Very basic question on balance

dereklee12

dereklee12

Well-Known Member
I have held many knives and know that they feel good in my hand. My question is how do i make a blank feel like a finished knife. How much weight do you want to take off the the back to make it feel right? Should i just start drilling and hold it then drill again? or is there some kind of rule of thumb to get the weight right then fine tune from there?
 
There is no easy answer to that. Different handle materials have different weights. Some woods are denser, thus heavier, than others. You will need to take the ticknes of the material into account too. It will also depend on what, if any metal furniture you wish to finish the knife with.

Doug
 
I agree with Doug. Even the height of the bevels can make some difference depending on how thick the stock you are starting out with is. That being said, not everybody wants the balance point in the same place. Some like it to balance at the index finger, some at the ricasso, some right where handle ends and blade begins (or just BEHIND the ricasso. Depending on the style of knife and its intendid purpose, you may even want it to be a little blade heavy.

Personally, I think the biggest difference in how finished a knife feels is not so much how it balances, but more in how well the handle feels in your hand to begin with. You can have a knife that balances dead center, but if the handle is sharp and blocky, it will never feel right.
 
I concur with the two previous posters.

Andrew's point in particular and the fit & finish of the handle being even more important I really take to heart.

Keep making knives and analyzing your finished products! You will develop a sense of how to get the balance right for what you desire in each one of your patterns..

Here a couple of things that may help.

For a index finger balance point, I grind with a full Vee or flat all the way to the spine. I have found that this will cut the weight in half from the blade portion of the blank.

Then drill out the pin holes in the handle and extra weight reducing holes until the blank is very nose heavy with a guesstamit that the liners, Pins and handle material will bring it back to neutral balance at the index finger or where ever you wish..

It's not very exact, but in a few knives you will get a good understanding of a process to get the balance you want.

After I have established this, I then can Profile, Drill the handle, Grind the blade, HT.
Clean and do any other grinding to finish. "I like to grind after HT" Tape up your blade, Mount and shape the handle and do your final finish and edge and Logo.

Its 530 am and I hope this helps cause I am going back to sleep for a couple of hours on my one day off a week! LOL

Laurence

www.rhinoknives.com
 
I came to this question some time ago and this is how I went about it...

For me I have tons of drawing and measurements for my patterns and I plan out where I want the balance point to be. I estimated how much metal was going to be removed by the beveling and then estimated the weight. From there I weighed the scales and pins and then figured out how many holes I needed to drill to make the balancing point where I wanted it.

I also ground the bevel and then started drilling holes and kept checking the balance until I found what I liked and then added the scales. I like using wood so the weight of the wood was not much to over weigh one end. I ended up doing this method first and found that I needed to be more precise so I tried the first method.
 
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