Four fighters-pic heavy WIP

Tony Mont

Tony Mont

Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Apr 15, 2018
Messages
1,488
I'd like to start by giving my best wishes for the new year to everybody!

This one has been a long awaited project for me and the new year seems like a good place to start.
Before I begin, I'd like to point out a few things and the reason I'm doing this thread.

WIP threads have always been pleasant and I believe there are not enough of them. Also, I want to expose my work and techniques to as many people as possible, get as much as possible of feedback whether it's ''harsh'' or good and improve my skills a step further.

The plan is to make four fighters. Three of them are going to be the same, which one of them is going to be sent to a fellow member to test it as he sees fit and get some first hand feedback. The fourth one is meant for another gentleman who has been super nice to me and the way the life played out, I had to cancel. I must point out, the fourth knife is not going to be shown in detail here but the process will be the same.

I will post as many details I can and as soon as I can, keep in mind that this project is going to take a while.

Without further ado, let the fun begin! I hope you guys enjoy it!

After studying a lot the work of two of my favourite makers, Mr Bill Bagwell and Mr Nick Wheeler, I came up with the design. To give credit where credit is due, my design is heavilly inspired from Mr Nick Wheeler's fighters.

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As I said, the one design is going to be revealed in the end. Both have a 7" blade lenght and 2" wide. Here I'd like to point out that all of them are going to be done via stock removal. I'd love to forge them but my current equipment and workshop allows for minimal forging at the time being.

The steel of choice is 1095. The thickness at the ricasso will be ~0.314" combined a distal taper to make it faster in the hand. More specifically, ~0.196" at the start of the clip which will lead to a super fine tip.

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With some good old blue dykem and some heat, I'm ready to start scribing the profiles.

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My weapon of choice, actually belay that, not my weapon of choice but more like my only weapon until I get a nice metal bandsaw, an angle grinder with some cut off wheels.

*A little tip for my fellow angle grinder users, if wearing a long sleeve, tape the sleeves to avoid them getting caught in the grinder.* Just don't make it too tight and cut the blood circulation.

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Even tho dangerous, an angle grinder makes quick progress. All four are cut into lenght along with a little piece which is going to be used as a test piece for the heat treatment and check the grain.

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A few more minutes and all of them are rough cut and ready to be profiled.

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In case some of you have seen an old WIP thread of mine, you might remember my Frankenstein grinder, luckily I have upgraded since then to a Batko grinder. (I will upload a full review of this machine soon, this could be really useful to our European members and our limited choises).

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With an old 36grit belt and the tool rest set to 90 degrees, the profiles came out really fast.

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You may notice, I have not profiled 100% the choil and shoulders. I roughly shape them on the grinder and then move to files.

Again, some more layout fluid...

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To be continued because I can't upload more than 10 pictures...
 
PART 2

...once the layout fluid is dry, with the help of my trusty calipers and height gauge, I can scrib my grind lines.

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As you can see, I have scribed 2 million lines along with the center lines. The reason is to get a visual guide when I grind the distal taper.

Once the distal taper is ground (which I forgot to take a picture of, I hope to remember it tomorrow), I use a simple plunge line guide which I made from two pieces of heat treated O1 steel to do my heavy pre heat treatment grind. The guide is not meant to make my plunges symmetrical, just to stop me from overshooting my plunges and keep everything symmetrical enough for the heat treatment. I prefer to refine them after the heat treatment.

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Here is a quick video of me grinding the first knife.


Next step is to establish my shoulders using a proper file guide.

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Once everything is nicely square and rounded, I take a machinist's square and slide it on the carbide to ensure that my shoulders are not protruding.


Finally, grinding the tang down to it's appropriate size, I'm ready to stamp my logo. Since my last one was stolen in a robbery, I got a new one and it's super high quality, the damage? 44$ shipped!

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With that done, the first one is ready for the heat treatment, 3 more to grind the main bevels and shoulders!

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That's it for today, tomorrow I'm going to prepare the rest of them for the heat treatment and I will be back soon with more!

Looking forward to your comments and thoughts, thanks for reading!
Have a beautiful day!
 
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PART 3

It was a busy evening today. As I said on the previous post, I wanted to prepare the rest of them for the heat treatment.

I do not have a lot of pictures from today but not much happened anyway. I ground the main bevels, squared the shoulders, stamped and clayed.

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A quick picture I took while I was grinding.

Also, I remembered to take a picture of the distal taper!

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As you can see, all of them taper nicely. After the heat treatment I'm going to taper the tangs as well.
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Ready for the clay!

I use a pencil to mark some lines on the steel and be symmetrical on both sides. I promise the pencil is much more visible in real life!

