Knife Show Batch WIP

J

jkf96a

Well-Known Member
One of the things I figured out early on is that it takes just about the same amount of electricity (or charcoal) to heat treat one blade as it does to heat treat half a dozen. Ever since then, I've always built in batches of the same kind of steel. I've got a show coming up and am working on a batch of blades. Here are the blades I'll document for the WIP, plus a few completed knives that will go to the show as well.
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There they are all profiled. The row on the right is CM154 and the row on the left is D2. The finished blades are all 1084. I want to point out several things. One, all of these are simliar, but slightly different. Although these are mostly my standard patterns, every one is done by eye. Two, notice the sharpie. I lay out the design, bolsters, etc. with a sharpie before I start grinding. It's all by eye after that. Three, even though I said "batches of the same kind of steel" I am doing D2 and CM154. I'll run the D2 blades at 1850 then bump the oven up to 1950 for the CM154.

My oven is a dental burnout oven, 220 volt. It takes forever to get to temp and the readout is in Celsius. You'll see my F/C chart on the wall behind. The good parts, it will hold a 13" blade and is programmable for hold times, intermediate holds, etc. The bad parts, it's slow.

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Here they are all beveled and ready for heat treat. The D2 blades are in the oven. I grind them all to 160 grit prior to heat treat. You'll notice some standard knifemaking stuff here: the tapered tangs all have holes drilled. I didn't take pictures of the drilling, but all those 1/4" holes were done with an old bit. Key was slow speed and high feed rate. Another standard knifemaker trick: don't forget to drill all your holes before heat treat. I drilled exactly 100 holes in this batch of 13 blades. As I got further along, I realized that one of the blades had the bolster holes drilled wrong. I had to change the design slightly and drill a couple more holes. Catching that saved me a scrap blade.

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It's pretty darn hard to take pictures of the heat treating process that show anything, especially when you're home by yourself. Even so, I snapped a couple.
First, the hot oven. Temp sitting at 1950 degrees after a 25 minute soak. I did the D2 blades earlier today. These are the CM154 blades.
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Second, my "quench plates." You'll see all over the place people talking about 12x6x1 pieces of aluminum. That would work great, but that's not what I have. I've got a piece of angle and a tool arm for a multi platen I never built. I have to cool them down every two blades or so.
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I've got them in dry ice now, probably won't temper till late this evening.
 
This is the best trick ever! Invariably when heat treating, you'll end up with some warped blades. These were plate quenched, so there's no logical reason for them to be warped, and yet four of the 13 are crooked. They were all straight going into the dry ice. Use a piece of 3/16 bar stock, angle iron, or a big file. Doesn't matter what it is, just needs to be stiff. Shim the blade so that you can clamp it and bend the warp a little past straight. You want to over-compensate just a little. Pennies make good shims. I always do any jig clamping in between the first and second temper cycles. After you have it clamped, run it through your second cycle. It comes out straight more often than not. You can temper as many cycles as you need to get it straight without any harm to the steel if you use the same temperature. The most I've ever had to do was four tempers, but that one came out straight eventually. I have not re-heat treated a warped blade in three years thanks to this trick! It's not mine, but I don't remember where I got it.

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It's not much good taking too many pictures of hand sanding, as there are several excellent WIP and/or youtubes out there with better technique than I have. Instead I'll pass along a couple of tips rather than a bunch of pictures.
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Everybody who has ever looked through Nick Wheeler's "Stuck in the Metal" WIP is jealous of his sanding jig. I am too. Even so, I've hand sanded my blades this way for four years. I use a piece of 1x2 clamped in my vise, and use vise grip pliers to lock it down. Doesn't work so well for 12" bowies, but is quick and easy for regular sized knives.

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Notice the red sandpaper. It's "Rhynowet" from Supergrit.com and it beats the pants off of any other sandpaper I've used so far. There is absolutley no use in the world for Harbor Freight sandpaper. The 400 and 600 from Home Depot aren't bad, but the Rhynowet cuts better. People say "Use sandpaper like it's free." Once it stops cutting well, toss it, period. Notice also the high tech polishing fluid: WD 40. I use it on every grit, every pass, until the very last passes where I'm setting my final scratch pattern. I use a fresh piece of dry paper on a clean blade for the final finishing passes.

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Here are the two main sanding blocks I use. A piece of wood, and a piece of mild steel. Yep, that simple.
 
Thanks, Faron. If I can get to a band saw I'll put some of that wood on some of these. Turned out real nice!
 
Here's a sequence of shots showing my high tech tube-flaring fixture.
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Several things to point out here. One, countersink your handle material before you put the tubing in. Two, grind your tubing down to about 1/16 or 3/32 proud of your handle material. Three, use the high tech tools. The flaring "dies" are simply two screw heads epoxied to two pieces of hardwood.
Put them in the vise, make sure everything's aligned, and clamp it down good.
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Viola!
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Grind, shape, finish the handle from this point on.
 
It's high speed techniques like this that got us to the moon. Thanks Jason, I think I will give this a shot!
 
Now I'll show how I do fiber liners and how I drill scales for a tapered tang. I attach my liners to my scales with superglue. Notice that the scales have been roughed up with 60 grit sandpaper before gluing. This is vulcanized fiber liner material. I use some G10 liner also, but have never had any problems with the fiber. It was good enough for Bob Loveless.
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This next picture is only for one thing. If your scales are flat, you can clamp them together to keep the liners flat to the scales. Here's the tip: If you are going to superglue your liners on, put a layer of tape in between your two liners in the stack. That way if (when) the glue leaks all over the place, your scales can be separated down the tape line.
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Now that the liners are attached to the scales, it's time to drill the holes. The knife in this case is a 3/16 thick hunter with the tang tapered down to 1/16. Do the math real quick... I took 1/16 off of each side of the tang, leaving the 1/16 in the middle. That means that for the center line of the knife to be straight for drilling, I need to prop up the butt end of the knife 1/16 of an inch. I happen to have some 1/16 G10 that works nicely. Here are a close-up and further back picture of the knife and scales clamped and ready for drilling.
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This next one seems simple, but might be new for some new folks. After you've drilled the first hole, put a pin in it. This will keep your hole spacing correct. Keep the butt propped up and clamp your knife down for the second hole. Put a pin in the second hole, then drill the thong hole.
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That's all for tonight. I have the scales glued up and dry, but I don't know if I will make a micarta-dust mess tonight or not.
 
