Wa Handle question

Brock Cutlery

Brock Cutlery

Joined
Jan 10, 2015
Messages
1,673
What is the best way to get the shoulders straight and even on the tang? I don't know why I am struggling with this. It seems like it should be simple.
 
I use a file guide. Mine's diy from HT'ed 1084. I have a carbide lined file guide on my wish list.
 
Carbide file guide and a machinist's square has worked for me, but make sure that your spine is straight and level up near the tang. I went though 3 0-1 and A-2 file guides in like two years on the grinder before I bought my Uncle Al carbide one. That one has lasted me 8 years and I also bought one from Bruce Bump because his is like 3 inches wide. That is the one that I use for kitchen knives
Brock47 said:
What is the best way to get the shoulders straight and even on the tang? I don't know why I am struggling with this. It seems like it should be simple.
Click to expand...
 
So you all use a file and file guide? That makes sense. I keep trying to do it on the grinder, and this time it just isn't working out well.
 
Im in the process of my first hidden tang so im speaking from very limited experience. I use a small square set on the spine to make my line for the shoulders. Then use a file guide to square them up. Dont forget to round the corners slightly so you dont have any stress risers. I used a chainsaw file. My file guide is a Bill Behnke, if I spelled it right, and was $75. It has an alumnus frame with carbide inserts. A 50 grit gator just slides right over it.
 
I do it on the grinder after heat treating. Either John White or Russ Andrews told me to do that because it grinds cleaner. John used to file the bevels on hardened daggers because he said it was more accurate. i think he told me that he went thought three Nicholsons doing one blade. With the carbide file guide, you can jam on it with pretty much any belt and it just polishes up the carbide face.
Brock47 said:
So you all use a file and file guide? That makes sense. I keep trying to do it on the grinder, and this time it just isn't working out well.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for all the responses. I'll try a couple variations of the file guide method and see how it goes.
 
Bruce Bump makes an excellent carbide faced file guide (it was $120 when I bought it). It may seem pricey, but the amount of time it has saved me has been worth every penny. You can clamp it on the ricasso and take it right up to the grinder without doing any damage to the guide. Then touch up the shoulders with a file.
 
If you want to go relatively cheap and don't mind dinging them, a set of parallel bars will make do. I don't know how they compare in price to be honest. I got two 3/4" bars with my mill.
 
I have two Riverside file guides. For some reason it just never occurred to me to use them for this.
 
Pics promised, pics delivered. Finished up this one and am pretty happy with the shoulders, but my tang mount angle wasn't quite right, so the bottom has a tiny bit of clearance where the top is tight. My fault for sure, not the shoulder grind.
One other issue I had was the termite hole showing up at the end of the handle shaping. :|
I'm not too worried about it though. This knife is a blade geometry experiment and it's going to be a tested in my kitchen. :) I don't know what to call the grind. It's a full flat down to .01 with a hollow on the lower side. The back is only slightly ground from the start, flat. The thought is to keep it thin, but have some food release.

Let me know what you think about any part of this design. I'm still in the early learning curve arc.

4gyuto-1.jpg


4gyuto-2.jpg
 
Not too shabby.. If the next one you do is a wa handled knife, try getting rid of the plunge cut.
 
On a wa handled knife with that much "ricasso" you can still have it be all 90 degree angles at the shoulders and just taper the ricasso in two directions and blend everything together. it is even easier if you are doing something like an S grind and the flat grind on the upper part of the blade is a tiny bit shallower than the grind below the bottom of the ricasso. With that said, I managed to blend in the plunge on a 240mm western style gyuto recently. Another way to do it is like what some of the Japanese makers do and just bevel the entire knife, handle or tang included.
 
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I keep seeing people say you can run the carbide guide up to the belt. I tried that once and my 120.00 carbide guide has a big divot in it. YMMV.
 
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