Got these 2 in Nitro V finished up and shipped out on Wednesday! Reverse Tanto has polished/buffed double black G10 guard, natty canvas micarta pins, lanyard tube, spacer and liners and ivory paper micarta handles. 3" clip point is wearing orange Ameragrip and black micarta hardware.
Been using the RD Knives Carbide platen a lot lately, still looks brand new after I scrape the reside from the platen from the wet sanding! Really cleaned up and flattened my grinds out and made my plunges much more consistent, too! I started using cork belts instead of scotchbrite belts as my final finish. Since I started doing lengthwise grit on the ricasso area and vertical on the blade, the scotchbrite tends to scuff up the transition, making it look not as crisp, so the cork belts seem to do better in that area!
Been playing with some spine jimping with the generic foredome type grinder lately, too, finally decided on doing it after the blade was fully done! 2mm carbide burr works pretty well size wise. I need to work on getting a template done up to help with lining up the jimping so it's more evenly spaced since I am just doing it by eye. I tried Cricut stencils, but they fell off easily.
Also been using the 1" scalloped belts in 120 and 240 grit, not just the 2" wide scalloped belts. They put a bit more pressure into a smaller area and work really well to take out the initial 40 and 80 grit sanding scratches from the roughing steps!
I picked up some 3" buffing wheels with 1/4" shank mandrel to use in my generic foredom to buff up the handles. I was using buffing wheels in my drill press, but since I have it set on slow speeds for metal drilling, it doesn't work as well. The generic foredom has a foot speed pedal, so I can control the speed and use the small buffing wheels to shine up the handles nicely and the 3" wheels are pretty controllable by hand. I will probably end up with one of those variable speed 3" bench buffers for handles eventually. The paper micarta looks nice all buffed and shined up and it should work nicely with stabilized woods, too!
