WIPs: Kitchen Knives Galore

[Don Nguyen]

Hey everyone. I have about 5 weeks before school starts again and I am cramming as many knife related activities as I can. I've never done this many knives before so it'll be a learning lesson.

First up, I have to show off again the kiln I just finished! It was a first of many things for me and it's working great so far.

Moving on, most of the knives you see are based somewhat off my designs in SolidWorks. They are still slightly custom though so the templates only act as starting points. The designs have been touched up slightly from these but you get the idea:

 

[Don Nguyen]

Here are a bunch of the paring knives I have laid out. There are a couple of stubby ones, we'll see how they turn out...

Here are materials for the gyuto and the templates on them. Makes it easier to drill out the tangs. In the future I will get them waterjet but for now this will work.

 

[Salem Straub]

Oh man, drilling all those holes looks mind numbing! I suck at working in batches. Props to you for taking so much on, and for the nice job on your kiln, too.

 

[Don Nguyen]

A couple shots of the drilling and cutting area.

On the 52100 blades I quench them full thickness, but these few W2 are ground before HT.

Normalize from 1600° F down to 1400°F , then quench at 1450° F.

The idea is to do an interrupted quench: 2 seconds in the water and quickly to the aluminum plates and compressed air (apparently this may be a terrible idea as I am talking to some people about it).

Sori

Apparently the interrupted quench didn't help me out all that much, because there is this strange crack looking thing. It follows an actual oval shape right in the middle of the blade. I guess that's what I get for doing that weird water thing.

 

[carbonsteel928]

Oh man, drilling all those holes looks mind numbing! I suck at working in batches. Props to you for taking so much on, and for the nice job on your kiln, too.

I feel your pain Salem, anything more than 5 at any given time and my shop looks like a freaking tornado hit it and nothing gets done.

Dan, I've enjoyed watching your work over the past few years from the first time I saw your creations over at KKF.

 

[coldsteelburns]

Maan, I have a hell of a time 'skeletonizing' one blade at a time lol.. Maybe it cause I use the el cheapo HF drillpress, but their step bits have helped me out quite a bit. Anyway I hope you post plenty of pics here Don, I'm interested in what you normally use to quench your W2 and 52100 blades in.

I have Parks 50 so that's what I use for all the shallow hardneding /low allow steels, but I recently started a thread asking whether or not it would be alright to quench my 52100 blades, (@ .110" thick and left nearly full thickness, but with only a 45* bevel to the edge that I left at .040") in my P50. I just ended up getting a bunch of canola oil and a ~3 gallon metal bucket from Lowes.

But yea, anyway do you have 2 commercial oils, like a slower oil for ur 52100 and something like P50 for your shallow hardening steels, or do ya have a commercial oil for deeper hardening steel and just now trying to find something else to use for your shallow hardening steel. I'm only asking it that way due to the somewhat odd water/plate/air quench ya didd with that W2 blade Sorry that didn't work out for ya btw, that sucks..

Can't wait ta see how these turn out, and I hope you're able to finish them before ya get back ta school! Take care bro

-Paul
www.youtube.com/Lsubslimed

 

[Don Nguyen]

Oh man, drilling all those holes looks mind numbing! I suck at working in batches. Props to you for taking so much on, and for the nice job on your kiln, too.

Thanks Salem! Drilling does take a while. I'm averaging about 25 minutes per knife, yeugh... It's totally worth it for me though until I actually do water jet cutting. I want the balance of these knives to behave like wa handles, and that's difficult to do with a full tang.

I feel your pain Salem, anything more than 5 at any given time and my shop looks like a freaking tornado hit it and nothing gets done.

Dan, I've enjoyed watching your work over the past few years from the first time I saw your creations over at KKF.

Thanks Mike!

maan, I have hell of a time 'skeletonizing' one blade at a time.. Maybe it cause I use the cheapo HF drillpress, but their step bits have helped me quite a bit. Anyway I hope you post plenty of pics here Don, I'm interested in what you normally use to quench your W2 and 52100 blades in.

I have Parks 50 so that's what I use for all the shallow hardneding /low allow steel, but I recently started a thread asking wheather it would be alright to quench my 52100 blades, @ .110" thick and nearly full thickness, basically just did a 45* bevel to the edge and left it .040" thick on the actual edge. I just ended up getting a bunch of canola oil and a 3 gallon? bucket from Lowes.

But yea, anyway do you have 2 commercial oils, like a slower oil for ur 52100 and something like P50 for your shallow hardening steels, or are you trying to figure out what to use right now for your fast quench? Only asl cause the qweird water / plate / air quench ya did with that W2

Can't wait ta see how these turn out, and I hope you are able to finish them before ya get back ta school! Take care bro

-Paul
www.youtube.com/Lsubslimed

Drilling them gets tricky with the bigger holes. On these I drilled pilot holes on all them of first, then the pin holes, and eventually built up the other holes up to size. I use a speed chart and get as close as I can, otherwise it can get frustrating really easily.

