136' and sent of to JT for heat treating. It was sent with an absurd designed nikiri that i absolutely hate now, and some other blanks. I've been really struggling to get a grind decent enough to move onto the next steps, and this has really stifled my progress and learning experience. It's hard basing everything off youtube, and what you read, doing it is something completely different, which is why i've reached out to some local and not local people to see if i can buy some shop time from them to better learn the tools of the trade. If you're in AZ, or close, and this interests you, let me know!
So onto the story of this little guy, which had 3/32 pin holes drilled into it prior to HT. Learned real quick that planning ahead does loads for the finish result. I was rushed to produce something because a co-worker bought a 1x30 and started making some stuff outed old files and heard that i had purchased the tools and was starting to try to learn to walk myself. He kept telling me that it will never be perfect the first go, and you just need to keep moving on, something that really resonated with me and that you guys have been telling me from day one. The old saying is something like - knifemakers don't make mistakes, they just make smaller knives? Boy oh boy is that true, ha.
1.) Grinding - still really struggling to get something useful here, i tried to freehand it but even getting the rough 45's in to the center line was proving to be really difficult. I really struggled with this, and it gets me so worked up. I moved onto using a jig to get the large portion of the flat done, then made a swap to the bubblejig to allow myself to correct the issues i made on the jig. This worked well enough to get something workable. Took the blade to 90% with 60 grit - moved onto 120 and refined the plunges as best i could (made a movement error on one side and messed a plunge up a little, was able to correct it when hand sanding a little but was still there). After grinding the blade down i moved through the grits 220 - 400 trizact - 600 trizact to try to lighten the load of hand sanding. I also used a very fine scotch brite belt to see what it would look like and i loved how it blended everything but it blurred the top of the flat so i was forced to had sand given how i had ground the blade. The blade was left super thick, i was terrified to fuck it up, i should have set a steeper angle and worked the blade thinner but i had reached the spine of the blade and it LOOKED thin enough to move on, but i knew it was to thick to be something i'd be proud of and it is. It also bowed when grinding, and i don't have a HT kiln to shim correct this, i could have tried creating a device and using the kitchen oven, but i didn't want to wreck the HT and just wanted to move on, again in a rush. Just another learning experience here but it is an EDC so thick isn't THE WORST thing to happen. This also means that the angle that i made the secondary bevel or cutting edge at is incredible shallow (27 ish degrees on my wicked edge - would really like a tormek system after having to do about a million passes with the 100 grit stone to get a bur built up).
2.) Handles - i had some stabilized madrone from K&G that i decided to couple with some black g10 scraps. This worked out pretty well but i wanted to have the dovetails flipped so that the g10 portion looked much larger than it does currently. ALSO now that it's finished, i would have taken the handles all the way to the plunge, it looks really small, and the handle proportions looked very off imo. I cut the dovetails with 120 on the grinder with the platen set to 45* using a angle cube. I clamped a square onto the work rest but it seemed to still grind at a slight angle, still managed to work out, but i think i can come up with something more accurate. The reason i didn't use the g10 in the orientation i wanted was because i ground the dovetail wrong on one of the scales that i wanted the show side to be on (hard to explain, but i made a planning error AGAIN, it was late in the shop and i was rushing to try to get everything ready for glue up. Everything was roughed up on 220 paper then cleaned with iso before i went for the glue up. I should have used a liner piece in between the wood and g10 to add some accent, but ended up not doing it out of rushing and not having a color i feel would look good with the overall blade. After getting them shaped after glue up, which was quite the task to make sure everything lined up, i drilled holes, and cut the 45* in on the front of the bolsters. For finishing i went up to 2500 grit - i don't have a buffer or and tru-oil but the finish was good enough for me and was what i decided to do for the handles when i moved onto that step.
3.) Blade prep - if you own or have purchased a hand sanded satin finish knife and you didn't pay 1,000,000 dollars for it, you rubbed that mother****er blind. I'm always stunned at how long and hard this takes, almost an entire day was spend sanding the blade, and the results i got weren't the best. I learned that pressure and not trying to press the weight of the world on the final passes really helps you get a clean finish, but i didn't spend enough time on the final passes and it shows. Also didn't know how to address the plunges & flats (as i was trying to not have flats). So i moved on, i took the blade up to 600 grit, then dropped back down to 400 grit for final strokes. I etched the blade before the final passes and inevitably did 10,000 final passes losing the darken on my etch (i've purchased some brass black to hopefully help this mark stay black after etching - note i picked up from the newest Kyle Royer video on youtube). After the final passes i used a kingspor fine sanding block with passes to try to smooth everything out, but it didn't save my atrocious finish (it's really frustrating only liking hand rubbed finished when i suck at them so bad, and i just seem helpless). Since i didn't file in a spanish notch, i had to borrow a dremel from my grandfather and use it to grind the notch - which ended up being to far forward so i took it back a bit and made the notch a little oblong shaped. After hand sanding late last night i took it in for glue up, and boy did i not plan this out well. It was again late and i yolo'ed it and didn't have enough clamps and was to lazy to walk back into the shop. Didn't get all the squeeze out cleaned up good and ended up having to exacto out some off the bolsters but you can hardly tell, i know have learned that planning is key to success for all of this ha. There is also a small gap on the left side of the bolster and it was made more obvious when i made the grinding mistake stated down below. I also wanted to taper the tang, i have a TW surface grinder but with the time crunch decided against it. Bummer because it is handle heavy.
