WIP - Knife #8 for Secret Santa 2013

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This knife I completed last December, but took detail pictures of the process from start to finish (leaving out the sheath and sharpening). This is a stock removal process and I decided to make a simple knife for a gift giveaway at work. There's many ways to make a knife and this is just showing you one way that I've learned to do it with my ever evolving knife making process. I think it came out okay and the coworker that received it absolutely loved it. It's not the best knife, but I feel the next knife I do will be even better.

Before starting, the first thing you need to consider is safety. Since most of the time will be spent behind the grinder, it is important to have safety goggles, a good respirator, and safety gloves. These should be worn at all times while working behind the bench grinder or belt sander. It is also a good idea to wear these items while hand sanding too, as you don't want to breath in dust particles or get them in your eyes.


The first step of the process is to draw out on paper the design of the knife you want to make. I decided to go with a very simplistic design, since I decided on doing this last minute. If I recall, I think my design consisted of a 3" blade, 1/2" ricasso, and a 4" handle. Ricasso is the flat center area of the knife between the blade and handle, every good knife design should have one.


For this knife, I used 1095 bar stock .187" thick by 1" wide. I used it because it was what I had on hand at the time. I like using 1084 or 1095, and if I had the choice, would have gone with 1084 and something a little more thin. After cutting the bar stock to the length that I need using a cut off wheel, I took the paper template and a black marker and traced it onto the bar stock. The area marked in black is what needs to be removed.


Now we take the bar stock to the bench grinder and start removing the area we marked in black. A coarse grit stone will make short work of the metal. You don't need to take it all the way, you can leave a little to remove later on the belt sander.


As you work the piece, from time to time you will need to dunk it in water to cool it. I like to use a pitcher full of glass cleaner. Reason is because I find metal doesn't form rust as quickly using glass cleaner, but you are welcome to use water.


After a few minutes of grinding, you should start to see it take some shape.


After you get the tip close to where you want it, move onto profiling the handle.

 

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Continuing the handle...


Once basic profiling is complete, we want to stop for a moment and compare back to the original design template. Always good to make sure that we are on track. It doesn't need to be a 100% perfect match to the template just yet, we are going to grind further using the belt sander next.


I use a 1x30 belt grinder that you can get from Harbor freight for a good price. It works pretty decent and does a good job with small knives such as this one. At this point I use a 60 grit ceramic belt and this will remove metal fast.


I like to start with the tip and then work my way towards profiling the handle.

 

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Next we want to profile the spine and the bottom parts of the edge and handle. While doing this, we want to try and keep this flat as can be. It would be helpful to use a tool rest that is level and 90 degrees to the flat platen. Unfortunately, I've had bad luck with the cheap tool rest on mine and removed it. To be honest, I'm not entirely concerned if it doesn't come out flat as I'll just hand sand it flat later. More power to you if you can keep it flat at this part though.


And then we also want to grind both face sides of the knife. Again, same deal as we want to keep it flat as possible. If not, more hand sanding later.


After that, we want to compare it against our template. At this point, it vaguely resembles a knife.


If put the template over the piece, it will give us a good idea the areas we still need to work on. You may wish to use a black marker. Grind of this excess area until you get it as close as you can to the template.

 

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After profiling is complete, next step is to work on the bevel. For making a bevel, I use a file guide. It is not completely necessary when working on your first knives, but I found this to make a night and day difference when trying to make straight even plunge lines. This one I got from Benton Hendry-Vincent, made out of stainless steel, and works very well. A must have for anyone that wants straight even plunge lines. When tightening this on your knife, you want to try and keep it 90 degrees to the spine and place it where you want your edge to start. Please note, I'm still using that same 60 grit belt from before.


This is the starting position on the belt sander. You want to tilt the face towards to the belt at some angle (any where from 10 to 40 degrees) depending on how steep or shallow you want your bevel to be. I don't know the exact degree on mine as I just kind of get a feel for it while doing it. If I had to guess, I would say around 20 to 30.


To keep the bevel edge centered, I usually do one pass on one side then switch and do a pass on the opposite side, switching back and fourth on each pass. I try to check how centered the edge is after every pass and do multiple passes on the side that needs it (when/if the edge starts to go off center). Also from time to time, while running bevel against the belt, I will slow down on certain areas that need additional removing to keep the edge uniform. Once I got the edge down to a thickness of a dime, this is what it looked like.


