Ken Erickson Knives: A Retrospective

Thanks for this WIP, Ken. It is enormous fun, especially for us less talented mortals.
One of your pics including the old knife, enlightens me as to how interesting it is to have that wooden handle roll down to meet the Rat-tail. Nice flow of curves! No reason why the wood can't be part of the whole "sculpture". I can even envision a "beaded" edge on the wood.
Some of the cutlers of yore blended the shaping of handles/bolster etc. to provide complementary textures.
Whoops - off on another tangent, sorry!
See what you inspire with these WIPs, Ken?
 
I had a chance to get out in the shop again today and make some progress.

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Campbell decided on CPM154cm on this knife. A surface grinder is not a necessity in slipjoint making but it is nice to be able to take a piece of stock and grind it exactly to the desired thickness. This is the piece of CPM154cm after surface grinding that I will profile both the blade and spring out of.

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This is the spring and blade profiled and rough fit to the frame. The reason that they are rough fit is that they are in the annealed state at this point. After heat treat I will do the final fitting of the tang and spring to achieve correct tension/rise and fall.


This next set of pictures are close ups of the tang and spring in the different positions to give a feel for how these parts interact with each other. My next step will be to do some "tweaking" of the blade and spring, then cut the nail pull. Then on to heat treat! Thanks for following along with this build, comments or questions welcome.

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I remember what Kerry said a few years ago...."Why does Tony Bose make a Cotton Sampler? Because he can!" Looks like we have another contender in the ring......
 
Fantastic, Ken, I can't wait to see how you get the spring and spine to line up perfectly. Looks like quite a bit of metal to remove.
 
black mamba said:
Fantastic, Ken, I can't wait to see how you get the spring and spine to line up perfectly. Looks like quite a bit of metal to remove.
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Jeff,

There is actually a lot less extra material than it appears in the photographs. If you compare my assembly pin at .093 with the extra material on the backspring at this point you can tell its about the same.

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Time to cut the nail pull in. This is one of the hardest things to get right when building a slipjoint. There are many threads in this forum discussing pros and cons of the different type of pulls , how they are installed, more importantly where they are installed. A lot of factors must come together at the right place and time for the pull to be "right". This knife complicates matters a bit for the reason the pull is located in the heavy swedge. Which I might add does not exist at this time!:eek: Because the pull is install pre-heat treat and pre-grinding I have to cut it much deeper now then it will end up being. This can be the tough part, to determine how deep to cut now, so after the blade grinding is completed you end up with a properly shaped nail pull.

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My fixture and set-up in my milling machine ready to cut.

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After touching the surface of the blade I zero my handwheel so I can keep track of how deep I make my cut.

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Looks good! Nice and crisp/sharp, located where it needs to be. At this point you can see its much deeper and larger than what it will be after blade grinding

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It maybe hard to see in this picture but I scribe a line on the backspring and work the tang/spring to get it as close as possible before heat treating. This leaves less work afterwards.

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You can see the tip is buried pretty deep in the frame now, but when tension is put on the spring the blade tip will rise a bit.

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Ready to heat treat. Blade and spring are foiled wrapped and into the furnace.

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Parts into the furnace!
 
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Thanks for chance to follow the process closely. This is most interesting, as well as the knife pattern which I like a lot.
Mike
 
Ken,

These are just great photos of the WIP! Thanks again for sharing them with us, and then describing the work so well, that even nimrods like me can understand it!

Kent
 
2Shot said:
Ken,

These are just great photos of the WIP! Thanks again for sharing them with us, and then describing the work so well, that even nimrods like me can understand it!

Kent
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Kent and the rest of you guys, It really is my pleasure when I do a wip like this. I get as much enjoyment out of it as anyone. Not everyone is in a position where they can make an object, hopefully treasured for a long time, document it, and share the passion with like-minded folks. I know how fortunate I am. It is I that should be thanking you guys.
 
Thanks for taking the time Ken. Great knife for a WIP. It will be interesting to see the blade being ground. Also, are you going to do the bolsters the same as on Campbell's knife? What handle material?
 
Thanks for this WIP Ken. It's really interesting and eye-opening to see all that's involved!!
 
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