The restoration begins

Cobalt said:
It's also very dangerous. If the belt catches the edge someone is getting hurt. Better to do it spine up.
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I agree and was taught to grind edge down by Jerry Hossom. But Cliff maintained grinding with the edge up contributed to less burr formation. He also believed grinding with the edge trailing (edge down) tended to load more heat into the edge and posed a greater risk of compromising the heat treat.
 
Ironic said:
I agree and was taught to grind edge down by Jerry Hossom. But Cliff maintained grinding with the edge up contributed to less burr formation. He also believed grinding with the edge trailing (edge down) tended to load more heat into the edge and posed a greater risk of compromising the heat treat.
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Cliff is right about burr formation because you are pushing metal away from the apex of the edge. As for heat, thats more complicated. The heat is more a factor of the right grit type and amount of force. Biggest mistakes people make are starting with too fine a grit and pushing the blade too hard to remove metal, which creates a lot of heat. A coarse grit will remove more metal with little pressure and little heat regardless of which orientation the edge is on. All I need is a couple of passes with a coarse grit to set an edge angle. Then refine with higher grits. The secret to not heating up is to not old the edge on the belt longer than an easy steady pass. The risk of injury or damage is higher with edge up orientation.

To each his own.
 
Pretty much finished for now. High satin/polish and a zero edge. The angle on the edge was near 9 to 10 dps, so I convexed it and transitioned it into the main profile.

ItALPhr.jpeg
 
That’s an amazing job! Truly a thing of beauty—congrats on a cool demonstration of your skills and the final result. After all the regrinds, is the blade significantly thinner than new at this point?
 
Ironic said:
That’s an amazing job! Truly a thing of beauty—congrats on a cool demonstration of your skills and the final result. After all the regrinds, is the blade significantly thinner than new at this point?
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Yes. Cliff had thinned the edge out and before my convex it was at .025" bte. I think he had it at near 8dps near the ricaso. If it still had an edge shoulder it would be closer to .03 now.
 
Cool. Much change in thickness at the spine/ricasso or in the main body of the blade? Was wondering if the multiple “clean-up” grinding thinned out the main body of the blade much. Thx
 
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Ironic said:
Cool. Much change in thickness at the spine/ricasso or in the main body of the blade? Was wondering if the multiple “clean-up” grinding thinned out the main body of the blade much. Thx
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Not really. The overall dimension of the knife hasnt changed much. We are talking thousandths of an inch. There is still plenty of meat there.
 
resinguy said:
Beautiful.

I must note that nowhere have you explained exactly how you made this transformation. Enquiring minds want to know.
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I second this!

Nice job Cobalt Cobalt !

Would love to see a video of it to get a better sense of what it looks like up close. A satin or polished finish is always hard to photographically capture. Seeing it in motion in a video is much better.
 
resinguy said:
Beautiful.

I must note that nowhere have you explained exactly how you made this transformation. Enquiring minds want to know.
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The Knife Life said:
I second this!

Nice job Cobalt Cobalt !

Would love to see a video of it to get a better sense of what it looks like up close. A satin or polished finish is always hard to photographically capture. Seeing it in motion in a video is much better.
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Lmao. Well, I have to admit, there is some photo trickery there to hide some of the areas I missed. But the process was fairly simple. I used 320 grit sandpaper to remove the blemishes and rock dents it had. Did that for about 2 hours lightly. Once I got the rough shape I used the green rough pads and worked that for another two hours lightly. Then once all the marks were mostly gone I hit it lightly with polishing compound for about two hours by hand. It wasn't perfect so I evened it out with a polishing wheel for 3 slow passes on each side. The ricasso area is not the same grit since I left it alone. But since this is originally an LE grade blade it has no dimples. I did not do this all at once. I did it over a week. So time is approximate since I was watching tv while doing it. As for the edge i have a collection of leather strops with 3 different grits. I worked the efge with the rough grit to remove the shoulder. Then i went to the next compound and finished with the finest compound which is around 2000 grit, I think. Not sure. Its not perfect but at 6 feet it looks great. Better than before. This is not a BanTang project by any means. It is not perfect. But good enough
 
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