Liner lock WIP

Z

ZebDeming

Well-Known Member
Not that I don't have alot of other irons in the fire, but I've been wanting to make a liner lock folder. The wife's been gone for the past couple days and the kids have been with me, so no garage time, but lots of craft time :) while the girls cut up straws and paper to glue together I decided to draw up a pattern for a folder. I'm loosely following Ray Roger's tutorial ( http://www.rayrogers.com/ftutorial.htm ) Here's the pattern

DSCN1485.jpg


I'm attempting to get the look of a small tanto when open, I'm going to try for a hamon and cast some Shibuichi for the bolsters. I've cast my fair share of bronze and aluminum so I'm gonna try to alloy some silver and copper :)

Tonight when my wife got home, she let me out in the garage for a little bit, so I dug out some 1/2" round W1 and forged it to rough shape. I'm a better machinist than blacksmith (for now, I'm still practicing) so I decided to forge it oversize without bevels and then mill it to thickness so as to get a good uniform straight blade. I'll then cut the blade out from the steel, and then grind the bevels in after making the rest of the knife. Here's the forged and milled chunk of W1

DSCN1486.jpg


That's about all I have so far, let's hope I can keep my attention focused on this long enough to get it done.
Thanks all for watching, comments and critisizm are both welcomed

Zeb
 
Looking forward to seeing this progress. I will make my first locker this year.
 
ZebDeming said:
Not that I don't have alot of other irons in the fire, but I've been wanting to make a liner lock folder. The wife's been gone for the past couple days and the kids have been with me, so no garage time, but lots of craft time :) while the girls cut up straws and paper to glue together I decided to draw up a pattern for a folder. I'm loosely following Ray Roger's tutorial ( http://www.rayrogers.com/ftutorial.htm ) Here's the pattern

DSCN1485.jpg


I'm attempting to get the look of a small tanto when open, I'm going to try for a hamon and cast some Shibuichi for the bolsters. I've cast my fair share of bronze and aluminum so I'm gonna try to alloy some silver and copper :)

Tonight when my wife got home, she let me out in the garage for a little bit, so I dug out some 1/2" round W1 and forged it to rough shape. I'm a better machinist than blacksmith (for now, I'm still practicing) so I decided to forge it oversize without bevels and then mill it to thickness so as to get a good uniform straight blade. I'll then cut the blade out from the steel, and then grind the bevels in after making the rest of the knife. Here's the forged and milled chunk of W1

DSCN1486.jpg


That's about all I have so far, let's hope I can keep my attention focused on this long enough to get it done.
Thanks all for watching, comments and critisizm are both welcomed

Zeb
Click to expand...

Looking forward to seeing this one! REX
 
Forging and grinding, great stuff! This could be a great project for you and very enjoyable for me to watch as you do it. Ray Rogers has started a lot of folder makers on their way. Frank
 
Thanks for all the encouragement everyone, I've got a nasty habbit of starting alot of things and finishing very few :) and I'm hoping not to disappoint on this one. If I can make this look half as good as the stuff around here I'll be happy :)

Today I worked a bit more on the blade, I traced the blade pattern on the steel. I left my dykem at home, and I was cutting this out at work on lunch, so I improvised and spray painted it black to scribe a line, the paint sure don't stick like dykem, but I managed :) here's a pic of it clamped in the vise and my extended 1/4" die grinder with a friction wheel that I used to rough cut it out.

IMAG0132.jpg


I then used the bench grinder to grind close to the line, that pretty much burnt up my lunch break. Tonight when I got home from work I decided to get a pilot hole drilled for the pivot. I used my pattern and an automatic centerpunch to mark where to drill.

DSCN1487.jpg


I then clamped a scrap piece of aluminum, that I keep around to use as a fixture for various projects, in my mill. I took a couple passes with an endmill across the aluminum to make a surface that's square to the mill. Then I clamped the blade to the aluminum, located the centerpunch, centerdrilled and then finished off the hole with a 3/32" drill.

DSCN1488.jpg


DSCN1489.jpg


I then clamped the blade back up, squared it up best I could with a dial indicator on the back of the blade and took a few light cuts to square up the back. I know there's only one clamp holding it, but I couldn't fit another and I just took passes of a couple thou till it was cleaned up.

DSCN1490.jpg


I know alot of you folks will do this with a belt grinder or a file, but the little mill is just sitting there begging to be used and I rather like machine work. My hand eye coordination isn't the best and if the chance is there for me to screw up doing something freehand, I'll definatly screw it up.

Here's the end result as of the end of tonight.

DSCN1493.jpg


I was going to start on the liners, I dug around for some suitable steel to use to no avail, I was going to try and use an old circular saw blade, I stuck it on the grinder to see if it had enough carbon to harden and temper, the sawblade and grinder had other plans, it kicked back and dug one of the dull (thank god) tips into my hand, causing the little boo boo you can clearly see in the above pic :) I took that as a sign that I should just pony up and buy the proper steel for the job instead of scrounging, which brings a question. What kind of steel would be proper to use for the liner???? I'm assuming that it'll need a spring temper for the lock??

Thanks for watching folks

Zeb
 
I know that the liners can be made of steel but I have not used it before. I would use titanium 6al4v possibly .050 or .060 thick. Dan
 
you can use 420 stainless for the liners, but would try for the titianum. no heat treat and you can color them.
 
You can buy small pieces of titanium from AKS - Alpha Knife Supply. THey are very good people. Have you decided what size your pivot will be? 1/8 is very common for smaller liner locks. Buying one is for most of us the usual thing since it needs to be threaded through one end at least for a screw. I still manage cuts now and then off of the belts. Stay with it. Your positive attitude will see you through it all. Frank
 
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