Weird question.....

D

d.weglarz13

Joined
Jun 4, 2008
Messages
1,945
Hey. I would like to know what the best way is to take a knife that is 1/4" thick, and bring the whole thing, blade and tang, down a bit? Preferably, I would love to bring it down to 3/16", or at least thin it down from what it already is. The blade is made of INFI steel. I am thinking of buying a Kalamazoo 1 x 42" and I'm hoping I can do it with this, but if I have to send it out, can you tell me who would be willing to do this? as I am well aware that a lot of makers do not like to work on other makers knives. Thank you for your inputs.

Dave
 
Don't even bother.
Here is why.

1) Disassemble knife. Take handles off, if they are glued and pinned or riveted. Throw away handles,

2) Try to un heat treat the steel.

3) Use a surface grinder, at a machine shot to remove 1/32 from both sides.

4) Heat Treat steel.

5) Put handle back on.

Time and cost of this will be more than the cost of knife unless its a custom. If you don't like the knife, sell it or give it away and buy one you want. The Kalamzoo 1 by 42 is not up to this .

FB
 
Well, I was hoping that wasn't the case. However, I know a lot of guys regrind the Busse knives into different shapes sometimes, and I don't think that heat treat is an issue, or else others wouldn't grind these too. Anyone know about this?
 
Who made the knife? They'd be the first folks to ask. (I think I can guess because I don't know of too many makers using INFI.) edit: yup, Busse. Doing a little profile touch-up or tweaking the bevels is a far cry from shaving down both sides of the whole blade.

I work on other people's knives regularly (well, other factories', I haven't been asked to rework a custom so far), doesn't matter to me where it came from. I always tell the client that any collector value it may have had is shot to heck as soon as I take it apart or grind on it though. Keep that in mind.

Anyway... it can be done without re-HT on a truly flat platen but will take a good while since the steel is already hardened. A kazoo 1x42 would drive you bonkers on that job, even if you have a lot of experience.

Once down to near your desired thickness, it would have to be finish-ground to the satin or polish you desire and of course reassembled. The project wouldn't be rocket science but it would involve a significant amount of time and belts. That means MONEY. Not to mention the loss of any resale value the knife may have. Oh yeah, don't forget shipping/insurance both ways, either.

You could check local machine shops that have a surface grinder, that might be quicker/cheaper. But I have no idea if they'd want to work on hardened steel. I doubt it.

What's the purpose of shaving 1/16" off the blade? It won't save you a whole lot of weight unless it's a very large knife. And it won't anything much for the cutting ability unless you have the bevels reworked to a more acute angle, too.

I suspect this is one of those times when the expense involved would just about equal buying a new knife that's what you want to begin with. Unless your heart is set on keeping that particular piece of steel, I'd look into selling it and ordering new from a good factory or custom maker. Who knows, if it's what I think it is (edit: yup, Busse), you may even come out ahead, those things command crazy prices on the aftermarket.

In short, I'll do it for you but I wouldn't recommend it :D
 
Last edited:
james terrio said:
You could check local machine shops that have a surface grinder, that might be quicker/cheaper. But I have no idea if they'd want to work on hardened steel. I doubt it.
In short, I'll do it for you but I wouldn't recommend it :D
Click to expand...

Ok, I edited James's answer quite a bit but here is a scoop. I just had a quote by my local machine shop wtih a surface grinder.

To grind a few thousands of a piece 2" wide x 24" in length.
There minimum charge was $75.00 for the first hour! :eek: This included set up time, which means that if it takes 55 min to set up the machine you only got 5 more minutes to finish the project befor the next hour kicks in!

Needles to say they didn't get the job from me!

In short you could have the entire knife custom made probably cheaper than the route you are talking about going!:)
 
Well, like i said i know a lot of guys regrind these knives all the time into different shapes, so what do you guys think??? thanks again


dave
 
Yikes, Dixieblade57, I didn't know it would cost THAT much! Guess I'll just keep ordering PG flat-stock...

Anyway, Dave, as I said before there's a good bit more work in thinning a whole blade and rebuilding it, compared to reworking a profile or touching up the bevels. If you like, shoot me an email
and I'll work up a quote for you, just so you'll know what you may be in for. A pic would be great and I'll need to know what kind oif handles you want put back on. (I'm not real familiar with Busse knives but I suspect the scales are both epoxied and peened/bolted on... which means I'd probably have to grind them off and make new ones.)

I wouldn't be able to get to it until the first of the year, what with current jobs, the holidays and whatnot. And you're probably going to cringe when you see what I'd charge for the work; seriously it would be almost the same as ordering a whole new knife.

I hope we're not discouraging you. If you absolutely insist on using the INFI steel you already have, I don't know of any other choice. But if you're open to other high-performance steels like CPM-3V or M4, there are several makers here who can make a damn good knife to your specs. Best of luck!
 
I'd face mill it. There is no reason to surface grind it. It is 2010 y'all - you can mill hard steel. Especially stuff like that. It is probably a fairly soft, low carbide steel similar to S7. You can do that with regular inserts even.

I have a surface grinder. The only piece of equipment that I hate more is different grinder. I hate stone wheel grinding. meh
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top