Thanks Clint, Hanz, and Mem. And thanks for sharing Mem.
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Happy Birthday, Lead Belly (1888-1949)! 🎸🕛🪨🏝️
Building myself a new knife.
- Thread starter Rippy
- Start date
Thanks Clint, Hanz, and Mem. And thanks for sharing Mem.
Rippy,
I gotta say, I'm impressed!! I own an R & D business, complete machine shop, CNC mills, lathes, grinders, many heat treat ovens....but I don't have a Rockwell tester!
Interesting that you like D2, I know the material, but never had a use for it. I'm an A2 guy myself, occasionally some S7, mostly my life involves super alloys or other unmachiniums.
I'm anxiously awaiting more progress on that knife. Do you have some sort of template for the relief cuts on those blades? Or do you have really steady hands?
I gotta say, I'm impressed!! I own an R & D business, complete machine shop, CNC mills, lathes, grinders, many heat treat ovens....but I don't have a Rockwell tester!
Interesting that you like D2, I know the material, but never had a use for it. I'm an A2 guy myself, occasionally some S7, mostly my life involves super alloys or other unmachiniums.
I'm anxiously awaiting more progress on that knife. Do you have some sort of template for the relief cuts on those blades? Or do you have really steady hands?
That sure is a nice shop Rippy, setting it up must have set you back a few bucks. I had no idea when you mentioned you where making a knife that you had all those tools, very impressive and looking forward to your progress, Thanks for sharing it.
A-2 is my favorite tool steel to machine and heat treat. The machinability is great and it is so dimensionally stable in heat treat that I have machined bushings to size at times instead of leaving a grinding allowance. A-2 would make a great knife blade and I have used it before for knives. It has higher toughness at the same hardness than D-2. But at only 5% chromium it just doesn't have enough corrosion and stain resistance for me.
I hollow grind the blades free hand on the home made belt sander. It is kind of tricky because you are grinding blind on the side of the blade that is away from you so you have to go by feel. I'll have some one take a couple pictures when I get that far.
Robin, like I said at the beginning of this thread, knife making is addictive. Don't make your first knife if you don't want to make a second one. This one is serial number 308.
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Well I got some more work done on the project. I smashed my thumb nail a couple Saturdays ago at work on a rush job so I took a break from it till the thumb felt a little better. I have slotted the finger guard and the Ebony handle material. I cut and slotted some spacer material to ad some color to the handle. The tang of the knife has been radiused top and bottom to fit the slots and a hole has been drilled through the wood and steel for a thong tube that will secure the handle.
Everything slides on the tang from the but end.
This is as far as I will go with the handle for now till after the blade is hardened. Next step is to hollow grind the knife blade.
Everything slides on the tang from the but end.
This is as far as I will go with the handle for now till after the blade is hardened. Next step is to hollow grind the knife blade.
Rippy,
The knife looks great, the thumb, not so much!!
Did you drill it?? The thumbnail, I mean...I usually pop an .040 hole in those, really helps relieve the pressure.
The knife looks great, the thumb, not so much!!
Did you drill it?? The thumbnail, I mean...I usually pop an .040 hole in those, really helps relieve the pressure.
Ya, I drilled it in the lower left hand corner of the nail. It barely shows up in the picture. I should have drilled it a day sooner. I didn't sleep too good the first night what with it throbbing and all.
Holy mackerel! That thumb has eclipsed the thread. Hope it gets better soon!
I decided it was hollow grinding day today. I am grinding the blade on a sander that I designed and built myself. In this picture I am using a 8" serrated contact wheel to back the belt. I have other wheels of different diameters for different purposes. They are pre-mounted on arbors so I can change wheels in about 15 seconds using a tee handled Allen wrench. As I use belts from 60 grit to 900 grit, I designed it so I could change belts in about 2 seconds with out tools. I also can control belt tracking by turning a spring loaded knob. It has a DC electric motor so I can vary the speed with the drive (black box) on the wall above the four way outlet. I tend to slow the speed down for wood to avoid burning it. They make sanders suited for this application but they are expensive and I had my own personal taste as to how it should be laid out.
Still grinding. Hollow grinding is done with the blade edge up. You are blind to the side you are grinding on so you have to depend on feel to tell what is going on. In other words, when you place the blade against the belt you have to carefully feel whether or not you placed it square in the grind you have started. Otherwise you will have multiple grinds on the same side. Today I had to move my head around a bit to try to find the sweet spot for my bifocals. I don't recall having to do that back in 1990 when I was making my first few knives.
