When Bossdog released the Bulldog framelock kit he let some go for a cheap price. All he asked was to write up a tutorial of the build as we went. So here we go a little later than I would have liked to have been able to deliver on for him.
So here is the kit as I received it. All the parts needed to make the bulldog framelock. This is the second time I have done a kit from Tracy that was water jet cut out and it really does cut down on the time to get a knife build going.
The first thing I wanted to do was tap the holes needed. I have been tapping the holes by hand and I kept breaking them and this was just in 0.060" thick liners. So for this one I wanted to try out a new method I have read about using a electric screwdriver.
I first flat sanded the liners and started on the blade as well and then drilled the holes for a 2-56 tap. I did this with a #49 drill bit. Just a word on chucks for the electric screwdriver. If you use one like the silver one below when you reverse out the tap it will come undone. It is much better to use one like the black one with the 4 grippy bits to hold the tap.
I still ended up snapping a tap and having to etch it out using some Ferric Chloride but I much prefer using the screwdriver than hand tapping.
Looking side on the clip doesn't sit real flat so I'll have to sort that out later.
Once that was done the next thing was to drill all the holes through the liners. We need a 2-56 clearance hole for the stop pin so that is a #43 drill bit. The spacers are a 4-40 clearance hole so that is a #32 drill bit. The lanyard hole I drilled out with a 3/16" drill bit and the pivot I drill out with a 6.2mm drill and reamed out to 1/4". The order I did them was the pivot first and then the lanyard hole while I had the pivot keeping the 2 liners aligned. Once the 2 holes were drilled I could drill out the rest of them keeping them aligned easily. I really quite liked having the holes spotted by the waterjet for drilling it made it very easy to drill through the titanium liners.
Once that was done the next thing was to thin out the blade a touch. I did this on one of my local knife makers tool grinder dodgied up as a surface grinder. The finish sure wasn't pretty by it was a lot easier than sanding it down on a granite plate and it was a lot more accurate than grinding down on my belt grinder.
After that I knew I had a nice flat surface for drilling the holes in the blade. I used the same 6.2mm drill and 1/4" reamer combo for the pivot and a #43 clearance for the thumb stud. I also wanted to inset the thumbstud as there is a little step on it. This isn't necessary though and it was the first mistake I made in the build. I used a 1/8" end mill to go straight in but for some reason the swarf dug into the blade surface and left some very deep an unsightly marks
While I was there I also countersunk the otherside of the thumbstud hole. You can see I didn't completely clean up the deep scratches from the surface grinding since that is where the bevels will be on the blade anyway.
So I roughed out some ideas for grind lines on the blade.
I ground the swedge first since it is such a large swedge I have seen a few WIP threads do it this way and it seems to work pretty well. I just took it to 60 grit to start with.
With the blade rough ground it gave me the first time I could see what it will look like open and closed.
Open:
Closed:
Before I could send the blade off to be heat treated I needed to drill the hole in the blade for the detent. I also wanted to check the amount of blade left for the lock face. I decided to mill the relief in the liner to make this a little easier. Here is it all lined up. I used a file guide to hold the lock bar in place while I milled the relief. Seeing that pic makes me wonder why my mill is going rusty and figure out the best way to clean it up.
I used a 12mm end mill to do the milling since that is what I use to mill my liners on the slipjoint knives I usually make. I have no idea the best way to mill these things but this seemed to work ok. I left about 0.060" since I wanted quite a strong lockbar on such a large folder.
This is my setup for grinding the lockface. I basically just ground the face back until all the waterjet marks were out.
This was the overlap left once the lock face was ground. At this point I also noticed the pivot only just goes through into the other liner so I decided to counterbore the pivot into the liners a bit as well.
I marked onto the blade where the lock would end up. At this point I also drilled the holes for the detent to go into. I used the same method I did for the contest build I did previously. http://knifedogs.com/showthread.php?3609-Cubane-Contest-Build&p=64429#post64429 I was a little concerned about how much was left over on the end of the tang.
It was at this point I send the blade off for heat treatment and I also got rather crook. The doctor reckons it was a case of whooping cough. All I know was that I was coughing my lungs up for about 3 months before it started to settle down to a bit of a throat tickle which lastest for another couple of months. I didn't get any knifemaking at all done in that time
Anyway enough about my misery. After I got it back from HT I started to finish grind it and stuffed it up a bit again. my grinding was a bit out of practice so I took the grind up a bit too high. You can see the blade came back from heat treatment at 60 Rockwell hardness
So if your grinding sucks then hand sanding can help fix it up a bit. I went back to 120 grit for hand sanding this one. I will usually start at 240 or 400 depending on how well my grinding went.
