Daniel’s KITH WIP

[Chris Railey]

You and that red layout dye...I always immediately think he cut himself again but then I remember. Great work on the blanks those are going to make some people happy. Counting from the left, number 4 and 8 are my favorites.

 

[Greg Rice]

You and that red layout dye...I always immediately think he cut himself again but then I remember. Great work on the blanks those are going to make some people happy. Counting from the left, number 4 and 8 are my favorites.

Oh now that is funny... I was thinking " dang this boy slices hisself while forging - how? Is it a smashed finger?" but red layout dye - too awesome

 

[Greg Rice]

my favorites are #'s 1 and 2. And 3. 4 also. 5 makes the cut. Yep, 6 and 7 too. And how could 8 not be? so, yeah - 1 thru 8 - that is my favorite one!

 

[Daniel Macina]

You and that red layout dye...I always immediately think he cut himself again but then I remember. Great work on the blanks those are going to make some people happy. Counting from the left, number 4 and 8 are my favorites.

I really do need a new container. I’ll try to get blue this time. At this point I just love using it to watch everyone’s reaction when I go out in public with red layout dye on me

my favorites are #'s 1 and 2. And 3. 4 also. 5 makes the cut. Yep, 6 and 7 too. And how could 8 not be? so, yeah - 1 thru 8 - that is my favorite one!

thank ya sir!

 

[Daniel Macina]

I have been in contact with Bob. His knife will ship out the 18th and I will post all the WIP pictures i’ve been taking after this crazy week. Thanks for your patience everyone.

 

[diverdale]

You and that red layout dye...I always immediately think he cut himself again but then I remember. Great work on the blanks those are going to make some people happy. Counting from the left, number 4 and 8 are my favorites.

I never new you could get red layout fluid ... my wife would go nuts if I used red. I've always used good old purple

 

[Daniel Macina]

Knife And sharpener was shipped. I sincerely apologize for it taking so long. I swear I’ll sit down this weekend and get pictures together to post.

 

[Daniel Macina]

OK I didn’t take real great pictures of actually making the knife but it’s all just your normal basic stuff I’ll post up what I did take. At this point the knife is ground and heat treated and the tapered tang cleaned up.

 

[Daniel Macina]

OK next step is getting our handle shaped I always do this part before doing final finishing of the blade and before glue up so I can do what I need with the scales.

decided to use some G- carta That was supposed to look like vintage Westinghouse. I didn’t end up liking how it looked Finished out Mainly due to the handle shape not being right for that material but we’ll get to that later.

now that we have our shape I’ll go ahead and take the front of the scales up to 1200 grit for this build.

 

[Daniel Macina]

Now to finish our blade. Got A clean a45 belt finish on the knife and etched my maker mark. Decided To go for a acid etched stone wash finish on this blade my first time doing anything other than a satin finish. My process for the stone wash was 3 5 minute cycles in FC. after the final etching cycle I still wasn’t quite happy with the darkness more than likely due to the cold not allowing my ferric chloride to etch as strongly so I threw it in for another 10 minutes and it was about right. After that I went into a bucket filled with relatively small Relatively smooth rocks And shook the tar out of it for about five minutes then neutralized. This was the result

 

[Daniel Macina]

Now that we have our blade finished and handle shaped and fronts polished we can glue up. Now this next part is very important make sure that when you were gluing up you jab one of the pins as far as you can into your thumb. Haha. In all honesty I always kind of dome my pins before gluing up to take care of any sharp edges but I missed a spot on one.

once The epoxy is cured i peen over my pins. Then briefly go over to the grinder and grind them flush.

Then all that’s left is the handle sanding and we are done. Went up to 1200 on this one and this is what we ended up with. No matter what I did I could not get rid of those dirty streaks I went all the way down to 120 grit twice and worked up back through the grits At this point I am not positive if it is grime or something to do with the material. Like I said I am not crazy about how this knife turned out and will explain after while what I will do to make it up to Bob as I simply don’t feel this is a good display of my ability. But felt he needed to get him something as I was already late. I will post pictures of the sheath making process after while but have some shop work to do this evening

 

[TimGinMN]

Wife says... "Don't bleed on the carpet!"

