WIP - Harpoon Bowie

[Erin Burke]

PHOTOS #30 (Three Versions)

While running the normalizing cycles – all 19683 of them {think (3^3)^3… three is a very important number when it comes to heat treating steel} – I had some time to think about handle options. This is kind of a fun trick to help visualize your options.

PHOTOS #31-33

Developing a hamon plan is a bit like voodoo/magic, only with less cat blood. There are folks out there who have mastered the art of bending the steel’s inner structure to their will. Then there are others who are diligently researching the art through experimentation… still seeking to understand the invisible interactions between the little iron guys and the little carbon guys (not to mention all of those other alloying elements). Finally, there are the actors from Fox’s late hit TV teen drama “The OC”.

I think that I fall somewhere in between the two later groups.


Here I have attempted to sketch a pre-visualization of how I will apply clay to the blade. The little plastic cup contains a very thin mixture of satanite and water. I will apply this with a small shop brush (one of the many that should be laying around here, but are never easy to find) as a thin wash to the entire blade. A heat gun is used to speed up the drying process.

Here is the blade with the thin coat of satanite applied. I don’t know that this clay is necessary, but I feel it helps the thicker clay stick to the blade. Also in this photo, you’ll see that I have started marking the clay pattern on the blade. The folded piece of sand paper was used as a straight edge to transfer the marks to the other side of the blade, ensuring that they would be symmetrical.

Finally, here is the final clay applied to the blade.

 

[lerman]

amazing WIP, i can't wait for the next update, i love seeing how different makers have different working methods.

 

[Erin Burke]

This post gets to be dedicated to the rest of the HT process.
To keep help things go smoothly, I came up with a little memory aid for heat treat (just now actually): T.T.S.T. (Remember it!)


PHOTO #34

I’m always playing around with my HT, but am seldom forward-thinking enough to record the process. For W2, I tend to shoot for a 10-minute pre-quench soak somewhere between 1440F and 1480F. This time, I set the kiln for 1450F and took photos of both the clay and the temp display. The images will serve as a valuable record should I end up producing the best hamon in the history of ever, and need to duplicate it sometime in the future.

For those interested, my kiln is the Sugar Creek BKK (or Big Knife Kiln) with digital controller. I think I remember hearing that they had gone out of business. Too bad… good kilns for the money.


PHOTO #35

Most of the time I don’t find it necessary to pre-heat my Parks 50, but it was fairly cold in the shop on this day. Shown in the photo is a photography thermometer from my wife's "pre-digital" days… back when photographers used chemicals instead of computers.

A typical heat treating day starts fairly early in the morning... allowing ample time after quench for follow-up temper cycles. This explains why my hand is clean.


PHOTO #36

SMOKE!!!

I always say a little prayer right before I pull a blade out of the kiln for quench… sometimes it’s something subvocal like “dear Lord, if it is Your will, please let this blade come out straight, and let the hamon look good and stay away from the edge.” Other times, it’s just a moment of silent petitioning that everything might go smoothly and that I don't burn off my eyebrows again.

My quench tank is a roasting pan. It's handy for pre-heating the oil on cold days. When not in use, I can put the lid on the roaster and roll the quench station away into the cabinet.

Sorry for the stupid shoes. Don't judge me.


PHOTOS #37 & #38

These are just a couple of shots of the blade after quench.

With clay still in place.

Cleaned up with wire brush

PHOTO #39

Temper in kitchen oven.
2 hr @ 410
2 hr @ 430

The cookie sheet and pizza stone are there to protect the blade from the direct radiant heat of the oven elements. I'm also using the oven’s convection mode which seems to help mitigate hot-spots by circulating the air. The pizza stone has the added benefit of being a thermal mass. I usually flip the blade between temper cycles.

Note: You can never have too many thermometers.


PHOTO #40

After the first two temper cycles I noticed a slight warp in the tip... maybe 1mm. It doesn't seem like a lot when you look at it perpendicularly along the spine... but when you stare "down-the-barrel" of the knife from the tip, it becomes something that needs fixing. So I clamped it up and re-tempered at 435F.

