What's going on in your shop? Show us whats going on, and talk a bit about your work!

7 x CPM 4V rough ground, 8 more to go before sending for heat treat!

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A little craft knife/box opener Christmas gift for my 25 yr old. I tried my hand at dovetailing the inset color. Must have been an ever so slight rotation of one scale when gluing handle to cause a bit of misalignment after final shaping. But I’m pretty happy how it turned out. 14C28N @ ~63 RC, black and red micarta epoxied/pinned in place. 2.75” blade/ 7” OAL.
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I'm slowly progressing on the grinder. The tensioning arm is complete, and the new motor (I could not and did not even want to reuse my old motor) is temporarily in place. The machine balances nicely even with the motor bolted on. I will attack the platen/contact wheel carrier arm next.

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Little WIP! Made some changes to my basic 3" model (3.25" cutting edge) recently and wanted to see how it looks/feels in the hand. Had some sweet Masur Birch to play with and carbon fiber and some guys recommended a hand rub finish for nicer stabilized burls, so I gave it a try!

Off the 600 grit felt backed finishing belt and then cork belt with black magic buffing compound in/on it. Not a bad start for hand sanding!
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2 days later:
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Took a while and using EDM stones (C Bright Orange and Green, Falcon N and GessWein White Oil Treated) to see how they worked on the steel and lots of SIC paper with Micarta backer and leather pad on Micarta backer to get to 1000. Started prepping the handle scales (carbon fiber bolster, white G10 spacer and liner and Masur Birch handles)

Handle prepped for epoxying, and I saw some scratches I missed, so back to the hand sanding again!!

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Clampy Clampy time!! I spent some time cleaning up the blade to 1000 both sides again, and then did some 1500 grit passes to clean it up a bit more before epoxying. Super careful during the glue up not to get any grit anywhere to scratch the blade!!
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Shaped out the handles and got it polished to 1000 and then Tung Oiled. Next is letting the Tung Oil dry, checking and re polishing the handle, removing any scratches I can see now. I find a coat of Tung Oil makes left over scratches on the handle stand out, so I can see where it needs more attention. I did buff the handle with white rouge as well for the same reason; helps make the scratches stand out!
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Kinda cool to see the leathers reflection in the blade:

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And of course, when I ask others, I found many go to 320-400 and then 600 grit pulls for a hand rub on the more highly alloyed stuff! LOL, could have saved HOURS of time, but I really like the way this one came out!

Some of what I learned about the EDM stones I have:
C Bright Orange stones: Work well, quickly, but scratchy on steels. Cuts 64 HRC Magnacut pretty readily. Need to play with prepping the stones more; ie sanding to an edge and rounding the corners to hopefully avoid errant scratches that are a PITA to get out!

C Bright Green SIC (soft): Very soft, barely does anything to Magnacut, super slow to see results. May work better on other steels? But not as scratchy and leaves a smoother finish, but SLOOOOW. I used these on some Damascus blades and they seem to work well for those!

GessWein Oil Treated white stones: Very thin, snaps easily. I used the 1200 to clean up some of the C bright Orange scratches, works OK, but slow. I only tried it at the higher levels this time.

Falcon N stones: I used mainly the 800 and 1200 to clean up the C bright scratches and leave a smoother finish before going to sand paper pulls. 800 and 1200 are nice and smooth. I have used the 220 and 400 before, and they were slower than the C Bright, but less scratchy.

This one is getting leather, maybe water buffalo? Too nice for kydex!
 
I picked up something to use to try to make the EDM stone use easier, but haven't tried it yet. I was getting nice finishes at lower grits, but I was hand sanding like I do for a damascus etch...1000-1500 grit finish, clean, no errant scratches, etc. Going to 400 and then the 600 pulls wouldn't have been bad at all, it was trying the various EDM stones and getting those deeper stone scratches out that took forever! I do get a nice belt satin finish, but the hand rub makes the knife look much better and should increase the sale price a good bit...hopefully!
 
First batch of knives on my new OBM 2x72. I love this thing. Upgrade for Father's day this year from my 1x30. Like going from a go-kart to a race car.

I have the four D2 blades completed, now working on sheaths. The four 154cm blades will be steak knives, but my wife wants 8 of them, so I'm waiting to make another order of steel and do them all together. Saves on heat treat costs too.

I had BOS to the heat treat this time and first outing with the larger blade has me very pleased with the heat treat. More photos to come.



 
I didn’t, I just used fresh drill and went with slow downward pressure at the end of the cut. And these handles got grooves dremeled into them from tube to tube anyway so I knew I had margin for error.

Yes. Black palm is beautiful.
 
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