Jawga, y'all

U

UpsouthRick

New Member
Georgia that is.:biggrin:

I'm Rick, I'm 45 years old and I know exactly squat about knife making. Right now I'm spending money, setting up, reading, watching videos and soaking up as much information as I can before I start ruining steel. Which I feel is absolutely inevitable.:2: I figure I'll be ready to start mangling my first knife in about a month.

The journey has begun. I've always wanted to do this.:cool: I know that this forum will be invaluable.
 
UpsouthRick said:
Georgia that is.:biggrin:

I'm Rick, I'm 45 years old and I know exactly squat about knife making. Right now I'm spending money, setting up, reading, watching videos and soaking up as much information as I can before I start ruining steel. Which I feel is absolutely inevitable.:2: I figure I'll be ready to start mangling my first knife in about a month.

The journey has begun. I've always wanted to do this.:cool: I know that this forum will be invaluable.
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Hello Rick,

We are on same journey! Spent the money and time on trying to learn, still practicing with mild steel for now as it's much cheaper!

For now you can call me 'peaches'!
 
Thanks for the welcome, everyone!

I just picked up some mild steel from HD to start practicing on, too. Much cheaper! I'm way worse than peaches, It's more like peach cobbler. Most days.:biggrin:
 
Just a thought...

Mild steel is okay to play with the first few times. But it's actually harder to learn with because it grinds like butter. That's good and bad- bad because it doesn't act like cutlery steel. Cutlery steel can be had cheap. Check out NJsteelBaron.com

At least with cutlery steel, if you end up with a good piece you can actually heat treat it and make a knife from it. Why waste all that time and energy grinding / filing on a piece of metal that will never be useful? It doesn't take 20 tries to grind a knife. You'll have it figured out in the first few pieces, at least good enough to make a useful knife. Honestly, the first ten knives you'll probably do 80 percent by hand even if you have a grinder. The bevels will have so many high / low spots that you'll probably want to draw file the bevels and then hand sand them. I was really upset when I first bought my grinder. Here I was, having just spent a pile of money on the best grinder I could afford and lo and behold, I still ended up doing most of the work with files to fix what I couldn't do with my new whizbang grinder.

Don't be hard on yourself. Work in batches. Why? If you were to grind 10 knives of the same design, wouldn't you expect your 10th one to be a whole lot better than the first two? Of course you would. And it will be. But if you try to make every knife start to finish, one at a time, you'll never have enough consistent time at the grinder to get any good at it.
 
John Wilson said:
Just a thought...

Mild steel is okay to play with the first few times. But it's actually harder to learn with because it grinds like butter. That's good and bad- bad because it doesn't act like cutlery steel. Cutlery steel can be had cheap. Check out NJsteelBaron.com

At least with cutlery steel, if you end up with a good piece you can actually heat treat it and make a knife from it. Why waste all that time and energy grinding / filing on a piece of metal that will never be useful? It doesn't take 20 tries to grind a knife. You'll have it figured out in the first few pieces, at least good enough to make a useful knife. Honestly, the first ten knives you'll probably do 80 percent by hand even if you have a grinder. The bevels will have so many high / low spots that you'll probably want to draw file the bevels and then hand sand them. I was really upset when I first bought my grinder. Here I was, having just spent a pile of money on the best grinder I could afford and lo and behold, I still ended up doing most of the work with files to fix what I couldn't do with my new whizbang grinder.

Don't be hard on yourself. Work in batches. Why? If you were to grind 10 knives of the same design, wouldn't you expect your 10th one to be a whole lot better than the first two? Of course you would. And it will be. But if you try to make every knife start to finish, one at a time, you'll never have enough consistent time at the grinder to get any good at it.
Click to expand...

Thank you, John!
That is some solid and much appreciated advice. Especially the knives in batches suggestion. I was planning on one knife at a time, but batches do make way more sense!

I only bought 48" of mild steel in the same dimensions that the cutlery steel is. So it will only be approximately 4 "hogging" (I just learned that term:cool:) and test grinds. Just to get at least a basic feeling for steel, which I have never worked with.

I will waste no more time with mild steel after that, especially after reading your post. Thank you for your time and wisdom, John. It's much appreciated!

P.S. And I should have mentioned this in my first post.... I will be trying to complete at least six knives by Christmas for gifts. That is my only goal at the moment.
 
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