I took it up to 240 grit on the hand sanding before continuing on the build. You can see I sanded at 240 at a different direction to the 120 to makes sure I got all the 120 scratches out.
Next it was getting stuck into finishing the handles. I started by grinding a relief in the liner to make unlocking the knife a bit easier. I also taped up the blade to make sure I didn't scratch it up before the final sanding finish.
Next up was counter boring all the holes for all the screws. I used a #4 counterbore for the spacer screw holes. I had to also grind down the screws a touch to make them fit in. The stop pin was counter bored with a #2 counterbore. The pivot I did with a 3/8" counter bore with a 1/4" pilot.
Now I fitted up the lockbar to the tang. I have a little ramp I made at a 8 degree angle I use for grinding the lock face. I just used a 240 grit belt to grind this.
After that was done I torched the lockbar as I am told it will help oxidise the face and prevent the lockbar from sticking. I like to think my cluttered work bench means I have everything close by when I need it
I took the handle liners out to the local sand blasting place to get them blasted. I made sure all the deep scratched were out beforehand and it was all sanded up to 240 grit first. I also taped off the lock face to make sure I didn't loose any of the oxides from heating it up.
The very final thing to do before assembling all the parts was to set the detent ball in place.
Finally I finished it off. Overall it is really a very quick folder to build. I decided not to finish up the pocket clip since I don't usually carry a knife with one anyway. The only thing I would ask Tracy to change in the kit would be to leave a touch more steel on the tang where the lock face ends up. Mine doesn't actually go all the way across the blade there. The lock up is still fine on this one but if someone has a bit of a brain fart when finishing the tang where it meets the stop pin they might run out of steel for the lock face. Since I finished it off I took it into work to show the guys and I have 2 of them pushing me to do some kits build for them. If they can twist my arm hard enough you might be getting an order from me soon Bossdog. I am going to have to stop showing it around if I want to keep making slipjoints
Thanks for looking and thanks Bossdog for the opportunity to test build the Bulldog folder for you. Once again sorry it took so long.
Alistair
So here is the kit as I received it. All the parts needed to make the bulldog framelock. This is the second time I have done a kit from Tracy that was water jet cut out and it really does cut down on the time to get a knife build going.
The first thing I wanted to do was tap the holes needed. I have been tapping the holes by hand and I kept breaking them and this was just in 0.060" thick liners. So for this one I wanted to try out a new method I have read about using a electric screwdriver.
I first flat sanded the liners and started on the blade as well and then drilled the holes for a 2-56 tap. I did this with a #49 drill bit. Just a word on chucks for the electric screwdriver. If you use one like the silver one below when you reverse out the tap it will come undone. It is much better to use one like the black one with the 4 grippy bits to hold the tap.
I still ended up snapping a tap and having to etch it out using some Ferric Chloride but I much prefer using the screwdriver than hand tapping.
Looking side on the clip doesn't sit real flat so I'll have to sort that out later.
Once that was done the next thing was to drill all the holes through the liners. We need a 2-56 clearance hole for the stop pin so that is a #43 drill bit. The spacers are a 4-40 clearance hole so that is a #32 drill bit. The lanyard hole I drilled out with a 3/16" drill bit and the pivot I drill out with a 6.2mm drill and reamed out to 1/4". The order I did them was the pivot first and then the lanyard hole while I had the pivot keeping the 2 liners aligned. Once the 2 holes were drilled I could drill out the rest of them keeping them aligned easily. I really quite liked having the holes spotted by the waterjet for drilling it made it very easy to drill through the titanium liners.
Once that was done the next thing was to thin out the blade a touch. I did this on one of my local knife makers tool grinder dodgied up as a surface grinder. The finish sure wasn't pretty by it was a lot easier than sanding it down on a granite plate and it was a lot more accurate than grinding down on my belt grinder.
After that I knew I had a nice flat surface for drilling the holes in the blade. I used the same 6.2mm drill and 1/4" reamer combo for the pivot and a #43 clearance for the thumb stud. I also wanted to inset the thumbstud as there is a little step on it. This isn't necessary though and it was the first mistake I made in the build. I used a 1/8" end mill to go straight in but for some reason the swarf dug into the blade surface and left some very deep an unsightly marks
While I was there I also countersunk the otherside of the thumbstud hole. You can see I didn't completely clean up the deep scratches from the surface grinding since that is where the bevels will be on the blade anyway.
