Which new piece of shop equiptment helped you to improve your knives the most?

LARRYZ10

LARRYZ10

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Feb 6, 2010
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I bought a rotary platen about five months ago and it has simplified and improved the way I make knives. I did not know what a useful tool the rotary platen was and even thought the thing was a ridiculous device of dubious usefulness. What changed my mind was a portion of a video by Nick Wheeler in which he uses the rotary platen to finish the area at the of the guard and the handle on a knife too long to use his 9 inch disc on and where a slight curvature was desired. The problem of the softer wood dishing slightly when grinding the steel guard and the wood at the same time was solved. In other operations where a knife maker might use the area of a belt next to the idler wheel to get more tension against the blade the rotary platen has wheels spacing and adjustments by use of an Allen wrench to get just the right amount of tension. This can be used to sharpen the edge on a new blade at just the right amount pressure to get a nice edge. I have moved my slack belt attachment into a storage cabinet because this tool is so versatile. Here is the only photo of the rotary platen that I could find which I took to show someone the tool arm I made.

I am curious what you other guys have acquired that really helped you make better knives. Larry


RMUabmNl.jpg
 
A bubble jig
And using plexiglass templates to get guards etc symetrical
(template = half the form and gets flipped over)
 
I think once you get to where you can make a decent knife, new equipment is about making things easier, more efficient or safer. I am, without a doubt, a tool hound. I love tools and somewhere down deep in my soul there is a unshakable belief that he who has the most tools wins. Ridiculous of course; a great knife can be made with simple hand tools and patience. If I were forced to choose one piece of equipment to answer your question, I would choose my HT oven. It allows me to make a knife from beginning to end with no interruption or waiting which, I feel keeps the artistic moment alive.

Bob
 
If I had to choose only one it would be a carbide faced file guide. Close second and third are the TW-90 and HT oven. If I had a mill, that might be my top choice.
 
I'd have to say a parallelogram hanging from my ceiling and a wet grinding setup. Simple as hell and it makes doing a good job sharpening heat sensitive alloys like Elmax a breeze.
 
I would have to say a granite plate and height gauge. you get the exact center of anything you put on it. The straightness of my knives has improved a great deal. It doesn't matter how pretty your knife is if it is shaped like a banana...
 
Unquestionably it was the upgrade to a variable speed motor that gave me better control over my grinder. Slower speeds allowed me to use the small wheel attachments without the concern of over speed heating of the small wheel bearings and my work.
 
Variable speed KMG. Almost all of the improvements I have seen that I can attribute to a piece of machinery have been things that originally came with or or were later bought for the KMG. The rotary platen is a big one. Yes, the carbide files guide are great, but they did not necessarily bring improvement over the old O1 or A2 ones. They just last forever. ;)
 
Good light, magnifying glasses and good belts.
 
Bufford said:
Unquestionably it was the upgrade to a variable speed motor that gave me better control over my grinder. Slower speeds allowed me to use the small wheel attachments without the concern of over speed heating of the small wheel bearings and my work.
Click to expand...

Same thing for me. VS was a major upgrade, and you have to have VS to do small wheel.
 
I think the answer to this question is going to depend on where each maker is in the ark of learning the craft, what they started out with and now take for granted. For instance, I find my Vernier callipers very useful, and my micrometer gets used on folder jobs, but I would have those tools even if I wasn't making knives, and I kinda take them for granted.

My drill press made a big difference. I got one very early on, then a bigger one much later. The small one I started with made knife making to a finer finish possible. Without it getting pins and bolts through full tangs would have been very difficult, and even attempting clean finish of guards would have been a challenge.

After the drill press, the grinder made the biggest difference. Its just a 10" Coote, so isn't used for handle work, just blade grinding. When I got it, I had been filing all my blades, and I had decided that filing was just drudgery, that if I was going to improve my heat treating (gas forge) I was going to need to increase my through-put of blades, and I couldn't do it using files. Not when sharpening a heat treated blade took five hours on a water stone before I could test the edge! Being able to grind blades faster, and grind hard steel, allowed me to improve heat treatment, guard fitting, handle shaping and ultimately my knife design by allowing me to make more knives more quickly and get more practice. You could take my grinder away now, and I would still be benefitting from having had it.

The carbide faced filing guide I made was a big help in evening up my plunge, and the home made handle broaches have offered a step change improvement in how fast and accurately I can fit hidden tangs, but these haven't had the lasting impact that the grinder has done.
 
I do a lot of hand finishing on my knives, so learning the basics of hand sanding has vastly improved my knives. So I guess my answer is sand paper. I can't wait to get my hands on a.variable speed grinder though.
 
Karl B. Andersen said:
Shop apron. ;)
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What I meant by that was "time spent in the shop".
All the gadgets in the world won't help you without the experience in knowing how to use it.

All that said, the biggest leap forward was getting my first bench top mill.
The ability to mill opposite sides parallel, mill a guard slot to the exact dimension needed, drill and ream holes straight and true, etc. made everything else go together correctly.
After this time, it has cost me less than a dollar a week to own it.
A cup of coffee a week to make huge steps in knife making is a good trade-off.
 
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