Frank Hunter
Well-Known Member
I'm putting this out there because I really don't want newer makers to be intimidated by the ultimate costs of making knives. Yeah, it's an investment but I can dare say it's profitable if you put the time into learning it. This is long, follow if you want to - I've got per-task breakdowns estimated throughout. I hope someone feels relieved at my numbers.
I've been following a few threads lately and I think I'll chime in with some to-the-penny pricing on what it takes me to finish out a knife. It can be expensive, or very cost effective. I'm a 2x72" guy, my belts run from between $7.50 for the flexible regular backing Norax, to $9.00 or so for the Blaze ceramic, to $14.00 for the super-stiff Norax blue back I had custom ordered. You all know how much your machine and hours cost you - here's mine.
Right now I can get eight or nine of my 4" skinner profiled off of a slightly worn 40-60 grit Blaze. I literally just cut the bar into 9" long sections with a slight miter at the tip and remove everything outside the pattern, using a push stick and medium speed, rolling the belt off the edge of the platen to get into the inside corners. The "slightly worn" belt usually has hollow ground multiple knives at this point but we won't count that. It's about a dollar's usage of the belt plus 1/6 of a $0.15 kilowatt of electricity to profile it. The belt isn't done yet, either - I shape leather and wood and bolsters, and can get another half dozen knives if I really push it but then the time starts to add up as it cuts slower. We'll stick with a dollar a knife for now.
The platen lasts for at least a hundred knives and is $25.00 shipped...the machine itself does so much other work I'd say the wear on it is about a nickel for ten minutes of profiling. So we're at a $0.25 worth of platen, five cents in KMG wear, $0.03 in electricity and and a dollar of belt at this point to make a knife blank. This is why I advocate taking the $1200 dollar plunge to get the big 2x72" machine, it costs literally less than $1.50 in materials to profile a knife possibly worth $150 to a thousand bucks.
With a new Blaze belt roughing the hollows and flats I can again get nine larger 4" knives out of one. This is all done at the middle pulley of my 3 speed setup, if you optimize the belt speed you can do better yet. Towards the end the belt is worn but not done. I then go to one of the stiff back Norax in 100X and clean the grinds and flats up and deburr it before tool wrap and heat treatment. This takes me about 5 minutes per knife and the wear on my 100x belt is nominal. Those new Norax are very, very efficient. Figure another dollar in Blaze belt at this point, plus $0.50 or less on the Norax. We're at $3.00 worst case scenario at this point, using my machine and choice of abrasives.
After heat treatment I go over it again gently with the same 100X, then onto 45x and 15x. This is done with the same stiff Norax mentioned in those grits - I have yet to totally wear one out, although I am now on my 2nd of each grit after probably two dozen knives in varying sizes, including 6 large 8" bowies. I use the originals for cleaning up bolsters and they're still going. I then swap to the original flexible 5x, chasing scratches in the hollows, then a worn 5x with white compound. The flats I hand finish from 15x with 400, 600, 1200, 2000 grit paper and white/green buff cycles for a mirror finish. I use 1/6 of a sheet of $1.19 paper in those 4 grits, so figure $0.80 in sandpaper. I estimate I've used 1/25th of a $14.00 belt of the heavier Norax for about $1.50 usage of those and a good half the 5x belt for cleaning the flats for $3.50. The old Norax are awesome and necessary for finer work but they don't last as long as the new ones - two almost completely different applications for them. So now the blade is taped up and mirror polished and we've got less than $9.00 in it so far.
On the handles, they're shaped with 60 grit, the 100x stiff Norax, then I move onto the flex belts in 100x, 45x, 16x and on the bolsters a 5x. I have to chase and buff, chase and buff with the 304 stainless I use for bolsters and I'd say I finish off a 60 grit belt that was started previously doing so. It loads up with epoxy and is about shot after this - but this is after multiple hollow grind and profile jobs. It doesn't hardly touch the 100x stiff Norax, so I figure I spend about a $0.50 there again. I have done multiple batches of 5 knife handles to a mirror polish, including top and bottom bolsters and the entire exposed full tang with a set of 100x-5x belts, so the cost of $30 amounts to about $6 a knife when done that way.
The electrical costs for the rest of the finish come out to be perhaps 5 hours of active grinding time at $0.15 per kilowatt - it's less than a dollar in electricity overall per knife. Heat treatment costs are another animal. But even with the KMG running cost included I've figured it repeatedly and it comes out to be for my mirror polished 4" hunter or skinner to about $15.00 in belts/electricity added up between blade and handle. I'd say the introduction of the new stiff heavyweight Norax has cut my abrasive costs by at least half - the hardened blade steel was very tough on the original Norax and I was getting two or three finished blades per belt of each grit. Now, if I do just a 60 grit, 100x, 45x and scotchbrite belt finish, considering that my original scotchbrite belt from 2009 is still going after hundreds of blades and handles, I guess the cost is $10.00 or less per blade.
Like I said, this is meant to give kind of a cost-flow for anyone curious about the process - all of us guys have different ways of doing it and vastly different machines. I suppose the takeaway is the 2x72" grinder is much more efficient in cost of abrasives, and the new ceramic and engineered belts are definitely the way to go. Cheap belts just don't cut it IMO in the price/performance ratio. Sure, if I'm using ironwood it really loads up and wrecks a belt - so I use one that's already about shot and take it slow. The cheaper AO belts shine in this application but I don't stock them as I've got a seemingly endless supply of half-used Blaze to do the sticky stuff with.
