Here's another installment!
I sanded the faces of the three blackwood blocks. All are nice, but I wanted to see if any had pretty grain. With a 220 finish, I was able to pick one out from the others. I'll show it in a minute.
I figured out what thickness I wanted the slab, adding about .125 to the handle thickness to be able to chamfer the leading edge of the handle piece. I set the rip fence on my bandsaw and went to work. I basically had to friction cut it in little bites, as it's very dense wood and not a new blade.
This is my vintage 12" Duro bandsaw. Got rid of my Craftsman and rebuilt this saw, as it's got a monolithic cast frame that can take tension. It's got a 2 hp Baldor motor on it now!
After roughing the cut face flat, the grain stands out:
The block itself was irregularly cut, so now that I have ripped out a piece with one good flat side, I put it in the mill vise and took the other side down flat to establish a uniform thickness. I did this carefully trimming around the edges first in the correct directions to avoid splintering.
I traced the tang onto the piece, cut it out, and ground closer. I chamfered the leading edge just a bit with a file.
I began the pressing process with the vise. It peeled a nice curl along the tang edges. I believe that's what you want, a sharp steel edge to cut into the wood rather than a dull edge that will cause the opening to be pried open instead. I filed a bit more, and pressed more.
After pressing the piece most of the way through, I took it back out (difficult!) and drilled for the vertical pin with a 1/8" bit.
After scrubbing the tang surface off inside, I mixed up some epoxy and added a few drops of black leather dye. Bingo, black epoxy.
I slathered it all up and pressed the block all the way through. I thought I had taken a pic of the knife glued up, but no... anyway it sits until tomorrow for now.
I looked over at the hot work area and thought to include a snap of my hydraulic press project, welding all done and ready for plumbing.
I shifted gears and went to finish grinding an 11" twist dammy dagger blade, post HT. It's getting a 4" hollow grind on the contact wheel assembly I made just for it. Small diameter hollows are fun to grind! I roughed with 8" and deepened the grinds with the 4" wheel.
A quick couple shots of the wheel. It's just a 4" industrial caster with an iron hub and poly tire. You can get them from Grizzly for like $10. I milled out the grease zerk area to improve balance, and mounted it on a 3/4" bolt using just the original crap needle bearings. Running it on the grinder, I tracked the belt first to one side and rounded the corner of the wheel off with a horseshoe rasp, then did the other side.
It only runs smoothly at lower RPMs since I didn't really balance it, and I'm going to replace the bearings with some better ones soon, but on my VS grinder it works just fine for hollow grinding. Needs a drop or two of low sling (chainsaw bar) oil now and then on the sides.
I did a better job of balancing another caster, and crowned the face off on the lathe, and now it serves as a tracking wheel for my old Olympic Square Wheel. I include the pic to further show that with a 4" caster and a little chutzpah much is possible on the cheap.
A quick shot of the dagger blade in the sanding station- with the 4" radius steel sanding bar I hammer-curved hot out of bar stock over the anvil horn.
And that's it for the night! Stay tuned for further adventures. Thanks for reading this thread everyone.
:thumbup: 