So I roughed out some ideas for grind lines on the blade.
I ground the swedge first since it is such a large swedge I have seen a few WIP threads do it this way and it seems to work pretty well. I just took it to 60 grit to start with.
With the blade rough ground it gave me the first time I could see what it will look like open and closed.
Open:
Closed:
Before I could send the blade off to be heat treated I needed to drill the hole in the blade for the detent. I also wanted to check the amount of blade left for the lock face. I decided to mill the relief in the liner to make this a little easier. Here is it all lined up. I used a file guide to hold the lock bar in place while I milled the relief. Seeing that pic makes me wonder why my mill is going rusty and figure out the best way to clean it up.
I used a 12mm end mill to do the milling since that is what I use to mill my liners on the slipjoint knives I usually make. I have no idea the best way to mill these things but this seemed to work ok. I left about 0.060" since I wanted quite a strong lockbar on such a large folder.
This is my setup for grinding the lockface. I basically just ground the face back until all the waterjet marks were out.
This was the overlap left once the lock face was ground. At this point I also noticed the pivot only just goes through into the other liner so I decided to counterbore the pivot into the liners a bit as well.
I marked onto the blade where the lock would end up. At this point I also drilled the holes for the detent to go into. I used the same method I did for the contest build I did previously. http://knifedogs.com/showthread.php?3609-Cubane-Contest-Build&p=64429#post64429 I was a little concerned about how much was left over on the end of the tang.
It was at this point I send the blade off for heat treatment and I also got rather crook. The doctor reckons it was a case of whooping cough. All I know was that I was coughing my lungs up for about 3 months before it started to settle down to a bit of a throat tickle which lastest for another couple of months. I didn't get any knifemaking at all done in that time
Anyway enough about my misery. After I got it back from HT I started to finish grind it and stuffed it up a bit again. my grinding was a bit out of practice so I took the grind up a bit too high. You can see the blade came back from heat treatment at 60 Rockwell hardness
So if your grinding sucks then hand sanding can help fix it up a bit. I went back to 120 grit for hand sanding this one. I will usually start at 240 or 400 depending on how well my grinding went.
I took it up to 240 grit on the hand sanding before continuing on the build. You can see I sanded at 240 at a different direction to the 120 to makes sure I got all the 120 scratches out.
Next it was getting stuck into finishing the handles. I started by grinding a relief in the liner to make unlocking the knife a bit easier. I also taped up the blade to make sure I didn't scratch it up before the final sanding finish.
Next up was counter boring all the holes for all the screws. I used a #4 counterbore for the spacer screw holes. I had to also grind down the screws a touch to make them fit in. The stop pin was counter bored with a #2 counterbore. The pivot I did with a 3/8" counter bore with a 1/4" pilot.
Now I fitted up the lockbar to the tang. I have a little ramp I made at a 8 degree angle I use for grinding the lock face. I just used a 240 grit belt to grind this.
After that was done I torched the lockbar as I am told it will help oxidise the face and prevent the lockbar from sticking. I like to think my cluttered work bench means I have everything close by when I need it
I took the handle liners out to the local sand blasting place to get them blasted. I made sure all the deep scratched were out beforehand and it was all sanded up to 240 grit first. I also taped off the lock face to make sure I didn't loose any of the oxides from heating it up.
The very final thing to do before assembling all the parts was to set the detent ball in place.
Finally I finished it off. Overall it is really a very quick folder to build. I decided not to finish up the pocket clip since I don't usually carry a knife with one anyway. The only thing I would ask Tracy to change in the kit would be to leave a touch more steel on the tang where the lock face ends up. Mine doesn't actually go all the way across the blade there. The lock up is still fine on this one but if someone has a bit of a brain fart when finishing the tang where it meets the stop pin they might run out of steel for the lock face. Since I finished it off I took it into work to show the guys and I have 2 of them pushing me to do some kits build for them. If they can twist my arm hard enough you might be getting an order from me soon Bossdog. I am going to have to stop showing it around if I want to keep making slipjoints
Thanks for looking and thanks Bossdog for the opportunity to test build the Bulldog folder for you. Once again sorry it took so long.
Alistair
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