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Numbered the knives to see how the hamons are going to turn out compared to the clay. This is going to help me improve my clay hamon skills in the future. Having a thick stock, an aggressive distal taper and parks50 oil, I decided to try on one of them a no clay hamon. I have no idea how this is going to turn out or if I'm going to get a hamon at all but it is worth at least a try.

That's it for today, in a few days I will heat treat them and update as soon as possible.

Have a beautiful day!
 
Thanks for taking the time to shoot the pictures/videos and posting them.... :cool:
 
this is a really good WiP thread!
thanks for giving back and paying it forward
 
I'm following this thread to see how it turns out.

I just got a 2x72 grinder, and have not really tested it out. (I tried grinding a cheap, garbage chisel point on a chinese chisel, that came in a set..I boogered the temper when I switched from ceramic belt to a 400 grit to clean it up).
 
It looks really good Tony. It's nice too see how far you have come since you started selling your knives.
 
Thank you guys for your kind words!

Bigfattyt said:
I'm following this thread to see how it turns out.

I just got a 2x72 grinder, and have not really tested it out. (I tried grinding a cheap, garbage chisel point on a chinese chisel, that came in a set..I boogered the temper when I switched from ceramic belt to a 400 grit to clean it up).
Click to expand...

It takes some time to get used to it. I used to have trouble with higher grit belt as well on my old grinder(single speed), the vfd has come a long way tho. Slower speeds, light pressure and patience is the key!
 
PART 3.5

I have not made any progress on the knives but I dialed the heat treatment on the test piece which in my opinion is one of the most important steps of this journey.

Therefore, this update is a small one. I snap tested the piece and I'm pretty pleased with the grain structure.
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Next step is to heat treat the actual knives. Prior to that, I will have to move my heat treating station from my balcony. Parks50 has a low flashing point and even with this small piece I almost burnt down my house, ALL HAIL MY FIRE BLANKET WHICH SAVED THE DAY!

I hope within the week I will have moved my equipment and keep going. I will update as soon as possible.

Have a beautiful day!
 
PART 4

Luckily within the week I was able to tranfer my oil to the workshop and do the heat treatments!

I started by preparing everything. While the oven was getting up to temperature, I did a quick run down to my precautions.

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Fire blanket on the ready just in case!

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The oven is not 100% completed but it's working. It still needs a proper door and case. Currently it can reach the temperature in ~15 minutes (just a note, all my temperatures are on celsius).

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QUENCHED! Even tho the workshop has a pretty good ventilation, I wear a respirator nonetheless.

I tempered them to 200C for two hours.
The three clayed blades came out great with promising hamons.
Unfortunately the no clay one did not harden properly. It did form a hamon but the edge close to the ricasso did not harden. I will have to normalize and retry with different in and out timing.
After the tempering was done, I quickly ground, sharpened and tested them. In the video is one of the tests, the blade was shaving arm hair and banged a few times on a steel rod. No chipping or rolling was done to the edge and it was still able to shave hair.

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With the testing done, I kept doing the final grinding.
I like doing my final grinding using a 120 ceramic belt, then a trizact A100 and finally A45.

With one blade final ground, I decided to change the pace and do the initial hand sanding.
EDM stones and some cutting oil make super fast progress.

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You may notice, I ground my maker's mark off. The reason is, it didn't get deep enough to keep a crisp logo after the polishing was done. I must practice more with my new logo. Instead, I will laser etch my logo later on.

Roughly 10 minutes later I'm almost done with the 220 grit stone. All that's left are some deeper mark which I did not take off in the grinder.

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A couple of minutes later the 220 grit was done!

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It's a dirty 220grit finish but the hamon is starting to pop up nicely.
For the time being I'm going to stop hand sanding and do the final grinding on the rest of the knives (and the heat treatment on the fourth one).

That's it for the day! All comments and advices are welcome!

Thanks for reading!
Have a beautiful day!
 
PART 5

I decided to work on the rest couple of knives this evening, not a huge update.

Once I was done with the second side of the first one, flats, spine and choil, I moved back to the grinder and ground the other 2.

A quick picture of the other side I forgot to show last time.
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I like to clean my spines with a 120grit belt prior to hand sanding. The 8" contact wheel is perfect for curves of these fighters.

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I didn't take any pictures from the hand sanding, it's pretty much the same as the last time. I did take a picture of my plunges tho.
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All of them are 99,3% there. To get them 100%, I'm going to take a block with a radius on the side and sand them there.

