Bevel Grinding Question

L

Lee B

Well-Known Member
I was hollow grinding the companion knife, a semi skinner, to the Loveless style drop point hunter I posted on the forum a couple of days ago and started to get "hot spots" on the blade. In the end I scraped it.

Because I usually spend too much time honing a blade to sharpen it, the blacksmith that heat treats for me said I was leaving them too thick and needed to stop grinding just short of the blade being "sharpened". Also, it is my impression that Loveless ground his blades very thin.

As the blade gets thinner, I try to make quicker passes and dunk it in water after every pass, but that didn't seem to work. So, my question is how do I do this without getting hot spots and ruining the blade ?

Thanks in advance,

Lee
 
I think I have answered my own question after putting the blade in a vise and breaking it. In cross section, the blade was swamped. The spine was still thick, the middle portion was way too thin, and the edge was slightly thicker than the middle. :(

Lee
 
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After.

I got carried away hollow grinding this blade and was getting discoloration because I had ground the middle portion way too thin. Maybe I was a little slow today because I didn't figure out what was going on until I looked at a cross section.

Lee
 
Slow it down, ease up on the pressure, and make sure that you are using fresh belts. If you think that your belts are starting to get a little dull, they're dull.

Doug
 
actually new Sharp Ceramic belts and higher speed will cut cooler if you run ceramics ( need over 5000ft/min to bne in their optimum speed) slow they will just blunt quick and rub so heat more
 
Lee B said:
I think I have answered my own question after putting the blade in a vise and breaking it. In cross section, the blade was swamped. The spine was still thick, the middle portion was way too thin, and the edge was slightly thicker than the middle. :(

Lee
Click to expand...

A larger diameter wheel will help with this. If you are using an 8", a 10" will be better and of course, larger even better.

Robert
 
Thanks for all the advice.

Obviously when I ground the blade, I ground it incorrectly. I was watching the edge which still had some thickness and trying to get the up-swept semi-skinner tip tapered (which doesn't seem to be easy to do) while I was unknowingly hogging out the middle out of the blade. There are times that I won't do blade work, like when I am tired or distracted. This was one of those times and I didn't recognize it before I turned the machine on.

I haven't lost a blade in quite some time, so it was a little frustrating, but that is why I am still using O1 steel. My thought from the very beginning has been to learn using O1 and move to something like CPM154 once I became consistent. I would rather toss a $5.00 piece of steel in scrap bin than a $20+ piece of steel.

Lee
 
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