My First Knife WIP

[Mungo Park]

Looking mighty fine, if you want to try a home HT you can give it a go at my place, if not Rob would be a good place to send it.
Cheers Ron.

 

[unky_gumbi]

So my friend/landlord use to be a golf pro and whenI showed him my knife blanks and told him that I wanted to get a 72X2 grinder he said that he has one from his old shop. I am going to go have a look at it sometime soon. This may work out great for me, he wants one of my knives, and he is a cyclist. I work in a bike shop and have access to parts and such that his wife wont let him buy. If the grinder is what I am looking for I will be able to make a trade with him

 

[unky_gumbi]

Looking mighty fine, if you want to try a home HT you can give it a go at my place, if not Rob would be a good place to send it.
Cheers Ron.

I may have to take you up on that for one of the knives, something about heating a piece of steel to insane temps and sticking it in oil is quite appealing. I think the 1st two are going to Rob though, they are both spoken for. I do have enough steel to make a few more knives though

 

[BenchmadeBoy]

Great progress and a great looking blade so far. Also nice to see a fellow 'Pegger grinding knives My own knifemaking ambitions have "ground" to a halt of late. I should stop by the shop and see it in person. :thumbup:

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

You can get a pretty good mirror finish at 1500 to 2000 grit,but if you do as well at 600 as you have so far the finer grits go a lot faster.The hard part is 220-400 grit after that it goes pretty quick.
Stan

What he said. The lower grit stages take the longest since you're removing deeper pits/scratches. Once you hit 400+ you have scratches that are more and more difficult for the eye to discern, so it's kind of the home stretch. If you have a buffing wheel you can often jump straight to white compound after 600 grit if you did a good even job, but it'll look even deeper and glossier if you go to the higher grits first. :thumbup:
I miss the industrial-grade polishing/grinding gear I got to play with in my yacht part-polishing days.

 

[Mungo Park]

Their you go 3 Winnipegers in one thread, whats the odds, where the heck is Winnipeg anyways I guess the rest of you are thinking.
A grinder would be great for you, but the jig you set up seem to be working well and is relatvely error free, a grinder has a learning curve which means you can eat a blade mighty fast.
Marvin, good to see you are still around.
Cheers Ron.

 

[unky_gumbi]

The only problem with the jig is time, I have a full time job as well and now that I have started I want to make more and I have people asking me to make them knives too. The grinder would speed things up and allow me to get more done in less time even though I would make some scrap along the way.
As for 3 Winnipegers in the thread, I am suprized there isn't more, we have to have something to do besides curling and hockey

Progress report on the knife:
I did some more sanding on the first blank along the edges and spine to remove the rest of the file marks, tomorrow night I drill the holes and touch up any scratches I get from that and put it aside and start on blank #2 so I can get them both out to the heat treater by the 15th

 

[Mungo Park]

for your first few if you don't get to hung up on sanding to really high grits you should move along getting your skills honed. Knifemaking is a time consuming thing any way you look at it, but so are a lot of other things.
I have a jig like yours, but not as nice yours, as well as the 2X72, the grinder is not all that much faster for me anyways, if you get to use the jig without reducing the scratches on the final few passes it goes rather fast. Home HT will also save you waiting around for the postman. You could eat the bulk of the bevel off with a cheapo princess auto angle grinder and refine the bevel with your jig which would also cut your time down, again you would have to practice with the grinder as to not create time consuming errors. The angle grinder would help to cut out the blank profile as well, can't go wrong for the 20 bucks a yellow one costs. I treat mine like crap because it is cheap and it is still whizzing.
I know of one other knifemaker in town, but I never see him on any boards.
I guess we are king of the town, we could have the first all Winnipeg hammer in when the white stuff goes.
Also use a magnet in a plastic bag to pick up all that metal dust or you will be grinding it in your bike gears.
Cheers Ron.

 

[unky_gumbi]

So I have sent my knife blanks off with a friend to be drilled on a drill press instead of me trying with a hand drill so I have no progress reports other then that. The first blank is ready to be heat treated second one hopefully by next monday, so I spent today designing my next project.

Played with the rendering a bit, just because I could. Let me know wht you think. I will put up dimensional drawings later tonight

 

[Fletch Helical]

If you do get that grinder and you and that jig are going to part ways, I may be interested in taking it off your hands

 

[unky_gumbi]

So here are the dimensional drawings for the next one, any comments or suggestions welcome

profile

Handle shape top view

dimensions will be rounded to the nearest common fractional inch

 

[NickWheeler]

Aesthetics are subjective.... so of course any thoughts I may have are my opinion and we know what those are worth

But since you asked!

