My first knife design. Critiques and Comments welcome

I sat here today and read through this and enjoyed it. Well, as much as I could enjoy it. It kept my mind busy and that was the important thing. Mom had surgery today to clean out some arteries, but all seems to be going well. Some swelling and pain, but to be expected. Don't mind me, I'm just rattling to hear myself talk. Good job on your knife! I look forward to more posts like yours. I haven't posted in awhile, but I did enjoy everyone taking their time to help you along.
 
Anxiously awaiting it's return. With a little luck she'll be here tomorrow. Now I definitely have to make sure the 3 I have sitting on my bench get all the sanding complete and be ready for HT.

Anthony hope your mom makes a speedy recovery and glad my WIP was able to keep you occupied for a while.
 
Woo-hoo knife arrived today!

A few things I noticed:

1. I didn't pay enough attention to the edges of the knife before sending it out, I noticed a few file marks where I shrunk the handle down a bit. For the most part I have them cleaned up already.

2. Getting the longer of the 2 plunge lines sanded down to meet the length of the other is going to take what seems like an act of God. I've been sanding for about 2 hours so far and seems like all I have is a really shiny (still) longer plunge line.

3. I noticed what looks like "pitting" for lack of a better word in the ricasso area. Naturally not somewhere that would be covered by the scales. Again this is something that I either didn't notice when I sent it. (I thought I had it all sanded nicely) Again this is something else that seems like no matter what they don't want to seem to budge either. I've been sanding the same area for about 2 hours now and it hasn't seem to have gotten any better. It's also on both sided of the blade in roughly the same area. No idea why they would just be there and nowhere else on the knife :confused:

Below is a pic of what I'm talking about, it's kind of tough to see with the camera and it really only shows noticeably in certain light but it's in the circled areas. This also isn't the side I was working on, this one has the good plunge line.

I also figured I'd have an uglier looking blade to clean up but I'm guessing stainless doesn't get that different color look to it after it's been treated?

Knife014.jpg
 
Matt,
You have to go back to 220 grit, and re-sand all the surfaces. Those spots could be artifacts of the HT, or tiny specks that showed up more after HT. Either way, they should sand out. That is why you only go to about 95% finished shape pre-HT, because you will take a little more off afterward.
The blade was a bit darker after the HT, but I ran it across a Scotch-Brite belt to clean the surface up a tad.
The edges of the tang may have a few grinding marks from shaping the scales. That will come out as you sand the scales and tang flush.

It will take a bit of time to get it sanded down now that it is hard, but once it is done to 400 grit it goes much faster.

Enjoy - Stacy
 
I've been hammering the plunge line and ricasso with 120 trying to get them up to snuff before jumping to 220 and nothing seems to want to budge. I'm sure eventually it will. Oh well break is over, back to sanding :)
 
You are now finding out the BIG difference between Rc 48 steel and Rc 60 steel.
Stacy
 
Without going into exact detail it involved me taking a Dremel and round sanding bit to the plunge line to try and speed up the obnoxiously long sanding process to try and shrink the line down. Then creating a somewhat low spot. Realizing that it will take forever to get that out I figured it would be a good idea to put it on the grinder with a 120 belt. From there I went a little past the area I needed to focus on and hit the blade with it. Also managed to put a slight bevel in the ricasso by likely not approaching the belt perfectly flat.

This particular side of the knife has been my nemesis since the beginning and it's only making my nightmare worse. With a little luck I should have this knife finished by the next presidential election. I should also order a pallet of sandpaper because I'll be burning through what I have in no time now.
 
Well I've got good news, and naturally, bad news.

The good news is the bevel that was in the ricasso was NOT caused by that I did the other night. I only made relatively few passes on the grinder to do as much damage as I did. Which leads me to believe that it was done pre HT most likely when cutting in the choil and not coming in perfectly square to the blade....I guess. I had to remove A LOT of metal to get it almost completely gone (reasons for not eliminating it completely to follow). I also shrunk the plunge line down considerably while doing that as a result of making so many passes it naturally shortened up the plunge line.