All I have for quenches is water and the McMaster 11 second oil. I use the 11-sec for 52100 and water for W2. If I could I'd have a tank for P50 but I don't right now, so I just chant and pray before every W2 quench

I'm still figuring out the liquid-->plate quench. It seemed like a good idea in my head but there are many variables that are unknown to me and I'm only going off assumptions. At this point in time it's just an idea I'm toying with.

 

[Don Nguyen]

Bandsaw blade broke today and I have no replacements until tomorrow. Had to make a couple of modifications to the kiln and a few other shop things, but today was spent mostly working on a personal edc knife. It's a little embarrassing to make knives and not even have one to carry...

I seem to have the grind down fairly crisp and even, but I need to work on keeping the sharp lines when hand sanding; it's taped up now but the lines got blurred up. I haven't had too much practice with these types of knives yet.

 

[Matthew Gregory]

Don, skip the liquid-to-plate quench stuff. It will never bring you joy.

That's an OBSCENE amount of drilling and profiling. Yeeks!!!

All of them look like excellent designs, though. Your sense of design is fantastic.

 

[Don Nguyen]

Don, skip the liquid-to-plate quench stuff. It will never bring you joy.

That's an OBSCENE amount of drilling and profiling. Yeeks!!!

All of them look like excellent designs, though. Your sense of design is fantastic.

Thanks Matthew!

Why do you say that about the liquid-to-plate? Not prodding or anything, I'm trying to learn what happens metallurgically when I do that. It's very likely it's a terrible idea but I like to know why

 

[Matthew Gregory]

There's a crazy amount of stress that occurs in the quench - more so with brine or water, and immediately following that is when a quenchant can assist in reducing that stress. Modern industrial quenchants such as the oft-discussed Park's #50 do more than allow steels like W2 to "beat the nose" - they've also been engineered to slow the rate of cooling after 1000 degrees to reduce the chances of quench cracking. At the end of the day, it comes down to repeatable results with fewer (if any) failures.

 

[Don Nguyen]

Thanks for the explanation Matthew. Makes perfect sense. I don't do much W2 so I'm not sure if I'll be getting P50 soon; for now I may just have to suck it up with water and take all the proper precautions.

An update on the little edc - the handles are drilled and fronts shaped+cleaned. It's getting glued right now. You can see the glue but I'm about to wipe that again in 10 minutes.

Also, like my other knives, only one pin is visible. The other is hidden.

 

[Shaw Blades]

Cool. I'm stoked to see your EDC finished.

 

[Don Nguyen]

Since my only bandsaw blade broke, and I embarrassingly measured my blade size incorrectly (those who are friends with me on Facebook may know the story ), I worked on my paring knives instead of profiling and heat treating the gyutos.

I'm about to get working on the edc tonight, but here is where it's at.

Today, from the gracious offer of a good friend of mine whom many of you know, I got most of the blade work done on the parers. At home these would have taken me a long time, but thanks to the sophisticated equipment, I can cut down the time immensely on batches. The result is the same knife, just faster I like fast.

This one is a little experiment on a 4 minute total grind. The whole blade is ground to a bevel, tang included. Makes a really light knife in no time at all. It's not something I see myself doing, but it's pretty awesome.

1" platen with carbide surfaces, for grinding bevels with plunges.

The plunges come out consistent, but not at an angle I like looking at. Quick touchups by hand change that easily.

Tapered tangs. I like this process a lot. I might just get spoiled

 

[Don Nguyen]

EHHHHhhhh? I'm not entirely sure I like the handle geometry all that much. I didn't really plan it out, so that was my fault; this is what I get for winging it. It's not terrible, but it's not something I'd put up for sale.

Not sure why my buffing belt started to make the handle red either, but it kind of works. I've been using this belt for a while and it hasn't done that ever since I put a lot of compound on it. Either way, I hate working with micarta. I like the look but I hate, hate, hate shaping and finishing it :grumpy:

Who knows, maybe this handle will grow on it. After all, it's my personal prototype Better photos to come.

 

[samuraistuart]

Don, thanks for the WIP. I think we all really love watching really well done WIPs, and you have certainly done a great job with both the knives you make, and the time to show us!

 

[Don Nguyen]

One not-so-terrible photo.

 

[Don Nguyen]

After getting the parers mostly ground, I thinned the blades next. The method seen above provides a thin geometry with a straight edge, but leaves the tip thicker and I didn't go to a complete zero edge. Here I basically do a really quick, dirty edge on all the knives. What I'm looking for is to kick up a burr without changing any of the profiles. After I get that edge, I thin everything until the edge bevels are just a faint line - that's the geometry I want. After hand sanding, these should be able to be sharpened up really easily.

In the picture you can see a really faint line along the edges, which shows how thin I'm going. For all my kitchen knives I want them this thin.

 

[Matthew Gregory]

Good stuff, Don!

 

[FosterJ]

Neat process. Thanks for sharing.