backtines
Well-Known Member
Hey Guys ,
I thought Id bring you in to a few of my challanges Im having building this knife .
I had a request to build A knife 12 " OL w/ 7 " blade Damascus with Ivory scales. He wants to get the ivory scrimshawed and was very specific on the design and look of this knife before I started.. Im so not used to that ..I just make knives that I like and people buy them . This deal , I was following a plan ..
Anyway , as some of you already know in order for me to pull this off , I had to get rid of my grinding jigs and grind the blade free hand . Ive only grinded a few blades prior to this one without jigs and thought I should practice more before I jumped into a 200 dollare piece of damascus .. I couldnt resist. I started grinding on this knife a few weeks ago and It came out ok .. I got plunges pretty good , not as straight as I like but ok .. My grinds came all the way up and my logo looked good for the time being. After HT , I was happy .. The blade was perfectly straight.. I ran my first temper cycle. No problem .
The following day is when it all started to change.. I was running an hour late from work, so i asked my wife to bring toaster up to 375 then put the blade in . I figured shes seen me do this 100 times there should be ne problem. WRONG !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I got home and found the blade sitting on the very edge of the toaster cooling down with the door open. Long short , she never put the blade in the middle of the toaster where the heat would soak the blade evenly .. She put it right on the edge , because it was too hot for her hand to move the blade in deeper .. Needless to say , the blade looked like a pretzle..
Now the fun began trying to get this thing straight, I heated the spine into the ricaso . Tweaking it hear and there and redoing this and that .. Then I startedgoing over my grinds and trying to fix plunge lines ect.. I remember in school , for every action theres a reaction and thats what was happening .. Everything I did , Id mess something else up . I was going nuts! I then had to reflatten everything and by doing that, I had to go ever my logo .. Its still on but you can barley see it . I didnt want to heat that aread up and whack it with my stamp because I was afraid something would give , so I left it .
MAde my bolsters. They came out ok, bif for my taste but I guess they'll do .
The Ivory ..I glued some black liners to the back for two reasons. 1. to give me a little more height to work with . 2. during expanding and contracting , I believe that the liner would take some of that . Instead of a direct hit on the ivory . Hoping that it wouldnt crack.
I found out later that 3/32 reamers had a few different sizes . I drilled my 3/32 holes not realizing that i should have been a little under sized to acept my reamers. I could have done that better .. Should have got actual sizes of pin stock , drill bits and propper reamer for that part of job.
I had to built the whole knife with temp pins , grind to fit and finish because i wanted to spine to show its grain after etching.. I didnt want to grind that stuff away during final F&F.
So I built the whole knife .Grinded the ivory VERY CAREFULLY !! not to get it hot .. I used sharp drill bits and took my time . One of the black liners moved in the corner of bolster and scale . I had to redo that . ( I found that mistake after I was done of coarse )
Big challange was the bolsters.. I couldnt really get into shaping them nice because I couldnt peen in the pins. So I glued them in , got them real close and was hoping to finish them nice after etching ..
I etched blade , Looks beautiful ( Thanks Randy ) I start reassembeling it and of coarse nothing lined up as it did when I pulled it all apart .
After peaning the bolsters , there were high edges, and because the bolsters were a little off , the scales follewed a bit.
Heres one I didnt expect .. When I glued on the scales and pushed my pins through. I noticed that black came up through the pin holes and onto scales.. That was the blackstuff that forms on the steel when I pulled it out of FC. I never cleaned the pin holes out and it pushed the black into the ivory holes .. Now I have a black lined ivory pin hole !
SO I had to regrind all the high edges and had to wash out spine and belly of knife. After I was happy with not having high spots and took a fine paint brush and very carefully re etched the spine and belly.. I was able to bring the grain back ..
News to me.. After the ivory was polished and shined up real good . Thats when I etched . The FC DID NOT ! soak into the ivory .. I was able to let it soak on spine for a while , then spray it off with Windex .. That was a relief.
So Thats where I am for now . I need to do some more hand sanding on the ivory .. Need to get out some scratches that are showing up in different light .. I may bring the bolsters back down to a satin finish . I still have some faint lines in there and Im afraid to keep going over them because I dont want to get into trouble with halos in my bolsters.. I taper reamed them out but who knows .. I dont want to bring on another problem. We'll see.
So thats it for now. I guess Im happy .. I will definitey do some things differnt on the next one .. I should have it finished with in the week and Ill post pics..
