WIPs: Kitchen Knives Galore

[Don Nguyen]

Larger knives profiled out and ready to heat treat.

Cleaning up the plunge area of the paring knives. I'm still not very good at plunges so you're looking at the early stages of imminent improvement

Large knives heat treated, ready to rough grind at Travis Wuertz's shop! Normally these would be just ground normally and would take a while, but with the TW-90 and its surface grinder, a really good starting point for the grind is done in no time.

Depending on what angles the knives are ground at, shims are made precisely to get the correct angle.

The overall setup.

30 seconds later.

Takes a few minutes for each blade. All I do after this is thin out the geometry more to whatever I prefer. Starting with this basic grind first allows me to quickly remove material and have a centered edge right from the beginning.

Since I don't have my own small wheel attachment, I relieve the choils earlier than most other people would.

 

[Kohai999]

I want one of the paring knives!!!!!

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson

 

[stezann]

Very good!! i like very much your approach and design Thank you for sharing

 

[tim37a]

I don't know if you have tried them but I have had good luck with the Harbor Freight step drills to drill the tang.
Tim

 

[Shawn Hatcher]

Fantastic WIP, Don. Amazing how versatile Travis' surface grinding attachment is.:thumbup:

 

[Don Nguyen]

Thanks guys! Tim thanks for the recommendation. I'm planning on waterjetting my blades soon so that I won't have to deal with the drilling and profiling

Kind of hard to see here, but it was kind of neat to see all the steel dust follow the magnetic field of my knives (from the surface grinder).

All of my knives are now at 80 grit. It took less time than I thought. You can see again where the edge thickness is before I climb up the grits.

The grind lines aren't perfect, but I'm not aiming to have them super crisp and dead straight. When the knives are done I want the blade faces to have a relatively smooth gradient from spine to edge; plus I'm not that good at grinding yet

One of the most important features I want in these knives is a huge distal taper. On the left is the original 0.180" thickness and on the right is where I want a thin sujihiki.

Now I have to get all the knives to a clean finish 2 more weeks to finish them all.

 

[Don Nguyen]

Getting two W2 blades ready for hardening. These will have a thin clay coating first, and then a thicker application towards the spine.

Everything else!

 

[PEU]

Don, I hardened many W1 blades in the last months, I used 780C (1436F) into 85C (185F) water and the edge thickness was around 2mm (0.08") Your style of breakage says you are slighlty above the required temp, otherwise with higher temps the cracks would be perpendicular to the edge.
Did all the hardening in water, but after a few seconds its irrelevant, W1/W2 will not harden anymore so you can put the blade between aluminum weights, no need for forced air.


Pablo

 

[Don Nguyen]

Thanks Pablo for the tips! I actually just quenched them right before you commented I'll keep your advice in check next time I do W2 though!

I think I was a little crazy with these ones. I had the edge at around 0.040"-0.050" and dunked them straight into room temp brine from 1450° F. They were warm but touchable after 5 seconds; not even sure if I got a hamon because the clay was blasted straight off. They came out straight and no cracks though, so for now that puts my life at ease!

 

[Techtical]

Great now I dont know what I want more one of your knives or a TW-90.

 

[Don Nguyen]

Great now I dont know what I want more one of your knives or a TW-90.

The TW 90 grinders are great. They're more than other grinders but you get what you pay for. For batches with similar grinds/tapers, it's nuts how efficient it is.

Got some handle stuff prepped out. There's still more, but I haven't decided on a lot of the parer handles yet.

After I do the grind at 80 grit, I do an actual sharpening at a really acute angle. The rough edge I put on there seemed pretty thin, but this is when it starts to get thin. This lets me get exactly where I want with an even geometry towards the edge.

On the parers I jump straight from 80 grit to 500 grit. The larger knives I'll do 80 to 220 to 500. Seems like big jumps but the rhynowet on the disk cuts so fast it's worth it to me.

Paring knives thinned out and at a dirty 500 grit finish.

I cleaned and shined up the choils. All that's left on the paring blades is to get them to a clean finish and etch my signature.

 

[PEU]

I would love to see that magnetic jig in action, the one I saw time ago on youtube of the TW the movement was up and down not to the sides.


Pablo

 

[Don Nguyen]

I would love to see that magnetic jig in action, the one I saw time ago on youtube of the TW the movement was up and down not to the sides.


Pablo

That would be the one for KMG's and similar grinders. I'm not sure if that's something Travis is still doing, but I could ask him about it. The side-to-side action for a horizontal grinder really makes more sense.

I might have a quick video showing it off some time

In regards to all those knives I'm working on, most of them are ready to start getting pretty. I started a few tonight; it'll probably take all the way until the end of this week to finish that.

 

[Don Nguyen]

I've been doing a bunch of things all over the place, but I finally have all the paring knife blades done. Lots of sanding! They are ready for the handles.

Next I'll finish out the larger knives and do all the handles at once.

 

[Don Nguyen]

I have 2.5 days left to finish these 15.

Here are the paring knife handles laid out.

Fronts shaped.

This one I wasn't a fan of at first, but shaping and finishing it a little quickly changed my mind

Glued up,

I decided to finish the cracked one and keep it for myself. The crack is away from the edge so for me that's alright. I don't have a decent knife of my own so it was an ok excuse not to destroy it

The larger blades are ready for etching and finishing.

I went through a lot of paper just for those to get them to a dirty 500 grit finish; doesn't show the rest of the sheets for hand sanding.

Their handles:

IMMEDIATELY after I finished all the fronts of these handles, I dropped one right on the tip. Until they go on the knife, they're pretty fragile. Anyways, about 15 minutes fixed that.

 

[Don Nguyen]

It's been a long few days, but I just finished these approaching 2am on the day that school starts! Couldn't finish the saya in time, but I'll get to them later this week.

More pictures and details to come later. Thanks for looking through my WIP!

 

[Will Morrison]

love your work, Don. Thanks for showing us your process!

This looks familiar: