WIP - Building my First Auto

[Keith Montgomery]

Thanks for giving us a look at all the work that goes into making a knife like that.

 

[Burchtree]

Thanks all!

1. When I heat-treated the first backbar, it warped and I ended up breaking it, so I had to make a new one. Here is the piece to be cut and surface-ground:

2. Marked for the slot my leaf spring goes in.

3. Yeeehhhhh -- almost back to where I was the night before.

4. Cleaned up the backside and little timestamp --

5. Time to work on my bolsters and handle. Bolsters in a vise, and I'm just bringing the wheel down to give my bolsters a slight curve.

 

[Burchtree]

1. Looking good -- now I gotta match the handle material!

2. Using African Blackwood on this one. Got the chunks roughly cut out and am skimming them down on the surface grinder. Using pieces of metal to wedge the wood in and running the grinder slow.

3. Hit them up on the disc sander after that and they are ready for fitting.

4. I overlay the bolsters on the wood and mark where I need to grind to with an exacto knife. Sounds good in theory, but it really just takes a lot of light grinding and checking over and over.

5. One side looking good.

 

[Burchtree]

1. After both sides are fitted I mark my handle holes and drill them in the liners.

2. Then I clamp the wood up against the bolster, clamp it down and drill through it. Then I hit the wood with the clearance drill bit and tap the liners.

3. Screwed together and ready for profiling.

4. Starting to look like a handle!

 

[Burchtree]

At this point the pics started getting a little scarce -- I was on my last day of building (and it went well into the night ), so the pictures become less of a priority as the deadline approached.

1. Slack-grinding the handle

2. Filing the corner of the lockbar

3. Hitting the lockface up on the grinder to square it up

4. Putting the thumb grooves

5. Cleaning it ujp on the scotchbrite wheel -- love that thing!

 

[Burchtree]

1. Getting the spring out of the watch piece. It will be used in the rocker.

2. Adjusting the leaf spring

3. Heat-treating the rocker

4. Finish-grinding the blade

5. Time for hand-rubbing!!

 

[Burchtree]

Alright - back to it. For some reason, I wasn't able to post on this for awhile.

1. So pretty!!

2. Pivot hole and around the tang get painted with fingernail polish to use as a resist against the etchant.

3. Hole drilled out for the detent ball. Though the there isn't a need to a detent hole in the blade, I still need to put one in so the lock rides against the blade smoothly.

4. Carbidizing the lockface - this puts a layer of carbide on the lock which creates a very hard (72 rockwell I think) surface on the titanium.

 

[Burchtree]

1. Turning all the screws so they are nice and shiny.

2. The rocker with the spring. This is where I spent the most time -- adjusting this thing and the tension on this took me hours and hours.

 

[Burchtree]

And finally; the finished photos:

 

[Burchtree]

And a few more -- thanks for checking it out.

 

[SSonnentag]

Very nice indeed! I've always thought that having the process of making a custom knife documented in photos would add at least 10% to the price I'd be willing to pay for the knife. It's sort of like being present for your kid's birth.

Good job!

 

[Can-Am Joel]

Michael,

Very impressive!

Joel

 

[Lorien]

Fantastic!
There must have been a lot of head scratching moments over the past few days. You really pulled out a great result:thumbup:.

 

[Burchtree]

Thanks! This was completely a couple of weeks ago, I just wanted to make sure I didn't post it up until the voting was done since it was a competition.

There was definitely some head-scratching going on about 10 PM the last night of my build-off as I was finessing the rocker.

 

[Jon Brand]

I like it. My birthday was a few days ago so feel free to send a nice present.