Need Newbie Pointers

G

Grizzly Bear

Well-Known Member
Hey Guys,

I need some advise.

Does it help to roughen the 440C knife blank and the burl wood scales before I try and epoxy them on for better surface area or should I leave them smooth for better adhesion to each other; the kind of adhesion that you get when you put two pieces of glass together with a little moisture between them. You can't get them apart unless you slide them off of each other.

I have made 4 previous knives by buying blades and attaching 1 w/cord, 2 w/kingwood and 1 with buckeye burl wood. They came out nice, very nice for the buckeye burl wood knife.

I am going to do my first stock removal grind. You can tell by my next question that I don't know much about what I am about to undertake.

How far do you take the grind down to the final form before you heat treat it? I have read that you don't want to take it down too far because the heat treat will really warp a blade that is too thin at the edge. I want to take the grind down as far as I dare so that I don't have to grind so much on hardened steel (440C).

Would it be best to do as much grinding as possible in the annealed state or is it just the facts that you cut out your blade in the annealed state and do the edge grind in the hardened state?

Thanks so much for you help. I don't want to screw up my first try if I can gleam enough knowledge from you guys to avoid at least some of my screw ups.

Thanks for your help.

Grizzly Bear
 
Annealed grind is faster than hardened also you wont damage the temper in the annealed state.
80 grit on your gluing sufaces is whats worked for me.
Im still learnomg so the lil I know and have used I will share.
 
I mainly forge to about 90%. I hammer my edge to the thickness of a nickel, grind to the thickness of a dime, then heat treat. Seems to work fine. Also do my own heat treating. For handle attachment I leave the tang at 120 grit, use GFlex epoxy with Corby Screws for mechanical attachment on nearly all my knives. The exception is when my design calls for domed pins. My favorite material for Corbys and pins is stainless steel. For guards and bolsters 416 stainless steel.

Hope this helps you a small bit...
 
I'm a newbie, too. But I've just gone through the stage you are in and now I'm nearing 60 knives completed. I started out with CPM154 and made thirty knives before I tried another steel (AEB-L). I'm a big believer in limiting the number of variables you have to contend with during the learning curve, so I picked one steel and stuck with it. I'm glad that I did.

The hardest part of learning stock removal, to me, is getting control over your grinder. Again, regardless of the type of grinder you use- it's the grinder you have- and you need to get consistent with it. The only way to do that is to grind, grind, and grind some more (preferably with the same steel so that when things change you'll know it's due to something you did and not a change in materials.)

I like to work in batches. If you make ten of the same knife, the 10th one you grind should be a lot better than the first one you grind, right? That's only logical. So imagine how much faster you will learn to grind if you go from one blade to the next, and you keep going until you find your groove and develop some muscle memory. The alternative is an exercise in frustration and missed learning opportunities. If you grind one- then stop. Send to heat treat. Get it back and finish grind it. Then work on the handle.... by the time you ever get around to grinding knife #2 you won't remember how the first one felt, or why your plunge lines were uneven, or why the bevel was wavy and uneven. Whereas, if you grind several bevels the first one will be atrocious, the second one better, the third one not so bad, the fourth one you're avoiding a lot of mistakes, the fifth one you learn to rock the blade pressure to control your grind line, the sixth one you learn... Then you fix them. Fix them again. Look at them a day later and see something else, fix it. Then you are pretty satisfied and you send them to heat treat. When they come back you have to finish grinding them. But now you've ground those 10 knives 30 times already (all the fixing and touch ups) and your experience level is way better than it was and you find the finish grinding goes much easier.

My first batch was eight knives. I think on four of them I basically ended up draw filing the bevels flat when I got done grinding them (pre heat treat). I was pretty upset that I spent all that money on a 2x72 grinder, only to do most of the work with files and sandpaper.

My second batch was ten knives. Every one of these was light years better than the first batch. My bevels were still a bit wavy and uneven, but not so bad I couldn't flatten them perfectly with sandpaper during the hand sanding phase. By this time I had a mentor I could call and talk to and he recommended a different kind of belts. THIS WAS HUGE. Going to Trizact belts at 220, 400, 600 made such a world of difference that my grind quality went up by an order of magnitude. After fighting splice bump and getting wavy bevels, a Trizact belt is like laying your bevel against a piece of indoor/outdoor carpet. It is a luxurious experience by comparison.