 

[MTBob]

Daniel, that knife looks just fine - and, more impressive you've spilled blood getting it done! I'm looking forward to having one of your creations.

 

[Daniel Macina]

OK for the sheath I’m going to try a horizontal carry taco style sheath which I’ve never done. First off we’re going to lay our knife down on the Roughside of the leather And trace a line around it about 1/2” from the edge.
Then without moving the knife turn it around to the other side and trace around that side leaving about 1/2 from the edge You should end up something like this. Then I’ll cut the top so it’s got a nice curve to it generally I would have the high spot Of the curve on the spine side of the knifeBut I did it the opposite way this time because I thought it might make it easier to draw a horizontal not sure I like it this way but maybe it’s just because I’ve made mine the other way. This is what we have at this point. Note this was obviously all done before the handle was cleaned up. LOL

 

[Daniel Macina]

Be sure to check the fit of the knife while you’re doing all of this to make sure it’s going to fit in the end don’t just rely on your lines for this style of sheath.

 

[Daniel Macina]

Going to lay down the sheath flat now and trace it on the backside of my leather so I can lay out the belt loop. note not shown in this picture but make sure you leave quite a bit extra so you have enough that when the sheath is folded a belt Will fit. This particular belt loop was about an inch wide if I remember correctly.

Now we just need our welt and we’ll be ready for the rest of the work. Just laid down my sheath traced around one edge and then matched the other edge so we had a welt that was about 3/4 inch wide. Generally a shoot for a half inch welt with a little bit of stick out. This is all the pieces we should have at this pointThe wealth is rough at this point I make sure and trim it so it matches the contour of the knife nicely in the outside edge doesn’t matter because there’s going to be some sticking out to trim and make flush with the edge of the sheath.

 

[Daniel Macina]

While our leather is dry i’ll take my groover set for 1/4” and go around all the edges. you want to make sure your edges are mostly cleaned up so your grooves are accurate

 

[Daniel Macina]

Time for tooling. First we wet the leather not a lot just enough to where it is all evenly damp then we let it sit till Color starts returning to normal. For stamping I decided to go simple and went with a alternating combo of these two. I cannot remember what the spiky one is called but the other is called a camouflage stamp. We just follow our groove around alternating between the two stamps till we’re finished. If your leather starts stiffening up and not taking tooling very well just re-dampen and let the leather start returning to normal color And keep going! Should end up something like this. You can see I had a weird ending of the stamping in the upper left corner if I had been smart I would’ve simply staggered my stamping a little bit under the belt loop where you couldn’t see it so it ended properly. also a little odd on the belt loop ends. Just didn’t think forward as much as I should’ve. This is what we have at this point.

 

[Daniel Macina]

Now to contact cement And punch holes/stitch make sure you have your belt loop edge and mouth of the sheath burnished before stitching or it will be very hard to finish nicely Now to mark our holes with the over stitch wheel. This particular one I believe is five stitches per inch. Once marked I will punch my holes with my stitching awl and stitch er up! Decided to try this orange tiger thread. I am undecided on it I really loved working with it but for lack of a better word it seemed to kind of loosen easier while stitching.

 

[Daniel Macina]

Now that we have it stitched up Trim up your welt flush with the sheath and run a edge Beveler around the edge. I didn’t dampen the whole sheath and fit the knife to it I just use my fingers and kind of trace the contours of the knife. Creates a nice pocket for the knife to sit in. Let sit overnight I then sand the edges with 220 sandpaper This will make them slick better. Then I wet very slightly and begin burnishing my edge. Just have a very cheap plastic slicker right now I really need to get something better. Once they start getting fairly smooth and shiny I will add some Gun Tragacante to finish. For whatever reason the fibers on this sheath absolutely refused to lay down properly which I’ve never had a huge problem with so I’m not sure what the deal was.