I think it's a cool start, but with a few small changes could be a REALLY cool knife!

It could flow smoother in the handle/guard/blade transition. The lines don't quite flow together... and I say that because my eye stops at that transition.

I think if you just altered the choil/ricasso area a bit, and made the guard thinner and with a smoother radius it would make all the difference in the world.

Remember, this was free

 

[unky_gumbi]

Aesthetics are subjective.... so of course any thoughts I may have are my opinion and we know what those are worth

But since you asked!

I think it's a cool start, but with a few small changes could be a REALLY cool knife!

It could flow smoother in the handle/guard/blade transition. The lines don't quite flow together... and I say that because my eye stops at that transition.

I think if you just altered the choil/ricasso area a bit, and made the guard thinner and with a smoother radius it would make all the difference in the world.

Remember, this was free

Dam why did you have to point that out, now it just sticks out like a sore thumb
I think I know what you mean though and I will edit it up tomorrow, thanks for the point out

 

[unky_gumbi]

Ok here are a couple of revs based on what I understood from NickWheeler

and while I was at it, I tried this one, where I dropped the spine to be level with the top od the handle and chopped off the upper guard.

I know things are not symetrical in the edited pics I just worked them free hand in photoshop. I am not sure what to call this, but its inspiered by the coffin handled Bowies I have seen and I put a mild clip on the point although its not too noticable

 

[NickWheeler]

Now see, to me, that makes a HUGE difference in the overall flow of the knife.

It is probably just an optical illusion (and if so ignore this part). In your bottom revision with the single guard, the spine of the blade and the top of the handle are all in a single plane. This is natural and flowing to me. In the first revised drawing there APPEARS to be a slight dip in that spot.... kind of like a speed bump from the handle to the blade.

Don't be afraid to really thin out the guards. I sure like them there to keep the hand from sliding onto the blade, but for both looks and weight, I like them to be reduced to a minimum. A guard that's overly thick can INSTANTLY make an otherwise "light and fast" knife look CLUNKY.

Some examples of knives that FLOW to me... (this is a small sampling) Please note how the handle flows right into the guard and then the blade.

Jason Knight, Ms

Jerry Fisk, Ms

Don Hanson III, Ms

Burt Foster, Ms

Russ Andrews II, Ms

You can see here exactly the kinds of things I'm talking about through some work from a handful of the bladesmiths with the most pleasing lines out there (IMHO)

 

[unky_gumbi]

Its not an optical illusion your eyes are seeing things right, I am rendering up a proper image now and I see now exatly what you mean by a thin guard. Int the new picture the top of the blade and end of the wood section of the handle are in the exact same line, but the guard section drops ever so slightly so I will fix that when I get home. I have to run to the shop and grab my files before someone uses them and dulls them out on me.

Thanks for the input and I really like the looks of the guard on the first picture, thin yet solid looking

 

[unky_gumbi]

Okay so here are a couple of better edited line drawings the nthe first two

upper and lower guard

Lower guaard only

Anyone can comment and put thier two cents in here, I am trying to get a feel for what other people like, and not just myself and Nick

 

[BenchmadeBoy]

I like the second drawing better. Double guards really don't do it for me. I really like the handle, almost a coffin handle style if I got that right. Good stuff.

Ron, good to see you around as well. Going in for knee surgery tomorrow. Going to laid up for a while. Please stay in touch. I know we never seem to match schedules but its good to hear from you.

marv

edit: woot! 888 posts!

 

[Fletch Helical]

Definitely like the looks of the second drawings better. To be honest I don't mind either one just a question if you want a single or double guard.. Personally if I had to choose on a larger knife like that I just feel the double guard looks better. If you're that undecided make both

 

[unky_gumbi]

I like the second drawing better. Double guards really don't do it for me. I really like the handle, almost a coffin handle style if I got that right. Good stuff.

Ron, good to see you around as well. Going in for knee surgery tomorrow. Going to laid up for a while. Please stay in touch. I know we never seem to match schedules but its good to hear from you.

marv

edit: woot! 888 posts!

What are you having done to your knee? I had mine scoped for a torn miniscus about 3 years ago and was actually walking on it that night. Not far mind you, but I was back to work with in a week