That's all for today.
Erin

 

[slatroni]

Cool Shoes! And that knife is not bad also! Really, that is one cool knife!

 

[brian7498]

Mmmmm...potatoes..

Sent from my QMV7A using Tapatalk

 

[slatroni]

more pics please........

 

[Pelallito]

This is a great WIP!
Thanks for posting.
About that grinding muscle, your still in amateur status, I should be able to grind a small car with mine
Fred

 

[Erin Burke]

This is a great WIP!
Thanks for posting.
About that grinding muscle, your still in amateur status, I should be able to grind a small car with mine
Fred

Hahaha! :thumbup:

 

[Erin Burke]

This it the part of the tale where our intrepid hero (me) begins the process of post-HT cleanup. Intrepid means Fearless... you know, just like Dodge wasn't afraid to put out a hyper-ugly sedan in 1993.


PHOTO #41

We'll start with with this image of more {flat} disc grinder work on tip. This really helps nail the symmetry. Using my bare fingers to apply pressure when grinding has the benefit of helping me to avoid overheating the blade. My notes say that I was using P80 Rynowet Redline paper in this photo.

PHOTO #42

Blade after the flat disc work shown above. As mentioned, I have two disc plates for my grinder; a flat disc, and one with a 1-degree taper. I mostly prefer the flat disc... as I it works great for cleaning up simple flat grinds and ensures that things are indeed "FLAT". However, when working a recurve blade, it's near impossible for the flat disc to get into the recurve area of the blade. You can see that in the photo. The tapered disc -- even thought the taper is minimal -- has better luck cleaning up this area... so I'll follow-up with that.

PHOTO #43

And here it is... the moment you've all been waiting for... HAND SANDING!!! YAY!!!

This is a hugely busy photo, and there's lots I can say about it.

• First off, I'm using the trimmings from the Redline paper that was cut for my disc grinder. In this particular image, I'm using P80 paper, which is about the same as 70-grit.
• My hand sanding fixture was modeled off one that Nick Wheeler developed. I have a matching piece of plexi-glass on top that can be adjusted with set-screws to support the tip of the blade. The base of the fixture is screwed to the metal tabletop. The sanding platform can be removed from the base and replaced with the small panavise in the background.
• My primary sanding sticks are pieces of aluminum angle. I find that the angle gives me a good place to "pinch" the sandpaper strip to keep it tight. Base (large-grit) sanding is done with the angle sanding fixture alone in order to keep all of the lines crisp. My finish sanding stick is the same, but has some thin cork material attached.
• For course grits, I use Mobile 1 synthetic oil as a sanding lubricant. You can see it in a little cup below the fixture. I usually just dab it on with my finger.
• For hand sanding with finer grits, I use a spray bottle with window cleaner. It's the one with the orange label below the light.
• When I'm done working for the evening, I like to wipe the blade down with Break Free CLP to keep rust at bay. (the little spray can with the red cap)

PHOTO #44

This first pass of hand sanding (with coarse grit paper) is probably the most difficult. Even after disc work, there can be some sneaky scratches left over from the belt grinder.

PHOTO #45

This is what the blade looks like after P80 hand sanding. You can even see the hamon. Looking pretty cool so far!!! :thumbup:

You'll notice that I still haven't cleaned up the profile at the choil area, the back end of the clip grind, or the guard shoulders. I really like to establish my bevels to a high grit before refining these areas. It keeps me from accidentally rounding off the crisp edges later.


PHOTO #46

Back in photo #26, I mentioned Fred Rowe's Bubble Jig. For those who have never seen one, this is what it looks like. In this image, I'm using the jig to take the raised false-edge to its final resting place. The goal is to set a grind angle that gives a zero-grind in the middle (no secondary bevel) and just kisses my (brass) scribed mark for the ridge-line. You may even notice how I placed a strip of black electrical tape on one end if the magnet to make a VERY small tweak to the grind angle. I'm working on an 80-grit black belt here.

