The "Official" T.M. Hunt Custom Knives Random Chat Thread

Oh, it has been considered. Two birds with one stone.

 

don't forget to pick up a YuMagua for the little lady!

 

Shes coming along. She'll be able to pick out her own steel.

 

There is no world where I get to Blade this year. I'm going from Iowa to the upper peninsula of Michigan for my 40th birthday to celebrate my best friend from the Army's cabin in the UP of Michigan, and there will be no brain cell survivors, so help me God. Everything I have left is going to Survive! preorders and a Tradewater from Todd. I have a shitty little knife meant to auction off that I hope to interest Murph with, that poor guy can't catch a break! Still can't decide whether to auction it off to or after WWP they might pay more to take this POS away

 

If we wait long enough someone will take this knife away

For a little bit of back story, Todd talked to me about my knife I sent him. (I ordered and got a badass Yuma, he sent my POS knife back also)He could've spent that long easily telling me what a dimfuckwit I am, but instead he talked about all manner of knife design and heat treat topics. He even made a point of how to heat treat a blade with my shitty little driveway forge

 

I'm paying attention....

 

Wow, that was some serious babble on my part. I've got 1 practice blade in 1084 that came out OK, working on the second then it's on to the O1.

 

I had a chance this weekend to run out to an armored museum just outside of town. I didn't want to pass up another chance to go see it again since it will be closing and selling off the vehicles following the passing of the gentleman who collected them.

Let me know if there are too many pictures here and I'll tone it down a bit.














I always pictured the "great Red Barron" a little.... I don't know..... greater than this.










The M-18 Hellcat was one of my favorites since I knew a WWII vet who kicked (literally) tons of Nazi ass with a few of these.

 

That's a cool place! I think I even spotted a diesel KLR650?

 

You bet! The one in the shot with the prototype Fast Attack Vehicle and Patton tank is a Harley, but I'm pretty sure I saw a KLR stashed away in there too.

 

Holy crap Jerry! It's a shame that collection is being broken up, that is some amazing history there.

 

I don't think there's any functional difference here but after hugging the passaround Yuma from the ESEE forums that just showed back up to my place today I noticed the pommel extends quite a bit further on the older Yuma (originally Coldwaterboys/Bmurray/Bob's) than the new one. I'm guessing it's just refining the design but I thought I'd ask if there was anything else behind the change.

 

looks like the blade blank follows the same template, but the handle itself is a little longer, for a more comfortable grip?

 

Mmm Tanks. I want one.

 

I never noticed anything until you mentioned this. There's not much or any difference to eyeball them, but if I switch them to a reverse/gutting grip the pommel on the older one introduces itself to the meat on the outside of my palm a tiny little bit. It wouldn't even be noticeable if the newer grip wasn't still so comfortable turned about like that.

 

Working in the garage tonight, broke my first portaband blade and didn't cut any appendages off. Woo. Broke a 60 grit belt while I wasn't wearing a hat and I didn't get a big welt across my face.. even better.

 

I feel like a mad scientist when I'm heat treating in the driveway. I wonder if at any point someone drives by and thinks "Oh, he's heat treating a knife.".



I got one heat treated, one ready for scales, and one roughed out tonight.



One overlaid over the other. The wide one looks a bit too cleaverish to me.


I think the handle on the newer one is going to work better but we'll see.


I got some micarta roughed out for a smaller one but with the broken bandsaw blade and busted belt I decided I was cruisin for a bruisin.
Definitely seems like there's a lot more decarb with three normalizing cycles prior to hardening and tempering. *Sploosh, bloop* Off to a jug of vinegar it goes. Definitely getting a harder blade now that I'm soaking the blade for 10 mins above non-magnetic. After reading a bunch on 1084 heat treating it sounded like they just needed to hit the temp then be quenched. I got an earlier blade to non magnetic, let it keep heating up for another 30 seconds, and quenched then sent it Todd's way. It wasn't beautimous, but it didn't look too fugly. Bad thing was, when Todd tested the RC it was like 39. Great for a butter knife I suppose.. He suggested soaking it for a while instead of just getting to temp and quenching. I started normalizing 3 times and trying to keep it at the just above nonmagnetic point. I haven't gotten anything tested but a file skates across the metal on the knives I've soaked a bit. I'm down to about 3' of 1084, and it's 3/16", so I might just throw in the towel on this driveway heat treat thing. Makes more sense to save money for a good grinder then a real heat treat oven. I've already exploded a HF 1x30 grinder and I keep waiting for the glass platen on my 2x42 to get ripped off and kersplode as well.

 

I wonder if I could train a monkey to do some hand sanding. My thumbs are killing me.

 

Having been "a monkey" for a while now, I can say yes. Find your own damn monkey though. I don't do Iowa.

 

I don't blame ya, the weather is ridiculous. I have hope though, thanks.