Also, a picture of the spines.
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And finally, this is how all three of them are currently sitting. Flats, spine, choil and bevels are hand sanded to a 220grit.
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On the next update, I'm going to taper the tangs, grind the clips and hand sand them to a 220grit as well. Also, I might redo the final heat treatment tomorrow.

Thanks for reading!
Have a beautiful day!
 
I gotta ask, why do you keep scribbling out a portion of one particular blade in the photos? lol

Also, if ya don't mind me asking, what type of cutting oil do you personally like using with your polishing stones?

Lookin' good!

~Paul
My Youtube Channel
... (Some older vids of some of the older knives I made)
 
coldsteelburns said:
I gotta ask, why do you keep scribbling out a portion of one particular blade in the photos? lol

Also, if ya don't mind me asking, what type of cutting oil do you personally like using with your polishing stones?

Lookin' good!

~Paul
My Youtube Channel
... (Some older vids of some of the older knives I made)
Click to expand...

The hidden one used to be a commissioned piece but some health issues made me cancel it. I'm hidding it so the gentleman who commissioned it will not know not that I'm working on it and it's going to be sort of a surprise. Other than that, it creates a bit of mystery for everybody else on what it could be.

As for the cutting oil, I can't remember which oil it is but I will upload a picture of it as soon as I'm back in the workshop. I used to use WD40 with the EDM stones but it was drying out really fast and it required a ton of it, this one keeps going forever and the cutting action feels much better.
 
PART 6

Really small update, I have been super busy lately working on commissions.

Paul, this is my cutting oil for the EDM stones. Is it a good cutting oil? I don't know. Does it work nicely with the EDM stones? Yes, it does!

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As I said, I hadn't have the time to work on the fighters as much as I'd like to. All I could do was take one of them up to 400 grit, grind the clip and taper it's tang.

On the first few grits on the clip I like to use my file jig to keep them even.
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A silhouette against the light is perfect to check the symmetry...trying to get a picture of it in the other hand, it's not!
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Moving up to 400 grit, now that the clip is ground, I must be really careful to keep a crisp line on the clip. A flat hard backing for the sand paper and preassure to keep it flat are the keys to success.

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When that was done, I taped the blade, scribed and tapered the tang. Obviously I forgot to take a picture of the tapered tang, next time.
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Now, I need to do all the steps these steps to the rest.
I hope I will be able to update soon! Have a beautiful day!

PS: I forgot to mention, I normalized the fourth one which is ready for me to retry the no clay hamon!
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PART 7

It's been a while since the last time I updated this thread. I haven't forgotten about it, I've had a lot of knives to completed the past months and there was no free time to keep working on the fighters. Now that there is a lockdown due to the covid virus and I can't go to my workshop, I found some time to organise the pictures and do some progress at home.

Last time I replied, I had started the polishing and normalising the fourth knife. Right after that I heat treated it. I decided to take the edge thickness a bit thinner in hopes to get a better result with the no-clay hamon technic. Obviously not a good idea, even tho it "worked", the blade cracked.

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And just like that, they remained three.

Using a bucket of water, a towel and my trusty propane torch, I drew back the tangs. This was a bit trickier than I expected because the edge is very thin and very close to the ricasso, one small mistake and I could start losing my hardness.

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I was driving the heat slowly towards the transition.

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This tape was a real pain to remove, I curse the moment I used it without some paper towel underneath.

With that done, it was time to start fitting the guards. I used mild steel for the guards.
Prior to that, I made sure that my tang was tapering as it should on the transition.

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Marked my area and punched a couple of holes. I kept some good distance from the shoulders. I'd rather file some more than restart the guard due to a bad fit on the shoulders.

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Once my two guide holes where drilled, I used a dremel with a cutting disc to connect them.

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Again, I kept a good distance from my lines for safety.

To be continued...
 
...PART 7 continuation.

With a flat diamon file I made some good progress on the guards. Even tho they remove material fast, they don't last long. Keep in mind that these diamond files are the cheapest available, perhaps a better set would last longer?

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Almost there, the process is pretty simple and repetitive. File->test fit->file again etc.
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When I was close enough, I hammered them in for a tight fit.

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Once the guards were all the way in, I checked for gaps. Using a pin hammer I pinned the guard, refitted, repolished. I did this until I had a perfect fit without the pin marks on the face of the guards.

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With this out of the way, I made a half template to keep my guard shape as symmetrical as possible.

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Once happy with the shape, I scribbed the shape.
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And this is how the knives are sitting.
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The next steps will be to rough shape the guards, polish the faces and hand sand the blades on the final grit. When these are done, I will start working on the handles. I hope sooner rather than later.

Thanks for reading!
Have a beautiful day!
 
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