Armory Sponsor
Posted: 9/20/2008 5:57:55 PM EDT
|
Lately there have been several threads started about handmade knives and one of the things I always liked to see was pictures from other makers shops. Lately I've been spending as much time as college allows in my shop and tonight I thought I would bring my camera along and snap some pictures. If this is something that you guys would be interested in seeing I would be happy to do this more often. Also like I said I hope this encourages more makers to post their own pictures of how they do it. Today I didn't really have anything special to do. I have just heat treated and tempered 3 blades (the three on top, the first is 1095 and the others are O1) that I am doing via stock removal. The bottom two are damascus that have yet to be heat treated. http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f28/rtj1981/ar15%20photos/DSC02837.jpg After the blades are heat treated in preparation for hand sanding I use my disc grinder to get everything flat and to make hand sanding easier. I use regular sheets of sand paper and a spray adhesive to make my own disk in any grit I want. The two grits I used today are 320 and 400. I also like the disc grinder because it have a foot switch which allows me to have the blade on the disc when I start it, this makes it much easier to make things dead flat. http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f28/rtj1981/ar15%20photos/DSC02836.jpg Notice in this picture I am using my leg on the stairs to brace my left hand and I have my right arm tucked into my body. Whether I and using my 2x72" grinder or this I always try to lock my arms into my body and move my entire with the knife as I am sanding. http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f28/rtj1981/ar15%20photos/DSC02840.jpg Here are the three blades after I have sanded them to 400grit on my disc grinder. http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f28/rtj1981/ar15%20photos/DSC02842.jpg Next I sharpened one of the O1 blades and also the one out of 1095 so I can test them. Since none of these were forged and I heat treated them in a digitally controlled oven I'm not so much worried about edge retention. Instead I am testing them to make sure I tempered them at a high enough temperature and the edges aren't too brittle. I test this by first drawing the edge across a brass rod at approximately a 35-40 degree angle. If everything is right you can see the edge flex without chipping. Next I grab a piece of hardwood (or in this case a broken hammer handle) and go to town on it. After I chopped half way through it I stop and examine the edge. If there is no chipping I can assume that everything is how it should be. http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f28/rtj1981/ar15%20photos/DSC02855.jpg As you can see in this picture there are no chips and it still shaves. http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f28/rtj1981/ar15%20photos/DSC02857.jpg Here is a picture of what the knives will look like when they are finished. http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f28/rtj1981/ar15%20photos/DSC02824.jpg Tapered tang and contoured handle made out of Bocote, the blade itself is O1. http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f28/rtj1981/ar15%20photos/DSC02827.jpg Next are a couple of the other tools I have in my shop. This is my 2x72" belt grinder, if I use it on wood it would be a belt sander but if its used on metal its called a grinder. This is pretty standard as far as knife makers go. I use it for no only grinding blades but also sanding handles. grinding out profiles as well as sharpening. The belts I use range anywhere from 36 grit all the way up 1000grit and you can even get finer grits than that. It has a 2hp motor and a VFD (its located in the ammo can for protection from all the metal dust) which converts the single phase power I have in my shop into 3 phase which my motor is. It also allows me to control the speed of my sander with no loss of power. The first picture is with the flat platen on it which is what I use most of the time, especially for flat grinding which is what most of my grinds are. http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f28/rtj1981/ar15%20photos/DSC02845.jpg Her it is with the 6" wheel on it. Its surface is a hard rubber and I use this for grinding scale off and when I do hollow grinds. Since its rubber it leaves a lot smother finish on metal that the flat platen. http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f28/rtj1981/ar15%20photos/DSC02846.jpg This is my heat treating oven. I built this from ideas I got of the internet. Its really pretty straight forward. It has two heating elements in it and is approximately 4x6x24". It has a controller mounted on the wall which allows me to precisely control the temperature within 1 or 2 degrees. http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f28/rtj1981/ar15%20photos/DSC02831.jpg http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f28/rtj1981/ar15%20photos/DSC02644.jpg Sorry if some of this is hard to understand, if you have any questions just ask and I'll do my best to explain. I'll post more pictures if people seem interested. Thanks for looking! |
|
Thanks everyone for the comments. I do make the blades myself. If you have read through Fox's tutorial at the top that's basically the same way I do it. When I taper the tang I use my contact wheel to grind a groove in the part of the knife handle that I want to taper. I also mark the center of the knife on the butt of the handle. Then its just a manner of grinding everything off from the butt of the knife to where i want it to start tapering. Here's a crappy ms paint as per arfcom rules to try and illustrate what I'm saying better. Once I finish these 3 I'll start on two others and I'll take some pics to better explain it. http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f28/rtj1981/ar15%20photos/untitled2.jpg *No walmart greeters were harmed in the making of this crappy mspaint. |
. I think his pics say it all.
Armory Sponsor