One hell of a knife.

Well I spent a few hours Saturday and Sunday with Spencer in his shop grinding away on my knife and it has come out incredibly awesome.  I must say thanks a ton to Spencer with SAR Global for all the help and passing on of some of his wealth of knife making knowledge.  What started out as a file has turned into a great field knife which is too beautiful to go beating up but to me a knife should be used.  Here are some recent pictures.  The last thing to do is go out into my shop and whip up a Kydex sheath then go back to Spencers and put the final edge on the blade.

 

At this point we added the brass threads into the handle.

   

And here we began cutting the Ranger Green canvas Micarta for the handles.

          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the coolest effects as we began the final grinds was the unintentional hamon created during the hardening process.  It is a visual effect caused by the tempering process. It also separates the harder edge of the blade with the softer ridge. The pattern is merely a side effect of the tempering process where a traditional Japanese swordsmith tries to create a desired transition between the soft and hard metals.  On a sword such as a Katana clay is added to the back of the knifes edge to transfer heat in the kiln at a different rate, creating a softer more flexible frame of the knife while having a harder edge to retain its sharpness.  Harder does not mean stronger, where as hard steel is brittle while soft is more flexible and can withstand abuse but will not hold an edge as well.  We did not intend to create this process, but because of the rough checkering of the original file surface retained towards the back of the blade a hamon was created which also will inherently have a positive effect on the strength of the blade.

WoW, I was busy today...

I started a knife project today.  Well I kinda started a couple of days ago I guess.  Thanks to Spencer of SAR Global, with some coaching, and his awesome knife making equipment a new blade is born.

It started a few days ago with the selection of steel.  We decided to make a knife from a file.  So I went through my shop and gathered up some files, then I picked the one on the right, because it was the thickest flat file, giving me the optimum size for the knife I had in mind.  The file is a Simonds Nucut Flat-BD, and files are a great piece of steel.  I am still working on attaining the grade.

First things first, a file is hardened and we must remove the temper so into a kiln at 1500 degrees for around seven minutes then shut off and allowed to naturally cool overnight.  Once the temper was removed we went through a whole bunch of other stuff and here's a few pics.

OK, so there was a bunch of grinding, but there was a bit more.  Scribing, profiling, tweaking, different wheel diameters, drilling and so on.  Next is re hardening.  We will have to go back into the forge at 1500 for about 6 to 7 minutes, then right into a vat of oil to quench.  Then into the kiln at 400 with a natural cool down period twice for the final temper.  But we are long from finished,