I now grind all of my knives after heat treating, but there's no way I'd do that starting out. In the beginning you spend more time fixing mistakes than you do initial grinding. You just can't fix stuff with files after heat treat. And believe me- files are your best friend in the beginning. I learned that lesson the hard way- a grinder is not magical. It's just a lot quicker than files. But it doesn't do anything at all that files and elbow grease don't do. And with files nothing moves unless you move it. With a grinder, it's all happened before you know what happened. It will seem like a never-ending series of corrections until you stumble your way into a good grind. Once you get control over the grinder it become like files- you do everything with purpose and you predict what's going to happen before you lay the bevel on the belt. That takes time and there's no way around it.
 
Last edited:
Oh, and to answer your questions in your original post:

Pre Heat treat, for stainless steel you want to grind until the knife is basically complete, but leave about 1mm thickness (minimum) at the edge. At least in the beginning, try to get the knife as near complete as you can before heat treat because it will never be easier than it will be during the annealed state. I know, I know. I said "millimeter". I like whole numbers.

Anyhoo...

You mention 440C. Great steel. AEB-L is also fantastic stainless steel (unless you are making camp choppers) and is dirt cheap. I get it from New Jersey Steel Baron (Aldo Bruno).
 
John, this is really good advice. I never thought of doing a bunch of blade grinds at one time to learn the process. Of course this is the way I learned to play tennis, shoot archery, throw the football and any other sport that I needed to learn muscle member with. Until your response, I never thought of learning how to grind in the same way.

Thanks so much for your help. I will start right away with the teaching method that you have laid out.

Grizzly Bear
 
Best of luck.

The best advice I've gotten is to slow down. Just like shooting / archery- call your shots before you release. Everything you do needs purpose and you need to predict what you're about to see when you lift the knife off the belt.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
John has listed many great pointers for learning to get your grinds consistent . I also recommend that you try a couple of different belts. Some grind best with Blaze, some with 3m Cubritron I've found that VSM are the best belts for my money but you may be different cause we all use different amounts of pressure and that can make a big difference.
 
Belt grinders with platens make things kinda flat. A disc grinder makes things flatter. A surface plate, if used right can make things even flatter and is an amazing tool to have.

if you don't have a surface plate check the local monument dealer for any pieces of polished flat granite.
 
If your like some of us newbies and ising a 1x grinder there is a way to make a hollow grind insert. You make a 3/4" wide main body and arms cross, 4" talland make it overhang 1" on either side of the table and bow the center of it so the belt moves over it similar to the wheels and it works quite well. My grampa showed me how on his 1x and is what hes made several knives with and it is a cheap and slick mod.
 
Thanks to all who have helped me. I appreciate it greatly.

I am going to buy a better grinder as soon as I can save up the money to buy one. I am using a disc/belt grinder I bought from Harbor Freight, its all I could afford. It's great at squaring scales, flat sanding the knife blank after I have used an angle grinder to cut out the outline, and to go around the edge of the blade to smooth and square up its edges. I am using a hand held drill with a leveling bubble and sanding drums to grind out the curves in the blade. And of course files and sand paper.

I am looking forward to getting a good grinder that I can do precise work with!

Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear
 
To answer your first question, a few years ago I made a letter opener, one handle scale came off after some use. Since then I use a dremel and a carbide burr to rough up areas to be glued together, I also make sure that I use JB Weld or a good epoxy. No more loose handle scales.
Second question, I do not like to polish heat treated steel, it takes a lot of elbow grease so I like to get my blades close to done before heat treat. I have used Peters Heat Treat for blades made of O-1, ATS-34 and 154CM with the taper ground down to .030, they said it was no problem to keep them straight. I trusted them, had no problems, all is well.
Dan
 
Dan,

Thanks for your input, especially the heads up on Peters Heat Treat. I have been looking for someone to do my heat treating until I get a shop built and install a heat treating oven.

Grizzly Bear
 
Tracy,

Tracy, I knew that a granite or fireplace glass on the platen would make grinding smoother but I didn't know the best place to buy the granite. It never dawned on me to go to a monument dealer.

Thanks for your input.

Grizzly Bear
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top