A knife for Mark by Markman

[Burl Source]

These are some photos of a knife being made for me by Erik Markman.
Some of the things I really like in a knife are:
Integral Bolsters
Interesting Patterns in the steel
Sculpted Handles
Ultra Clean overall
From what I have seen in Erik's knives, these are normal features.

Here is what Erik has sent so far;

First pic is welded, forged and profile ground.

On the second pic I have ground the bevels and the transition to the bolster.

A little more grinding and it is ready for heat treat.

 

[eastvillageknives]

Cool, I've seen the welded blank when I was visiting him (picking up my knife, see other thread). This one will be great Mark!

 

[Wicked-Fish]

looking great
can't go wrong with a knife from Erik

 

[Erik Markman]

Thanks for the introduction Mark!

Here is the progress of yesterdayevening.

After rounding the bolster to its final shape i placed the blade in my newly made clamp for grinding and filing the back of the bolster square and flat.
It has a slot on the front so I can see if the blade is in the right position and has 2 leathercoverd steel plates inside it that are pushed together by the bolts sticking through the sides. It also has a piece of allthread running through the bottom of the square tube and the plates so the don't drop out. There is a hardened steel plate on top so the file doesn't chew up the surface. It works much nicer than my old clamp wich I will show later.

Here you can see the plates clamping the blade.

After grinding away the bulk of the unneeded steel.

After filing the back of the bolster.

Here it is out of the jig, the tang is still almost half an inch thick by a little over 3/4 high, that doesn't come off easily..

Erik

 

[liontribe]

most impressive. great work.

liontribe

 

[Erik Markman]

I ground and filed the false edge and tomorrow evening it's time to clean up the tang and grind the blade to 400 before heattreat.

 

[sfbreed]

Great step by step progression. its like being there while your knife is being made.

 

[Erik Markman]

Ground to 400 and a quick etch to see where we are going.

 

[Erik Markman]

The blade with the beautiful stabilised Redwood burl block provided by Mark.

Drilling the pilothole.

Getting there...

Sawed off the angle for the bolster with not much fitting left to do.

 

[Lagrange]

Very interesting. Great progress report. This ought to be nice.

 

[ArtinNC]

Like the design, like the blade , like the vice, Guess I like it all.

 

[Stew]

That's an exciting knife!

 

[Erik Markman]

The block fitted against the bolster, the contour of the handle scribed and ready to drill the pinhole.

The blades painted in antiscale compound and my HT oven heating up.

Quenchoil heating up. This is Durixol 25W wich is a professional HT oil, I have been using it for almost a year now and it is a great improvement over peanutoil in hardness and keeping things straight.

The blades as-quenched, nice and straight and free of scale. Lucky me......

 

[eastvillageknives]

Great work Erik!

 

[Lagrange]

I'm diggin on them yellow shoes!

 

[Erik Markman]

Here is the block ground to profile and the lines for the contour scribed.

Roughly ground to shape.

With the template I use for these knives.

The corners knocked off and roughly shaped.

I make sure i keep the centerlines on top and bottom so it is easier to keep things symetrical.

Now it is time to finish the blade. I like a flatground blade so I use a DMT diamondplate to take out scratches and high spots to get things really FLAT.
This is after a few wipes and it was almost flat already.

 

[Allen Newberry]

Nice I am betting this is going to be one sweet knife!

 

[Stew]

Wow, love the idea of the DMT plate!

How long does it last? How much work do you do with it?

 

[Erik Markman]

This one is 600 and 900 grit. I use the 600 for flattening but it needs to be fairley flat to start with or I will use a coarser one.

 

[Lagrange]

Sweet idea. I might have to try that.