New Member Checking In

[Merle]

Hi Everybody - Just wanted to check in and say "hi" from Buckley, WA. After lurking on a few of the more popular blade making forums, it sure seemed like this place had the coolest and most positive vibe, so I decided to register here.

I'm pretty new to blade making, but have been building all kinds of "stuff" my whole life. And as a mechanical engineer, I find I really enjoy delving into the technical metallurgical aspect of steels and heat treating. I just wish I had paid better attention in Material Science class back in college!

So far I've only made two knives; small drop point hunters out of 80crv2 and 1095. They came out "okay". But I did have a lot of fun building a propane heat treating forge out of firebrick and angle iron. I'll try to post some pics at some point.

thanks, Andy ("Merle" is just a nickname)

 

[Dennis Morland]

Welcome to KD.

 

[Mark Barone]

Hi Andy, Mark from Rhode Island.

 

[Von Gruff]

Giday Andy. welcome to our place

 

[Justin Presson]

Welcome Merle!

 

[Justin W.]

Howdy!
I'd love to take a look at those first knives that you made

 

[Randy Lucius]

Welcome to KD! You're right, this is a great forum. A lot of very nice people here.

 

[Sean Jones]

Welcome

 

[Ty Adams]

Welcome to KD.

 

[Merle]

Thanks everyone. Here are a couple pics of my first two knife attempts. Sorry for the low quality photos. It is tough to get good pics as you all know.

First one is 5/32" thick 80CRV2 with bloodwood handles and 316 SS bolsters. I wet sanded the metal up to I think 2500 grit, and was surprised how shiny a regular carbon steel could get. The two major things that went wrong on this one were 1) I elongated one of the .125" holes for the bolster pins, so a result the pin didn't "disappear" when ground flush to the surface. 2) I dropped the knife on a concrete floor (while holding it to do some hand sanding) and broke about 1/16" off the tip. I managed to re-grind and salvage it, but I know it used to look a lot cooler with the nice pointy tip. There's also a lot of grind marks and scratches that I didn't get polished out.

Second one is a salvage attempt of a blade that I initially goofed up the bevel grind. I managed to clean it up though and just make the blade a bit shorter. This one is 1/8" thick 1095 with black linen micarta handle (NO bolsters this time - those were tough!). I wanted to try making a hamon and etching, but as you can see it didn't really come out. But while no distinct hamon, the blade did get kind of a cool mottled appearance. (It looks better in real life than in the photos.)

-andy