Thanks for listening .
I thought Id bring you in to a few of my challanges Im having building this knife .
I had a request to build A knife 12 " OL w/ 7 " blade Damascus with Ivory scales. He wants to get the ivory scrimshawed and was very specific on the design and look of this knife before I started.. Im so not used to that ..I just make knives that I like and people buy them . This deal , I was following a plan ..
Anyway , as some of you already know in order for me to pull this off , I had to get rid of my grinding jigs and grind the blade free hand . Ive only grinded a few blades prior to this one without jigs and thought I should practice more before I jumped into a 200 dollare piece of damascus .. I couldnt resist. I started grinding on this knife a few weeks ago and It came out ok .. I got plunges pretty good , not as straight as I like but ok .. My grinds came all the way up and my logo looked good for the time being. After HT , I was happy .. The blade was perfectly straight.. I ran my first temper cycle. No problem .
The following day is when it all started to change.. I was running an hour late from work, so i asked my wife to bring toaster up to 375 then put the blade in . I figured shes seen me do this 100 times there should be ne problem. WRONG !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I got home and found the blade sitting on the very edge of the toaster cooling down with the door open. Long short , she never put the blade in the middle of the toaster where the heat would soak the blade evenly .. She put it right on the edge , because it was too hot for her hand to move the blade in deeper .. Needless to say , the blade looked like a pretzle..
Now the fun began trying to get this thing straight, I heated the spine into the ricaso . Tweaking it hear and there and redoing this and that .. Then I startedgoing over my grinds and trying to fix plunge lines ect.. I remember in school , for every action theres a reaction and thats what was happening .. Everything I did , Id mess something else up . I was going nuts! I then had to reflatten everything and by doing that, I had to go ever my logo .. Its still on but you can barley see it . I didnt want to heat that aread up and whack it with my stamp because I was afraid something would give , so I left it .
MAde my bolsters. They came out ok, bif for my taste but I guess they'll do .
The Ivory ..I glued some black liners to the back for two reasons. 1. to give me a little more height to work with . 2. during expanding and contracting , I believe that the liner would take some of that . Instead of a direct hit on the ivory . Hoping that it wouldnt crack.
I found out later that 3/32 reamers had a few different sizes . I drilled my 3/32 holes not realizing that i should have been a little under sized to acept my reamers. I could have done that better .. Should have got actual sizes of pin stock , drill bits and propper reamer for that part of job.
I had to built the whole knife with temp pins , grind to fit and finish because i wanted to spine to show its grain after etching.. I didnt want to grind that stuff away during final F&F.
So I built the whole knife .Grinded the ivory VERY CAREFULLY !! not to get it hot .. I used sharp drill bits and took my time . One of the black liners moved in the corner of bolster and scale . I had to redo that . ( I found that mistake after I was done of coarse )
Big challange was the bolsters.. I couldnt really get into shaping them nice because I couldnt peen in the pins. So I glued them in , got them real close and was hoping to finish them nice after etching ..
I etched blade , Looks beautiful ( Thanks Randy ) I start reassembeling it and of coarse nothing lined up as it did when I pulled it all apart .
After peaning the bolsters , there were high edges, and because the bolsters were a little off , the scales follewed a bit.
Heres one I didnt expect .. When I glued on the scales and pushed my pins through. I noticed that black came up through the pin holes and onto scales.. That was the blackstuff that forms on the steel when I pulled it out of FC. I never cleaned the pin holes out and it pushed the black into the ivory holes .. Now I have a black lined ivory pin hole !
SO I had to regrind all the high edges and had to wash out spine and belly of knife. After I was happy with not having high spots and took a fine paint brush and very carefully re etched the spine and belly.. I was able to bring the grain back ..
News to me.. After the ivory was polished and shined up real good . Thats when I etched . The FC DID NOT ! soak into the ivory .. I was able to let it soak on spine for a while , then spray it off with Windex .. That was a relief.
So Thats where I am for now . I need to do some more hand sanding on the ivory .. Need to get out some scratches that are showing up in different light .. I may bring the bolsters back down to a satin finish . I still have some faint lines in there and Im afraid to keep going over them because I dont want to get into trouble with halos in my bolsters.. I taper reamed them out but who knows .. I dont want to bring on another problem. We'll see.
So thats it for now. I guess Im happy .. I will definitey do some things differnt on the next one .. I should have it finished with in the week and Ill post pics..
Thanks for listening .
