The_Iron_Joe
Updates?
I hope all is well with you and your family.
Thanks for the well-wishes, really.
Things have been pretty insane in the months since I last posted here, most trouble seems to have sprung up around the production of the spacers needed for the heel of the knife handle. I'll try to be brief, but the situation is as follows, and I hope I have everyone's understanding;
TL;DR at the bottom.
Firstly, the garage space I had hoped to have available for my lathe has been taken up by furniture, hardware, tools and other affects taken from a recently passed on family member, and naturally it has been quite an ordeal figuring out which things to keep, give away, sell or otherwise discard, as well as continuing to unload the house and prep it for sale, further pressing the need for that floor space. Unfortunately, a greater emphasis on paying off other debt had come into focus, and that took the majority of my efforts to pay off. The friction folder project was put aside, as I focused on other projects, as well as my regular job instead.
Sometime in late September, early October, I started looking into having spacers sourced locally, hoping to reduce the increase in cost as much as possible, fearing (rightly so, it seems...) that I would not have the lathe up and running anytime soon. There was some temporary back and forth with a local jeweler who had his own lathe set up, and although he believed he would be able to produce the spacers I needed, it ended up being wildly out of my price range, which would have pushed the price of the friction folders much too high compared to the budget price point I wanted to adhere to. Needless to say I backed out, and he appeared to understand with no hard feelings.
I wound up looking into my second option for sourcing spacers, through a casting house, and although it is of course still many times more expensive than producing the part in-house, it is affordable enough that I can eat the cost of the spacers' production until I am capable of producing them. A silver lining here is that I can have the spacers cast in not just brass, but... silver. Or copper. Or gold, and so forth. It brings to mind the idea of doing variant runs, with different spacer material and blade material combinations... anyways.
In the meantime, I spent some time working on the design of the friction folders itself, and researching new machining techniques (I have so much to learn still), happening upon a few different breakdowns for CNC workholding, including using precision-made screws as if they were set-pins for holding material in place against the fixture.
Just today, I received a cancellation email from McMaster-Carr, with whom I placed an order for washers, taps, screws, and other hardware that I have not been able to find elsewhere. They said in their email that due to the complexities of shipping to Canada, they would only ship to businesses and schools, which is understandable. Luckily, I may be able to place an order for the hardware I need through another local business, and proceed once I can get the parts from them.
So once again, thanks for the interest of anyone still checking in... I'll be sure to post again to update with how the new work-holding setup proceeds. Sorry for the wall of text, I really didn't intend this to be a whole thing, but now that I've got it all written out... yeah, it has been a very busy last few months. I'm still super excited to get this project properly underway, and very frustrated with myself that I haven't made it happen yet. I guess that's why I feel the need to explain myself like this.
TL;DR
Familial circumstances have repeatedly prevented me from being capable of fixing up my lathe, although I have been working on the project with increasing frequency, especially since October. I am attempting to have new hardware brought in to make my life easier when actually making the friction folders, although I will have to outsource the spacers for the time being.
keep us updated
b00n
The hardware I was referring to was more in line with mounting screws for the process of milling out handle scales and blades from raw stock, the assembly hardware is still going to be Chicago-Screws as they are still reliable, affordable, and can be adjusted easily by anyone, even without torx bits..
herisson
Thank you very much, and the same to you and yours. I'd love to produce something like this with a one piece milled handle, but I likely won't be attempting that until I can set aside some time to develop workholding for it all.