After grinding the bevel is complete, the next step will be to start hand sanding the knife. I still keep the file guide on for the initial hand sanding before removing it. Reason is because I'm going to hand sand the bevel area first, and the file guide tells me how far to go. It's probably not necessary, but this is what I do. I also use a knife vise clamped into my bench vise. This makes it convenient when I need to rotate the knife and work on different sides.

 

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For hand sanding I use Mirka Gold PSA (Pressure Sensitive Adhesive, which means its sticky on the back) and a flat piece of wood. I usually cut the rolls out to be a little more than the width of the blade and somewhere between 1 to 2 feet in length. I then wrap this strip of sand paper around the piece of wood and use it to hand sand out all the scratch marks. First I start out with 120 grit and then eventually will work up to 220 grit. If I find the scratch marks are pretty deep, I start with 60 grit and then move up to 120.


Also, this might be optional for some, but I find that it works pretty well if you use cutting oil on the metal while hand sanding. Just a few drops each time will go far.


Using 120 grit, I begin hand sanding by stropping back and fourth, then side to side, all while applying good pressure.

 

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Next, we want to clean off the piece before repeating the process. I normally hand sand for about 30 seconds or so before cleaning off the piece and moving to a new section of sand paper on my strip.


To save time, I show a picture after every few hand sanding cycles. Yes, it does take a while, but very much worth it.


After getting most of the scratch marks out, we flip it over and do the other side. We don't need to get 100% of the scratch marks out at this point as we still need to heat treat the knife, but the more you can take out while the metal is still soft the better.

After both sides of been hand sanded, time to finally remove that file guide.

 

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Next, we want to hand sand the handle part. Some people may choose to skip this step as the handle will be covered by wood scales and no one is going to see this part of the handle. Plus, the scratch marks gives the glue something to grip. Even so, I felt like hand sanding the handle anyways, reason for me is because it wasn't flat. You want the handle to be flat with the ricasso, otherwise you might run into problems during heat treat and the wood scales might be difficult to go on flush. I believe I used 80 grit though for the handle.

Also, since we don't want to scratch up the hand sanding we just did, I use a small piece of wood in the knife vise to protect it from scratching.


Then we want to continue to hand sand all parts of the knife.

 

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Pay very close attention to detail and try to get most of the scratch marks out if you can. At some point, I believe I switched to 220 grit. Some prefer to only go up to 120 grit before heat treat, I usually like to go to 220. I don't really think it matters as you will have to do it again after heat treat to take off the scale, just a matter of preference.


After you are satisfied with your hand sanding, next step is to drill the holes into the tang for where the pins will go to hold the handle together. In my case, I decided that my handle would have two pins, therefore I need to drill two holes. Using a ruler, I try to keep the pin holes center and aligned and mark where I need to drill. I don't know if there is a wrong or correct placement of pin holes, but usually you do not want to go too close to the edge as you risk cracking either the tang or the wood scales. You also do not want to use too large of a size pin or too many as you reduce the strength of the tang. In this case, I decided two small pins centered would be good. I believe I used 3/32" brass pins, and you want to drill the holes using the same size drill bit as the pin. Maybe 1/64" larger on the drill bit size if you have it to allow the pin to slide in a bit easier to give room for it to expand. I don't have such a size drill bit, so I simply used 3/32".


Getting a bit late. Will continue to upload the rest of the pictures tomorrow.

 

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Next, it is time to drill the holes into the handle that we just marked. I use an old drill press given to me by my grandfather. Here I use a clamp to hold the knife in place while I drill. This is very important as I quickly learned after drilling into my first knife the dangers of the drill bit potentially grabbing the knife and doing similar to a helicopter affect. If the drill bit happens to catch the knife, the clamp will prevent that from happening.


As you drill, make sure to occasionally lift the drill bit to help clear the thread and perhaps spray it with cutting oil to cool the head and help your bits last longer. You don't want to drill all the way through in a single press.


Once completely drilled through, move on to the next hole. In hind sight, its probably better to move the knife on the clamp so that way the hole you are planning to drill is centered in the clamp and the weight is distributed more evenly, helping prevent a non-straight hole from occurring.