PHOTO #47

Next, I follow up with some hand sanding to the false edge. I use the same fixture for this process as I do for hand-sanding the primary bevel.

 

[Erin Burke]

PHOTOS #48-50

There’s not a whole lot exciting about these next three photos… just some shots of the blade as I progress through the grits.

If there’s one thing that I’d like to emphasize as you look at these photos, it’s the importance of wiping down the work-station and replacing the paper-towel between EVERY grit. There are few things more annoying than dragging a piece of 110-grit across your paper when you’re working on 330-grit. I predict that I will be cussing about a stray grit approximately nine photos from now.:what!:


PHOTO #51

Oooh Baby!... it’s finally time to clean up the profile. As you can see, I ended up selecting the ironwood. The 1-1/4” small wheel just tucks into the choil and the rear of the false edge.

PHOTO #52

Initial material removal using 36-grit blue zirc belt. I’m handle these grinds carefully as it’s easy to accidentally remove too much… especially at the edge where material is thin. I work my way down through a cheap 120 grit Al-Ox belt to a A30 trizact with final cleanup on an A16 trizact.

Once again, this is a good way to mess up a new white t-shirt.


PHOTO #53

The small wheel leaves things a bit cheesy in the area of the spine between the false edge and the guard shoulders. Cheesy is short for cottage cheese... which is a descriptive term I sometimes use for cellulite... which is kind if what the spine looks like after the small wheel. So in this photo I'm cleaning up the area with a sanding stick... very similar to a bevel. I start with P400 on hard-back stick and work up to 2500 grit on a cork-backed stick.

PHOTO #54

And here’s the blade profiled and sanded to P400.

Thankfully, we get to take a break from hand sanding for a while… and explore some {slightly} more interesting parts of the process.

 

[Mudman]

Nice work, that false edge is so crisp, I'm somehow missing it in earlier photos.

 

[Doug Timbs]

Great thread Erin, I'm enjoying seeing your process. Looking forward to seeing the finished piece, and reading your commentary.


Doug

 

[Mark Behnke]

I was looking at the last pic and I saw submarine, no, battle ship, no, cigarette boat.
Sorry over active imagination.

 

[rhinoknives]

Erin,
That Swedge or Harpoon looks great on the blade. How did you grind that in? Beveled flat disc machine or on the 2 x 72"
I must have missed the pics of that? This inquiring mind wants to know?

Fred, Erin and all who wish to participate?
We may have to have a Grinding Muscle grid off! :biggrin:

 

[Erin Burke]

That Swedge or Harpoon looks great on the blade. How did you grind that in? Beveled flat disc machine or on the 2 x 72"
I must have missed the pics of that? This inquiring mind wants to know?

Laurence... check out photo #46 in post #29. That's basically how I grind the raised clip. I have to tweak the angle of bubble-jig as I get closer to my scribed grind-lines to make sure everything meets up where it should.
Erin

 

[Erin Burke]

My apologies for not keeping on top of this thread. I had a little project that I wanted to finish up before the Seattle Knife Show this weekend... so I had to make shop time a priority over the past few days.

PHOTO #55

Drawing back the temper of the tang. I apologize that I was unable to get a photo of the process, but I feel like I barely have enough hands as-it-is to do this right... and throwing a camera in the mix didn't seem like the best idea at the time. Imagine this: the blade, a big bucket full of water, and a propane torch. I hold the blade submerged in the water with the tang sticking out. My fingers pinch the blade ahead of the guard shoulders, just below the water line. This is what the blade looks like after.

I should have done this a bit earlier in the process, because now I have to sand the spine and choil again to clean off the colored oxides. The bevels will get cleaned-up and I continue the finish sanding.



PHOTOS #56-58

Setting the guard shoulders.

