Horsewright
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2011
- Messages
- 11,780
Time to get started. Finally geting a chance to get going on these. While back Paul, Anthony and I had a discussion about sivving knives. Good ones were getting hard to find and even then the edge holding wasn't all that great. I thought about building one. I posted here and got lots of feedback on designing a skivving knife. So here is where we are. This isn't goining to be a WIP so much, or a how too, just a pictorial progress of where we're at. Comments and questions are more than welcome.
These are the three blades back from heat treat. My goal was 63 RC for edge holding ability and each blade has been tested and marked by Peters Heat Treating, they hit that goal. Each blade is 5" long. Paul had mentioned that he liked the round tip and I thought I might like to try the angled tip so that is why we have two different styles represented there. I had settled on AEB-L for the steel for a couple of reasons. First what better than razor blade steel to make such a knife and its available in the thin stock we were desiring. One of Pauls design characteristics that he wanted was a very flexible blade and so that dictacted the thin stock. I can get AEB-L past "scary" sharp into "ugly" sharp, (ugly sharp is the next level past scary on the sharp meter) and yet AEB-L remains very easy to resharpen. I used it on the last batch of roundknives I made at 63 RC and its edge holding ability has remained amazing. I think in all the time I've had my roundknife I've only resharpened it twice. This is with daily use, sometimes for hours at a time over a period of months. Strop it once in a while and it will cut and cut and cut....
Now I've finished the post heat treat grinding. I started at 80 grit (all gator belts), then 120 and finally 220. Then I hit them with a green Scothcbrite belt for a nice uniform working finish. Pretty much how I finish all my non damascus blades. These three are a group of forty knives I'm working on at the same time.
Often times folks think that if you get steel really hard you won't have flexability. This just isn't the case as this next pic shows. Flexability has more to do with the shape, geometry and thickness of the blade, not the hardness.
I think we'll be plenty fine in that regards.
So then handle materials. I choose Desert Ironwood, Cocobolo and Bocote. All three have similar characteristics. Tough, durable, woods with the finish in it. In fact on all three I don't use a finish, just sand and then buff a little. Another neat thing for this experimental project is I have a lot of all three and I traded for em. So cost here is almost nothing.
So now we've got them glued up. I decided to use Loveless bolts to secure the handles. With the flexability we have in these I was worried about the scales separating some over time if I just pinned them. Loveless bolts simply make that issue go away. The scales can't loosen up.
These are the three blades back from heat treat. My goal was 63 RC for edge holding ability and each blade has been tested and marked by Peters Heat Treating, they hit that goal. Each blade is 5" long. Paul had mentioned that he liked the round tip and I thought I might like to try the angled tip so that is why we have two different styles represented there. I had settled on AEB-L for the steel for a couple of reasons. First what better than razor blade steel to make such a knife and its available in the thin stock we were desiring. One of Pauls design characteristics that he wanted was a very flexible blade and so that dictacted the thin stock. I can get AEB-L past "scary" sharp into "ugly" sharp, (ugly sharp is the next level past scary on the sharp meter) and yet AEB-L remains very easy to resharpen. I used it on the last batch of roundknives I made at 63 RC and its edge holding ability has remained amazing. I think in all the time I've had my roundknife I've only resharpened it twice. This is with daily use, sometimes for hours at a time over a period of months. Strop it once in a while and it will cut and cut and cut....
Now I've finished the post heat treat grinding. I started at 80 grit (all gator belts), then 120 and finally 220. Then I hit them with a green Scothcbrite belt for a nice uniform working finish. Pretty much how I finish all my non damascus blades. These three are a group of forty knives I'm working on at the same time.
Often times folks think that if you get steel really hard you won't have flexability. This just isn't the case as this next pic shows. Flexability has more to do with the shape, geometry and thickness of the blade, not the hardness.
I think we'll be plenty fine in that regards.
So then handle materials. I choose Desert Ironwood, Cocobolo and Bocote. All three have similar characteristics. Tough, durable, woods with the finish in it. In fact on all three I don't use a finish, just sand and then buff a little. Another neat thing for this experimental project is I have a lot of all three and I traded for em. So cost here is almost nothing.
So now we've got them glued up. I decided to use Loveless bolts to secure the handles. With the flexability we have in these I was worried about the scales separating some over time if I just pinned them. Loveless bolts simply make that issue go away. The scales can't loosen up.
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