Making progress. Starting with a 60 grit belt, I will Rough grind the blade and then take it to a 220 grit finish, and then heat treat it. After heat treat I will remove a little more material and take it down to 900 grit before buffing. The last knife I made for myself had a satin finish. I decided to have a mirror finish on this one.
Next step will be heat treating. Dave
Still grinding. Hollow grinding is done with the blade edge up. You are blind to the side you are grinding on so you have to depend on feel to tell what is going on. In other words, when you place the blade against the belt you have to carefully feel whether or not you placed it square in the grind you have started. Otherwise you will have multiple grinds on the same side. Today I had to move my head around a bit to try to find the sweet spot for my bifocals. I don't recall having to do that back in 1990 when I was making my first few knives.
Making progress. Starting with a 60 grit belt, I will Rough grind the blade and then take it to a 220 grit finish, and then heat treat it. After heat treat I will remove a little more material and take it down to 900 grit before buffing. The last knife I made for myself had a satin finish. I decided to have a mirror finish on this one.
Next step will be heat treating. Dave
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That's very awesome, and the thumb looks better too. You're a pretty handy guy, there's a place for you in my compound when the Zombie Apocalypse happens!
I'm your man. I may or may not have a few Zombie guns but that's a different forum isn't it.
Not much else going on so I decided to go ahead and heat treat today. The blade is in a stainless steel envelope to keep the oxygen off of it while its hot. Otherwise it would scale up and be a mess to clean up. Its been at temp (1875*F) for about 25 minutes.
Using a pair of long handled tongs I remove the package from the oven.
I need to remove the blade from the package so it can air cool. It didn't go too well this time as the package kind of vacuum formed to the blade. I didn't leave enough air space in the package when I folded it shut and sealed it.
I guess it all worked out. Here I am testing the hardness before drawing it back to a working temper. It tested 64 RC after cooling to room temp (RC=Rockwell C scale)(it's a measurement of hardness) . I need to draw it back to 60 RC so it isn't brittle. I will do this by baking it for a few hours in a toaster oven at 450*.
Heat treating is about as exciting as watching paint dry. Next I will finish sand the blade and polish it on the buffer. Later, Dave
Using a pair of long handled tongs I remove the package from the oven.
I need to remove the blade from the package so it can air cool. It didn't go too well this time as the package kind of vacuum formed to the blade. I didn't leave enough air space in the package when I folded it shut and sealed it.
I guess it all worked out. Here I am testing the hardness before drawing it back to a working temper. It tested 64 RC after cooling to room temp (RC=Rockwell C scale)(it's a measurement of hardness) . I need to draw it back to 60 RC so it isn't brittle. I will do this by baking it for a few hours in a toaster oven at 450*.
Heat treating is about as exciting as watching paint dry. Next I will finish sand the blade and polish it on the buffer. Later, Dave
Rippy,
I gotta ask, what is your background? Your using 321 SS wrap on your D2, you've got your own heat treat oven, and I'm seeing height gages, surface gages, dial indicators, 123 blocks, the same DC motors that I use every day...Toolmaker? Modelmaker? R & D Technician? Engineer?
I think we may have similar backgrounds!
BTW, we used to keep a beat up paper shear near the ovens, to cut open the foil wrap for air cooling.
Anyway, I'm enjoying the ride, thanks for sharing!!
I gotta ask, what is your background? Your using 321 SS wrap on your D2, you've got your own heat treat oven, and I'm seeing height gages, surface gages, dial indicators, 123 blocks, the same DC motors that I use every day...Toolmaker? Modelmaker? R & D Technician? Engineer?
I think we may have similar backgrounds!
BTW, we used to keep a beat up paper shear near the ovens, to cut open the foil wrap for air cooling.
Anyway, I'm enjoying the ride, thanks for sharing!!
Stripperguy, I grew up in a family owned machine shop. As you guessed I've done some tool and die work. Also did a lot of CNC programming and set up which was really my favorite occupation. When I first started in that field it was still just NC and ran on paper tapes you had to punch on a Flexwriter. All the programming was done in incremental instead of absolute. Didn't even have a offset register. CNC was was like a quantum leap after NC. I also built a few prototypes. Worked for a while in a shop that did emergency repair for the grain industry such as ADM, Cargill, Penford, General Mills and such. Got tired of being on call 24/7 so I left and went to work as a technician at a electric motor repair shop for a change of pace. Now I rewind industrial motors for a living and do metal working among other things for a hobby.
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See, I knew it!! I am a grad of the GE aprenticeship (1977) program. I trained and worked as a Toolmaker, Jigs and Fixtures, and worked in their Automated Equipment Division, it was great work.