So now I want to pull out the old file guide and square up the guard shoulders. But first, I want to make sure than my blade is protected from the guide itself. I tend to use some combination of painter's tape and electrical tape. In this case, I've placed some electrical tape in the area where the file guide will site, and will sandwich the rest of the blade with painter's tape.

Because I have no parallel ricasso on this knife, setting up the file guide for setting the blade shoulders can be a bit if a challenge. I've have yet to find a perfect solution... just a series of good-enough solutions. This time I tried toothpicks. Seems like they compressed enough to help "set" the file guide.

Shoulders rough ground on belt grinder, touched up on disc grinder, and final clean-up with files (both flat and round). I've also started chamfering the sharp corners on the tang.

PHOTO #59

Remember a few pages back when I wrote about the importance of cleaning up your sanding workstation after ever grit change? This is why.

I had hand-sanded my way up through about P2000, when I caught a stray piece of a previous grit. It might be hard to see in the photo... but this little scratch set me back several steps. :49:



PHOTO #60

This is about as light as this blade will ever be. From here we start putting weight back on. Another 78g removed for a total weight loss of 78% (down to 227g from a starting weight of 1031g).

 

[Erin Burke]

I apologize that the last few posts have been snore-out-loud boring. Nothing I write about hand sanding can make it sound interesting or exciting... but it IS necessary.

However, now we get to move on to...


PHOTOS #61-65

ETCHING!!! Yay!!!

First a quick shot of the "tools-of-the-trade".

• Home-brew etcher, base on Chris Crawford's plans.
• Stencils from Ernie Grospitch. Ernie is fantastic to work with. If you need stencils, check him out. I will be using the largest version of my name on this knife.
• Electrolyte solution from USAknifemaker.com. I used to use salt water, but this stuff works WAY better, and provides for a much cleaner etch.
• Q-tips
• Electrical tape.

There are two schools of thought when placing a name/mark on the spine of the blade:
1. Orientate the mark so it will be right-side-up when viewed from the right hand.
2. Orientate the the mark so it flows from guard to tip.

I think #2 looks best when using upper- and lower-case letters, or flowing fonts. With all-caps block letters, I prefer #1... and that's what I chose.

The black electrical tape is great for holding the stencil in place. It's stretch nature allows for some tension to hold the stencil taut.



This photo is just to show what it looks like when I etch... you know, for those who haven't seen it. It's like flippin' magic... probably something involving ions and semi-permeable membranes. It also involves dirty frothy metal foamy stuff.

I submit Exhibit A

The initial results of etch.

There's a nasty looking halo around my mark that needs to be cleaned up. Repeated etching corrodes the alligator clip that holds the q-tips.



That's better. After some work with the fine sanding papers. Perfecto!

 

[Mudman]

Another excellent update Erin. Glad I started following this thread from the beginning, it's been exciting. Trying to read threads that are 10+ pages long gets boring, not matter how much super helpful the info is for me.

I've had my Personalizer Plus unused in it's original box for two months now. Got stencils from Ernie a month ago. I need to hurry up and finish some blades.
Ernie is great to deal with, and very quick with the turn around time.

 

[Erin Burke]

Now we'll start working on some fittings.

First up comes the Seppa. "Seppa" is a word that I made up to describe a thin copper piece in front of a guard. In an amazing coincidence, according to Al Gore's Internet[SUP]TM[/SUP], "Seppa" is also a term used in Japanese sword/knifemaking cirlces for a spacer adjacent to a guard. Mind blown.


PHOTO #66

If you look closely at my original sketch, you'll notice a thin spacer/seppa-type fitting in front of the main guard. I had planned this piece to be copper, about 0.07" thick. However, I do not have any copper in the correct thickness. I have some really thin copper flashing... but it's just not thick or rigid enough for this application. My only other copper is a plate about 1/2" thick. That's what I'm going to use... and here it is. You can see the template that I created in CAD for the guard/seppa/spacer.