After drilling both holes, time to test to see if the pin fits by passing it all the way through without much resistance. Since I used the same size drill bit as the pin, its highly likely I will need to go back and drill a little more until it has a snug fit. Reason we want a little a room is so that way the pin has something to expand into when we start pinning it.


Lucked off and the first pin hole I tried had a good fit. The second pin hole however needed more work as the pin would not fit all the way through. Back to to the drill press.


Viola! Now it fits nicely.


Now we just need to clean and debur the holes. I simply used the sand paper and hand sanded them. It's also a good idea to use a counter sink at this step to give the pin more room to expand when we start pinning. Looks like I forgot to do that here, but it still worked at the end.


Again, comparing it to the original template. Looks like a pretty close match to me.

 

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Now its finally time for the heat treat.

First we need to get our safety gear, leather apron and leather gloves.


We also need to light up the forge. This is a forge I built out of soft and hard fire breaks that runs on a propane tank. Originally, I built this in a 6" diameter, and after realizing that it would not hold a flame, I put in extra fire brick to fill it up so that the opening would be 6" wide by 2" tall. I coated the inside with bubble alumina to help retain heat and to protect the fire bricks. I wrapped it together using metal wire and covered the outside with cement and spray painted it black rated for 2000 degrees. Probably completely unnecessary, but I was too excited at the time and wanted it to be the best forge ever. The bbq stand it sits on I found in a neighbor's bulk pile that they threw out.


After the forge is good and hot, time to stick the knife in and heat it. Typically, I heat it by passing it through the forge three times before quenching. Get it to a bright orange the first time and then to a soft red the third and final time. Make sure that the blade edge is always facing up.


I use peanut oil for my oil quenching. I quickly go from forge straight into this bucket and swirl it around for about 20 seconds or so. It is probably a good idea to use a metal bucket for this, but plastic is all I can find.


Next step is to get it into the oven as quickly as possible. I preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit before starting this process, that way the oven is ready to go when I stick it in. I have no idea what the best temperature to use is, but I guess this works. I use a cooking tray and a home made rig to hold the knife in place facing up. I set it in the oven for 1 hour, then take it out for another hour. Then put it back in for one more hour. This is to normalize the steel and in theory to get a nice even grain structure. If we skipped this step, then the blade would remain too brittle and would have a high chance of cracking.


Nothing like homemade KFC!

 

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Now its time to remove all that yucky scale. I start by first placing it in my home made descaling tank. Really all it is, is a PVC tube with the bottom end sealed and positioned into a piece of wood. Then filled up with vinegar. The vinegar helps eat away the scale. I tie wire metal through one of the pin holes and place it in. I leave it in there for about 30 minutes to an hour. If you leave it in the vinegar for too long, it will start to eat into the metal of the knife, which is not good!


From here on out it is all hand sanding away the scale starting with 120 grit paper and progressively moving up to 400 grit. You can go finer, but 400 is currently the finest I own and have available. Again, for the handle we do not need to go so fine since it will be covered up. I normally just leave it at 120.


Same thing with the other side.

 

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More hand sanding. For the bottom and top parts of the handle, I only hand sand to 120/220 grit. Reason is because this part is going to go back on the belt grinder later when working the handle material attached to the tang and will do more hand sanding after.







And this is what it looks like after hand sanding the handle and getting the scale off. Looks like a two-face knife!

 

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Just some more boring hand sanding. The important thing to remember is to get all your hand sanding finished on the blade at this point, which means I started at 120, then moved to 220, then 340, and finally 400. Go as a fine as you want to go. The goal is to finish all hand sanding before moving onto the handle. Also note, I used a rag wrapped around the area I just finished hand sanding to prevent any unnecessary marks/scratches while held by the vise.









This is what it looks like after hand sanding is complete.

 

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Next step is to start on the handle. Here I'm using a piece of red heart wood. I decided to go with red heart as I thought it would go well for a Christmas theme color, along with some brass pins.
So first step is going to be to trace the part of the handle we want to be covered onto the wood. Then flip the knife over and trace the other side of the handle.


After tracing out the handles to the wood, next is to cut the pieces out on a band-saw. It's important to leave a little fudge room when cutting out the scales, we can always remove more later after they have been attached to the handle. If you cut them to exact size, they may not fit properly and you will have to start again.


As you can see after both have been cut out that I left myself plenty of room to work with by cutting outside the drawn line, rather then directly on the line. This makes it much easier when attaching the handle.