I left GE and joined MTI, at the time, one of the best R & D houses in the US. Along the way, I furthered my education, specializing in industrial engineering, and some dynamic structure analysis. Eventually, I partnered with some coworkers to form our own company, MITI, and we were promptly sued for $45 M!! 19 years later and we are the recognized world leader in Foil Bearing technology.
I now design every piece of hardware that our company produces, but it is sometimes more pressure than I desire...it's very difficult to maintain our recognized world leadership position.
The sort of work you are doing in your shop is fascinating. And you're creating tools that are useful and works of art. Nice stuff, man...
I left GE and joined MTI, at the time, one of the best R & D houses in the US. Along the way, I furthered my education, specializing in industrial engineering, and some dynamic structure analysis. Eventually, I partnered with some coworkers to form our own company, MITI, and we were promptly sued for $45 M!! 19 years later and we are the recognized world leader in Foil Bearing technology.
I now design every piece of hardware that our company produces, but it is sometimes more pressure than I desire...it's very difficult to maintain our recognized world leadership position.
The sort of work you are doing in your shop is fascinating. And you're creating tools that are useful and works of art. Nice stuff, man...
I see that you are still MiTi so I guess you didn't lose the lawsuit.
Yeah,
MTI was experiencing a mass exodus in '94 and '95. We took 1/3 of their business away from them when we left. Mostly, they were bothered that we took our minds with us...
Also, they (MTI) sent a clear massage to those exiting employees with thoughts of binding together...DON'T!! To that end, the lawsuit was very successful, we were the only spin off.
Other than that, and the cost of defending ourselves, that suit only made us stronger and more savvy business men!
Wll, I'm heading out to the boat shop now, are you going to work on that knife some more??
MTI was experiencing a mass exodus in '94 and '95. We took 1/3 of their business away from them when we left. Mostly, they were bothered that we took our minds with us...
Also, they (MTI) sent a clear massage to those exiting employees with thoughts of binding together...DON'T!! To that end, the lawsuit was very successful, we were the only spin off.
Other than that, and the cost of defending ourselves, that suit only made us stronger and more savvy business men!
Wll, I'm heading out to the boat shop now, are you going to work on that knife some more??
I got some more work done last night. I finish sanded the blade down to 900 grit, refining the grind lines as I went. Next step is to buff the blade to a mirror finish on the buffing wheel. I don't feel all buffy just yet. I may need some more coffee.
The first NC milling machine I worked with had a GE control. It was the size of a phone booth. Right now young guys are saying "whats a phone booth". It could read numbers up to four digits with .001" being the smallest increment. So if you wanted to travel more than 9.999" you had to do it in two or more steps. What a hoot now. Technology has came light years in just our time. Anyway we were located in a small town and towns folk would wander in a stand around fascinated watching it run. I was still in my teens at the time so I felt like a big deal while running it. It was a 1974 vintage and read punched tape. People would stand there and watch it read the tape and then move the mill table. We had a shop cat and every once in a great while a cat hair some how got in the cabinet and landed on the tape causing a read error. I guess I'm just rambling, have a nice day. I am so looking forward to seeing some strips on your forms. Later
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Rippy,
I trained as an apprentice with all manner of machine tools, including a Wells Index NC mill, the same paper tape programs too! That was also in '74!
When I got my assignment in a toolroom (exactly where I wanted to go) I worked with all the old timers, while my contemporaries would hang out together and goof around.
When I graduated the program, I was chosen as apprentice of the year, there were about 125 graduates that year. Most of the guys my age were laid off almost as fast as they graduated, (times were not good at GE then) but the department I was in put me in a temporary assignment to hide me from lay off. I spent another year and a half in an advanced technology development shop, that's where I got my first taste for R & D. Who knew it would be a career long choice! BTW, did you look at our website? Everything you see there was designed by me...for me, it's not like a job. It's the same stuff I would do in my basement, if I had unlimited funds and time!
So getting back on track...where's the blade? Let's see it!
I trained as an apprentice with all manner of machine tools, including a Wells Index NC mill, the same paper tape programs too! That was also in '74!
When I got my assignment in a toolroom (exactly where I wanted to go) I worked with all the old timers, while my contemporaries would hang out together and goof around.
When I graduated the program, I was chosen as apprentice of the year, there were about 125 graduates that year. Most of the guys my age were laid off almost as fast as they graduated, (times were not good at GE then) but the department I was in put me in a temporary assignment to hide me from lay off. I spent another year and a half in an advanced technology development shop, that's where I got my first taste for R & D. Who knew it would be a career long choice! BTW, did you look at our website? Everything you see there was designed by me...for me, it's not like a job. It's the same stuff I would do in my basement, if I had unlimited funds and time!
So getting back on track...where's the blade? Let's see it!
