Photos First Knife

caseyfulp

caseyfulp

Joined
Jan 13, 2017
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I ran a heat treat and temper on my first knife yesterday. It's 1084 from Aldo. Called there and talked to someone about the heat treat process. Also talked to Ed Braun and Kevin Chasen. I skipped the normalization cycles... oops. Any way, this is how it came out. I banged it around and dropped it on concrete a few times. It didn't shatter and also didn't show signs of wear. I sanded off the scale and this is what it looks like. You can see a couple lines in there that I originally thought were cracks... but they don't continue past the tang and into the bevel.

Should I bother using belts on this knife to finish it up and put a handle on it? Or should I take this new info from Ed and Kevin and consider this knife a lesson to apply to the next one? Thanks.
 
Looks good finish it. 1084 usually doesn't need to be normalized. It will probably surprise you how well it holds an edge.
 
I normalize all carbon steel that come from Aldo. My customers that have sent me blades out of 1084 from Aldo seam to like my heat treat. A good thing to remember is just becaus steel gets hard does not mean it heat treated properly or will hold a good edge on a knife.
 
JTknives said:
I normalize all carbon steel that come from Aldo. My customers that have sent me blades out of 1084 from Aldo seam to like my heat treat. A good thing to remember is just becaus steel gets hard does not mean it heat treated properly or will hold a good edge on a knife.
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Yeah, I'm certain that I messed up the process. Now that I have that squared away, my real question was whether or not to finish this knife knowing that the steel itself isn't exactly what it's supposed to be. Like I said... I've banged it around and slammed it on the floor without it breaking. I could have sworn it would due to the lines I saw. I would hate for the first knife that I complete to be a potentially unsafe one.
 
looks good to me. oh I also am working on some knives from new jersey steel baron @ 1084, but haven't heat treated yet. what is the recommended process on his 1084 steel?
 
Definitely keep the knife! It's your first! You can pull it out in 10 years and see how far you've come!

Daniel.
 
finish it out and use it - if it doesn't use well - keep it as a reminder of where you started, your first.
 
knoxknives said:
looks good to me. oh I also am working on some knives from new jersey steel baron @ 1084, but haven't heat treated yet. what is the recommended process on his 1084 steel?
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Are you using a kiln or a forge? They had me talk to Ed Braun and he dialed me in for my setup with some pointers.
 
I'm not saying your knife needs to be re heat treated but is there any reasion you can't redo the heat treat. When I posted above about heat treating I was talking about getting the maximum performance out of your steel. Heat treat is only half the battle the other half is the blade profile and edge geometry. Definitely finish the knife whether you redo the heat treat or not. You are bound to discover other things as you finish this knife that your going to do differently on your next knife. It's a learning process and what's important is that you constantly push yourself to become better.

I have seen alot of people try knifemaking and it seams like we have 2 types of people. We have the type of person that hops around from project to project when thy discover thy did somthing wrong. Then we have other people that really focus and dive into there project. Thy ask questions and really try there best to finish there first knife. I would say the second person advances as a knife maker much faster then the first.

Knife making hardly ever goes smooth and just about never stays on track so it's important to flow with the punches. Focus on the task at hand and do what needs to be done, you will learn so much more then if you jump around.
 
Looking good so far. I think you need to sand it and get off all the decarb layer. A lot of what you are seeing could be just in the decarb layer. 1084 should finish bright and shiny without those squiggly lines and discoloration. There aren't many shorts cuts in knife making especially in getting a good even finish.
 
Finishing and fitting is 90% of knifemaking
Small hunting knives can be rough ground in a couple minutes. Getting it ready to shape the handle (final grind, polishing, buffer or hand rubbing, fitting the guard/bolsters, fitting up the handle material, ect) can easily take hours. Shaping and finishing handles takes lots of practice too. Being able to go from the belt sander right to the buffer or 600 grit hand sanding takes many hours of practice. A mirrored tang with ivory or light colored wood right beside it is a lot more of a pain to get right than you could ever imagine.
So yes, finish that knife! Carry it for a while and see what you'd change on the next one.
You're going to screw up blade finishing and handles anyways, might as well minimize the amount of blade steel you go through doing that
 
Like everyone has said...FINISH IT! I still have one of the first batch I did. A good friend has another, and uses it often, and the third one, the tang snapped off!(it was a bad design...different from the other two) That was almost 6 years ago. It's something, to compare the first to knives I'm making now. You will amaze yourself with how far you go in a short amount of time. And it looks pretty nice to me.. good job!
 
Finish it! Looks good and deserves some use and abuse. I just got to work on my first batch of steel from Aldo. I got some 1084, 1095, O1, and a bunch of A2.
 
Finish it and hang it on the wall. You will be glad you did in a few years. Everyone starts their endeavor with a single first knife. Larry
 
JTknives said:
I'm not saying your knife needs to be re heat treated but is there any reasion you can't redo the heat treat. When I posted above about heat treating I was talking about getting the maximum performance out of your steel. Heat treat is only half the battle the other half is the blade profile and edge geometry. Definitely finish the knife whether you redo the heat treat or not. You are bound to discover other things as you finish this knife that your going to do differently on your next knife. It's a learning process and what's important is that you constantly push yourself to become better.

I have seen alot of people try knifemaking and it seams like we have 2 types of people. We have the type of person that hops around from project to project when thy discover thy did somthing wrong. Then we have other people that really focus and dive into there project. Thy ask questions and really try there best to finish there first knife. I would say the second person advances as a knife maker much faster then the first.

Knife making hardly ever goes smooth and just about never stays on track so it's important to flow with the punches. Focus on the task at hand and do what needs to be done, you will learn so much more then if you jump around.
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I was trying to figure out if the "cracking" was going to be an issue. Turns out, it was only in the scale. I didn't want to finish a knife that would fall apart during use... which is why I was trying to figure out if I should or not. I've already worked on it quite a bit more. Just waiting on some cactus juice to soak in so I can get a handle going. Apparently walnut takes a lot longer to do than the wood in the videos. That or the Hold Fast system sucks.

I think that part of my problem was trying to soak in a shotgun blast of information over the past few months and then step into the shop to apply it all. I had to take a few steps back and look over more information at each step. That has helped greatly. I've also had to do little things around the shop still so that has slowed the actual knife making progress. I spent a good portion of today installing a cell phone signal booster since I am basically in a dead zone. I'm now typing this message on my iPad while looking out the window at the beautiful blue ridge mountains. That's only a bonus... not having to drive down to the house to make a call or watch a video on YouTube is a huge time saver.

knoxknives said:
I will likely use charcoal in a homemade forge (eg brake drum)
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I little experience with heat treating... and absolutely none with a forge. I did, however, learn a bunch between the forums and YouTube. Use the BF search engine.

LARRYZ10 said:
Finish it and hang it on the wall. You will be glad you did in a few years. Everyone starts their endeavor with a single first knife. Larry
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The thought of not finishing it was driving me insane. I didn't want to finish a knife that was unsafe regardless. Looks as though all is well. Thanks.
 
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