I've been following a few threads lately and I think I'll chime in with some to-the-penny pricing on what it takes me to finish out a knife. It can be expensive, or very cost effective. I'm a 2x72" guy, my belts run from between $7.50 for the flexible regular backing Norax, to $9.00 or so for the Blaze ceramic, to $14.00 for the super-stiff Norax blue back I had custom ordered. You all know how much your machine and hours cost you - here's mine.
Right now I can get eight or nine of my 4" skinner profiled off of a slightly worn 40-60 grit Blaze. I literally just cut the bar into 9" long sections with a slight miter at the tip and remove everything outside the pattern, using a push stick and medium speed, rolling the belt off the edge of the platen to get into the inside corners. The "slightly worn" belt usually has hollow ground multiple knives at this point but we won't count that. It's about a dollar's usage of the belt plus 1/6 of a $0.15 kilowatt of electricity to profile it. The belt isn't done yet, either - I shape leather and wood and bolsters, and can get another half dozen knives if I really push it but then the time starts to add up as it cuts slower. We'll stick with a dollar a knife for now.
The platen lasts for at least a hundred knives and is $25.00 shipped...the machine itself does so much other work I'd say the wear on it is about a nickel for ten minutes of profiling. So we're at a $0.25 worth of platen, five cents in KMG wear, $0.03 in electricity and and a dollar of belt at this point to make a knife blank. This is why I advocate taking the $1200 dollar plunge to get the big 2x72" machine, it costs literally less than $1.50 in materials to profile a knife possibly worth $150 to a thousand bucks.
With a new Blaze belt roughing the hollows and flats I can again get nine larger 4" knives out of one. This is all done at the middle pulley of my 3 speed setup, if you optimize the belt speed you can do better yet. Towards the end the belt is worn but not done. I then go to one of the stiff back Norax in 100X and clean the grinds and flats up and deburr it before tool wrap and heat treatment. This takes me about 5 minutes per knife and the wear on my 100x belt is nominal. Those new Norax are very, very efficient. Figure another dollar in Blaze belt at this point, plus $0.50 or less on the Norax. We're at $3.00 worst case scenario at this point, using my machine and choice of abrasives.
After heat treatment I go over it again gently with the same 100X, then onto 45x and 15x. This is done with the same stiff Norax mentioned in those grits - I have yet to totally wear one out, although I am now on my 2nd of each grit after probably two dozen knives in varying sizes, including 6 large 8" bowies. I use the originals for cleaning up bolsters and they're still going. I then swap to the original flexible 5x, chasing scratches in the hollows, then a worn 5x with white compound. The flats I hand finish from 15x with 400, 600, 1200, 2000 grit paper and white/green buff cycles for a mirror finish. I use 1/6 of a sheet of $1.19 paper in those 4 grits, so figure $0.80 in sandpaper. I estimate I've used 1/25th of a $14.00 belt of the heavier Norax for about $1.50 usage of those and a good half the 5x belt for cleaning the flats for $3.50. The old Norax are awesome and necessary for finer work but they don't last as long as the new ones - two almost completely different applications for them. So now the blade is taped up and mirror polished and we've got less than $9.00 in it so far.
On the handles, they're shaped with 60 grit, the 100x stiff Norax, then I move onto the flex belts in 100x, 45x, 16x and on the bolsters a 5x. I have to chase and buff, chase and buff with the 304 stainless I use for bolsters and I'd say I finish off a 60 grit belt that was started previously doing so. It loads up with epoxy and is about shot after this - but this is after multiple hollow grind and profile jobs. It doesn't hardly touch the 100x stiff Norax, so I figure I spend about a $0.50 there again. I have done multiple batches of 5 knife handles to a mirror polish, including top and bottom bolsters and the entire exposed full tang with a set of 100x-5x belts, so the cost of $30 amounts to about $6 a knife when done that way.
The electrical costs for the rest of the finish come out to be perhaps 5 hours of active grinding time at $0.15 per kilowatt - it's less than a dollar in electricity overall per knife. Heat treatment costs are another animal. But even with the KMG running cost included I've figured it repeatedly and it comes out to be for my mirror polished 4" hunter or skinner to about $15.00 in belts/electricity added up between blade and handle. I'd say the introduction of the new stiff heavyweight Norax has cut my abrasive costs by at least half - the hardened blade steel was very tough on the original Norax and I was getting two or three finished blades per belt of each grit. Now, if I do just a 60 grit, 100x, 45x and scotchbrite belt finish, considering that my original scotchbrite belt from 2009 is still going after hundreds of blades and handles, I guess the cost is $10.00 or less per blade.
Like I said, this is meant to give kind of a cost-flow for anyone curious about the process - all of us guys have different ways of doing it and vastly different machines. I suppose the takeaway is the 2x72" grinder is much more efficient in cost of abrasives, and the new ceramic and engineered belts are definitely the way to go. Cheap belts just don't cut it IMO in the price/performance ratio. Sure, if I'm using ironwood it really loads up and wrecks a belt - so I use one that's already about shot and take it slow. The cheaper AO belts shine in this application but I don't stock them as I've got a seemingly endless supply of half-used Blaze to do the sticky stuff with.
" a prison shiv "