Now the bad news :(. I removed enough to actually have the blade sit higher that the ricasso almost like a reversed plunge line. The silver lining I guess is the amount that needs to be taken down is not as much as was needed to shorten the plunge line, so it might be easier to try and erase that mistake.

Below is the pic of my current nightmare, it's hard to see because I either can't or haven't figured out how to turn the flash off. And a lot of times the flash is right on the line making it impossible to see. The middle line shows where the plunge basically ends. Arrow pointing to the left is the plunge (naturally). Arrow pointing to the right shows where the high spot is. The arrow near the choil (which is kinda hard to see) points to where the bevel was. It considerably smaller now and before I started grinding it down tapered down to almost the finger guard.

The fact that my blade is not perfectly flat is making my life harder naturally.

P1290717.jpg
 
Your into the home stretch now, it wont take that much longer to get it. Sometimes we just have to walk away from the project for a bit and clear our heads. We sit there and stare at something long enough we do stupid things:eek: I personally think I may have spent too much time trying to get the perfect mirror finish on mine. I finaly had to say enough is enough, at my present skill level this is where it is going to stay.
 
Believe it or not my series of mistakes has actually led to some very positive results. I now have the plunge lines basically near perfect...(bear in mind I haven't touched the other side of the blade yet but as of right now they match). So I effectively have gotten my nightmare side on the run.

I still have to try and sand down that hump more but I have it looking better than it was. Before it was blatantly obvious to where you could actually see the difference in the height of the metal. Now it's basically only noticeable when the light catches it. I'm hoping I get that nailed down either today or tomorrow. It's a ton of sanding with such little results so we'll see.

Once this side gets taken care of there shouldn't be that much more corrective work from what I can see. The other side will likely need a decent amount of sanding to get it as flat as possible but. Considering that I should be able to move into the finishing stages. I still haven't decided if I want to go mirror or satin finish on it.... It's stainless so I don't have to worry about it getting rusted too easily, but a mirror finish looks snappy as well.
 
Sometime you have to "blend" in a spot that has a high or low area. If you can sand the hump down and make everything dead flat, fine. If not, just gracefully curve the surfaces into each other as best you can. Once the scales are on, slight imperfections in these areas are less noticeable anyway. Good deal on the plunge lines.
Stacy
 
Fletch,

Slow down a bit!! Patience!!!

It almost seems like you are trying to hurry things along(using a grinder instead of sand paper). Hurrying will only make matters worse!
 
I'll admit I'm a bit overzealous about these plunge lines. They have been bothering me since I sent it to Stacy for the HT. Now that I'm trying to nail them down after the HT and seeing how little I'm accomplishing by hand... Then I look over and see my little grinder sitting there. Knowing it can cut my sanding time down dramatically when I need to take a fair amount of steel off is a hard temptation to avoid.

Although with a bit more sanding I know I'll be able to live with myself with regards to the way the plunge lines look. I also know that once that is squared away I can focus on moving up through the grits and then really making this knife look good.
 
FINALLY!

I couldn't let myself go to bed until I got both sides respectable looking. There are sill some spots I need to clean up. But I had to measure them to make sure they were spot on. It's not precise in the pics because either my trust toothpick is off a tad or the tape isn't exactly on the edge. Plus trying to keep everything steady with one hand and take a pic with the other wasn't easy.... but you get the idea. 11/16 both sides. There is still a bit of cleaning up to do that can't be seen because of the flash. Just a few scratches that need to come out. And a bit more work to get the blade perfectly flat.


knife14.jpg

knife13.jpg


TALLY HO!!!

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And just for kicks I figured I'd throw in a pic of my high tech knife rest I've been using throughout this entire project. A 1x2 that has been rounded because I got tired of catching my knuckles on the corners. That is C-Clamped to my bench and the blade is held in place with 2 spring clamps.

knife16.jpg

knife15.jpg
 
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