 

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Now its time to attach the handles. The way I do it is that I use super glue and clamp the handle in place, wait for about an hour for the glue to dry, unclamp, drill my holes, then do the same for the other side.
Before we begin this step, make sure to have everything you need out and ready. I use latex gloves as glue/epoxy is toxic and not something you want to get on your skin. Also make sure to get out the glue/epxoy you plan to use along with the clamps.


Before actually using the glue/epoxy, we want to make sure both of our pieces will fit the handle and go where we want them to go. I like to use a marker and make a parallel line where I want the handle piece to go on the knife on both sides.


And one more thing to do before attaching the handles is to clean the area we are going to attach to. I used acetone in this case or you can use rubbing alcohol.


Now that we are finally ready, quickly apply the super glue or epoxy. If its quick drying like super glue, then you have five minutes to get the handle on and where you want it before its too late. Speed is important. Once on, clamp it in place and let the glue/epoxy dry. If its a longer drying epoxy you are using, then you will need to leave it clamped over night until it fully cures.


After the glue/epoxy has fully dried. Next we drill the holes through the wood, using the other side as a guide for the holes as shown below.

 

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We do the exact same thing on the opposite side.



Next we want to make sure our pins have a clean fit. If they do, then we want to mark them to cut so that way just a little bit sticks out of both sides as shown below.



Next cut the pin where we marked while it is held in the vise. It's probably safer to use the bench vise with teeth when doing this, but this way worked for me. Use a cut-off tool to cut the pin. Use pliers to pick it up as it will be very hot. Dunk in water to cool it.


Again, do this for the other pin too.

 

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Now its time for pinning the pins in place. This is what really holds the handle together (not the super glue, the glue is just to help hold it in place and give the wood a seal). Is this example, I actually over cut it which is probably a mistake, you want the pins to be shorter and stick out less than shown below. I'm still learning how to do this right.


Next we want to place the handle and pin onto something that we can hammer on. In this case I use a small flat railroad spike a cousin of mine gave me that his grandfather use to use. I've found it quite handy. In this case, I also used a carpenter's hammer, on the last most recent knife that I did, I used a round ball ping hammer and feel like I got much better results.


This mushroom affect I think is what you want to go for.


Hammer it in until it comes out flush on both sides.


Same thing for the other pin.


Goal is to try and hammer them as flush as possible.

 

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Now its time to go back to the grinder to sand down the wood handle. Here I used a 120 grit belt. Idea is to get it down to the thickness that you want and to get the tops and bottom flush to the metal. In hind sight, its probably a good idea to wrap some tape around the knife that was hand sanded to prevent it from being scratched or damaged while we work the wood on the sander.



After getting it to the thickness that you want and flush to the metal, next start sanding off the edges of the wood at a 45 degree angle all the way around.


After sanding on the belt sander, this is what it looked like.

 

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Now it's time for our favorite part, more hand sanding!
Just like before, wrap the part that is going to go into the knife vise with a towel.


This is the sand paper that I use to hand sand handles. I start with 150 grit and progressively work my way up to 400 grit.


We want to hand sand the handle round as though we were polishing a shoe as shown below.


After doing that to both sides enough times until you get the handle into the rough shape you like, next we are going to switch back to our 120 grit gold sand paper for hand sanding the metal part flat and removing all the scratch marks caused by the sander.


Do the same for the bottom as well. Yes, there is a deep notch that I caused by not being careful while I was on the sander. This actually took a long time to take out by hand sanding. Lesson is to be more careful behind the sander next time.

 

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Next we move up to 240 grit. Then 320. Then finally 400. Sorry for the lack of pictures of hand sanding, but there's not much of a visual difference as much as a difference in feel. With that in mind, its good from time to time to take off the glove and grip the handle to see how it feels and is coming along.



After we are satisfied with the look and feel from all our hand sanding, time for some final clean up and seal.
I use a chisel to take off some of gunk from under the handle. It's a good idea to use a brass chisel to avoid causing scratch marks, but at the time I misplaced mine and was stuck using a steel chisel.


Finally, to seal the wood, I use Tung Oil Finish. I like to use latex gloves and massage it into the wood evenly. I like to do around 3 - 5 coats. I usually allow 12 hours to dry between each coat.