PHOTO #67

Fresh off the band saw. Here a block has been rough-cut to the approximate dimensions needed. If you look close, you can see the scribed lines on the face.

PHOTO #68

That is a 1/2" end mill squaring things up.

PHOTO #69

Setting up to use the mill to slot the seppa block. Finding center of Y-axis using edge finder. Previously found back edge and zeroed the axis. The middle number on the DRO display is the Y-axis value for the front edge.

DROs are awesome. :thumbup:



PHOTO #70

Most of my blades are "plungeless"... which means -- when it comes to fitting guards, etc. -- there is no parallel. I don't have a parallel ricasso, so I don't get to mill a parallel guard/seppa slot. My tang cross-section ends up looking more like an isosceles trapezoid (thanks high-school geometry)... as stark contrast to the periclesian pseudo-rhombiod {hahaha}. The photo below show a progression of how I mill the slot in steps. At this point the slot doesn't go all the way through the block.

PHOTO #71

Here I'm splitting the seppa block closer to desired thickness. Had to lose the push sticks to take this photo.

Funny story... the fence you see on my band saw table in the photo above is actually the same piece of aluminum angle that I used for hand sanding in earlier photos. It's wicked versitile. OK... maybe not a funny story.



PHOTO #72

Ewww... gross. My band saw made things all ugly. Seriously guys... somebody needs to do something about this. :26: That's why I left some "meat" for clean-up. I will save the other half of the block for another baddass project later.

PHOTO #73

Missed photographing a few steps. I put seppa back on mill to clean up the mess that the band saw had made, and to make sure that the faces were back to parallel. It was then touched-up on disc grinder with used P80 paper. It looks quite a bit nicer now.

PHOTO #74

Cleaning up the "steps" with file. Copper really likes to clog file teeth, so I do a lot of chalking and carding.
Every so often I check the fit on the knife's tang. The copper will leave a nice mark on the steel tang letting me know where things are binding.

PHOTO #75

Driving seppa onto guard shoulders.
The idea for this tool was borrowed from the handsome and radiant Mr. Nick Wheeler... a paragon of knifemakeriness. Pretty much ALL of the most useful tools in my shop have their conceptual origin in Nick's brain. All joking aside, if you haven't checked out any of his project threads, you should close this page RIGHT NOW and read through those instead.

The green steel plate keeps the pressure distributed as evenly as possible when whacking with a hammer, while the little slot allows the dropped tang to peek out as necessary.



PHOTO #76

Sometimes when filing in a guard (or seppa) by hand, I'll end up with tiny gaps that need to be fixed. In this photo, you can see where I have peined the face of the seppa. This was done while it was fitted in place on the blade. You can also see the light outline where the blade shoulders sit against the seppa face.

Now I need to sand the face smooth again.

 

[Erin Burke]

Time to build a guard. The plan is to have the guard and fittings be mildly aged/blued, so I won't be digging into my stainless stash for this one.


PHOTO #77

But I will be exploring the miscellaneous mild steel cut-off bin under my bench.

PHOTO #78

And what do we find?... a beautiful 1/4" plate. Here it is, all marked-up for cutting.

PHOTOS #79-80

Cut and squared-up, but still about 0.06" too thick. Time to fire up the mill again.

And here we are, 0.06" thinner.

PHOTO #81

In this photo, the guard slot has been fitted... using the same process as we did for the seppa.

PHOTO #82

And here we have the guard stack in place for a test fitting.

PHOTO #83

Fore the ferrule (I think this is the correct term) I needed a fairly thick block of steel. Shout-out to my grandpa for this bar, which was found sitting next to one of his sheds. Looks like some type of large drift. It tapers along the length, and looks like it has been beaten frequently with a hammer on the large end.

PHOTOS #84-86

Cut, squared and scribed.

{band saw}

{mill}

{dykem}

In the last photo, I have scribed the center-line and end points of the proposed slot. I'll have to mill this from both sides as my end mill isn't long enough go all the way through.


Next we'll move on to some shaping.