Alright, folks. Fished a little yesterday, but spent this afternoon working on knives. Today's project was bolsters. I did a set of stainless dovetailed bolsters and fitted the handle, and also glued up a set of mesquite bolsters. Now for the pics :)

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Here are the bolsters with the holes drilled. The side of the bolster that will contact the knife has been ground flat, first on the platen, then on the disk, then on the surface plate. If the bolsters are not flat, you'll have a gap when you go to put them on the knife.

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Two tips in this picture. One, notice the pin punch I'm using to keep the bolsters aligned. It makes a nice handle. Two, notice the 36 grit belt. Fresh low grit belts equals less heat, and the tiny parts heat up fast. Keep the water bucket handy.

In my experience, with what tools I have, the disk grinder is the way to do dovetails. I suppose if you had an articulating work rest, you could use your platen. Several shots of the disk here, with some comments.

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This disk is worn out, so I replaced it before grinding. I want to say a word about the angle. Simply put, there's no need to be precise. Unless you just like saying "37.5 degree dovetails" you can set the table at any angle you want. The important thing is not to move the table in between dovetailing the bolsters and the handle material. If you don't move the table, the angles will be the same, whether 90, 45, 30, or whatever.

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Tiny bolster parts will slip in between the guide and the disk. I use a piece of bar stock spring clamped to the guide to extend it all the way to the disk, so my bolsters stay square. Speaking of square, I forgot to mention something. EVERYTHING about dovetailing bolsters indexes off of the top of the bolster where the spine of the knife is. Grind your top edge square to the axis of the spine. If you index off the square side and set your guide at true 90 degrees, your joints will be correctly perpindicular to the spine of the knife.

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Here's a shot of what grinding the dovetails looks like. Use the guide along the square side of the bolster. If you square everything up before you start doing the dovetails, you get a nice visual indicator of whether things are straight or not. That's what the next picture is all about.

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Notice in this pic that I left a little flat on the outside edge of the bolster. If you start with squared up stock and index off the square side, your dovetail should be straight as it comes up. I will grind the bolster until the dovetail comes all the way to the sharp edge, but the line along the edge like in this picture is an indicator that things are pretty close to square.
 
One of the things that separates a good knife from a great knife is attention to detail. It's the "Fit" part of "fit and finish." I'm not a precision guy like some of the machinist folks, but I do pay attention to details. Look at this picture, at the fit in the middle. This is NOT good enough. Even with square sides, etc., there's always a little bit of final fitting to make sure everything lines up.
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I try and shape the bolsters as much as I can before installation, as they get hot and heat is not your friend. I use sacrificial pins (meaning I grind them off as I shape) and do one side 95% to shape before I touch the other side. When I'm done, I want the front edges as symmetrical as I can make them. Finish up the front edge of the bolsters to final finish. In this case, I did 400 then 1000 belts then buffed for a mirror finish. The picture was shot before the buffing. Notice the tiny bevel on the front edge. No point in your bolster fronts being sharp.
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I forgot to shoot pics of the pinning process. I used 416 for the bolsters and 3/32 416 pins. If you don't want the pins to show, use a countersink by hand to just turn the edge off of the outside of the pin holes. Take the pins down to about 1/16 proud of the bolsters, then peen them down tight. I use a drop of superglue to seal up whatever tiny gap is left between the bolster and blade. If you flattened everything right, that gap is really thin.

After you've got the bolsters attached, dovetail the handle material. This knife is getting stabilized mesquite. If you grind the dovetails on the handle without moving the table, the handle will be straight with the knife and will not match right with the tapered tang. If you were to grind it on the table and clamp it to the knife, you'd have a glue gap between the handle material and the outside of the bolster. Fit and Finish! Fix it! The ticket is to use the same offset as you did when you were drilling. In this case, that 1/16 piece of G10 I used before works perfectly.
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Once the dry fit is right with no gaps, it's time to glue. Do one side first and let it dry. I use spring clamps. Make sure you push the scale up against the bolster tightly. It also helps to make sure you have the butt end clamped good, as that's the other most likely place for a glue gap to show. Once it's dry, drill through the tang holes, and don't forget to use your spacer to make them straight (my thin G10 again). Then you can put on the second side and drill back through your first scale.
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I didn't shoot any more pics of this knife. Once you've got the holes drilled, install the pins. Tap them in then add a drop of superglue on each pin to lock them in place.

I also did a set of mesquite bolsters on another knife. You do not have to shape wood bolsters as much before you glue them up. You do the dovetails the same way, then finish the front edge. Glue with epoxy and pins, same as a full tang. Make sure you clean all the epoxy off of the front of the bolster, and don't forget to clean it out of the dovetailed side as well. If you leave glue in the dovetail, the handle won't fit tight.

And finally, the best knifemaking tip in this entire thread, and the only one that may save your life. If you work on knives when your wife is out of town, get all your "knife crap" off the kitchen table before she gets home :) Don't leave it like this.
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That's all for tonight.
 
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Got seven done so far. Two of these were the micarta handled knives in this WIP. I bet I can get to fifteen or eighteen before the show :) Still have alot of leather work to do.

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