TM Hunt Pen Pal Apprenticeship. A Knife WIP!

Joined
Dec 3, 2010
Messages
1,875
I have a very cool story I would like to share with everyone… This story is ongoing ;)

Around November of last year I posted a picture of little ugly knife I made out of an old saw blade to the Becker Snark Thread. It was not anything special, but I was proud because miraculously it actually turned out to be a good cutter. Well during the course of the ensuing conversation I guess the picture caught a specific knife maker’s eye and it just happened to be a maker that I admire their work very much. That maker, as you can probably guess, was none other than Todd Hunt. As the conversation continued Todd made me an offer that I absolutely could not refuse. That offer was to essentially guide, mentor, and assist me in making a knife out of a known steel and heat treat it for me. Soon Todd and I began exchanging e-mails back and forth getting to know each other and setting parameters and guidelines for me to follow throughout this task.

Before I continue I would like to preface this thread by letting everything know I am not a knife maker, and I do not have delusions about it etc. I do not want to devalue the work of any of the amazing craftsman out there who create knives. I am just a guy with some files lol ;) I am just a student wanting to learn more and who loves knives!

My very first task from Todd was to design and draw out a knife to size and spec so that he could know what size of stock we needed. I wanted to put a lot of thought into this so I first gathered up some of my favorite blades, looked to some of my favorite makers and designers, and even looked to historical pieces for inspiration and started drawing. As you can see in the pic below I began with a Becker BK15 type knife because it represented to me what I was kind of looking for. From there I added in the inspiration from other makers, blades, and even my 3 year old gave her valuable opinion. You can see the evolution below, warning I am not a technical type of artist or photographer at all LOL.



I finally settled on this certain design, (The one on the bottom) e-mailed it to Todd, received some valuable feedback and some lessons from him, and finally applied that feedback to my design. There are a lot of reasons why the knife ended up the way it did, but to make it short and concise I essentially designed it after my experience, and built it around me and my usages. If anyone has any questions about it I would be more than happy to answer.
 
Todd and I exchanged quite a few more e-mails about everything ironing out the details of how everything should happen until finally I received a piece of O1 Tool Steel in the mail. Also it came with fantastic written and illustrated instructions by Todd specifically for me and this knife. I had never been so ready and excited to start a project in my entire life. I was so excited that I didn’t even take pictures that first night! Just of what I had done so far the morning after. I am not very good at taking WIP pics because I get started and focused and forget to stop.

By the way, all of the work I am doing on this blade is all by hand, with hand tools. The only motorized tool I will be using on it is an old B&D drill for the pin holes. Other than that, I have a file set, a hacksaw, and a vice. There are two reasons why I am doing it this way, first off, well that’s the tools I have LOL second, I wanted to do this by hand, and so far it’s been extremely rewarding. Here is what I accomplished the first night. I cut out the rough blade shape with a hack saw, evened up all the hacks saw cuts with a file, and slimmed down the handle area. At this point I was already addicted LOL



I also decided to make a file guide out of some angle iron I had laying around. It worked out pretty good. Here I made a rectangle around to kind of illustrate what was removed since I don’t have a before pic. It’s pretty close although not exact.



I also began attempting to mark out my edge line as close to center as possible. Even this changed a bit with some experience.

 
Like most of us, I live a pretty busy life so work on this is fairly erratic, but all of the previous work was just a couple hours. I have been able to devote a couple nights to it, but some of the work has been spaced out by a little here and a little there when I can retreat to my garage work bench. At this point I was clear to start working on my grind. The handle is left square so that I can clamp the knife in my vise flat and work on it. I just attached my file guide, and chucked the knife in the vise, and started filing. First session or so I was only using a 6-7” double cut file. I actually ended up making a handle extension for it so I could actually move the file correctly to cut. Here was my work after what I call “night 2.”



You can see where the purple marker has been backed up to illustrate the progress. Here is an edge shot. Then a spine shot…





And finally the other side…



As you can probably tell from the edge and spine I still had a lot of work to do! FYI I am aiming for a full flat grind and on a knife this wide at 3/16ths” thick, it’s a lot of filing. ;) But a lot of fun.
 
For the next session I acquired a 12” Nicholson file and man did it make the difference I needed! It was like night and day! Here was my progress after a little more filing. Also, you hear knife makers on the forums talk about file cards etc… It is VERY important. For some reason when cutting something this wide I was CONSTANTLY getting little pins of metal in the file. To remedy I just used the file card, another type of brush, then I would chalk the file well. The process was like this, file for a minute or so, file card, bristle brush, chalk, file some more, repeat! It takes a second or so, but it makes a world of difference in your work.



Down to about 1/16” at the edge, more taper in the spine etc…





 
From here I was given the go ahead to proceed with getting the rest of the work done. I fiddled with the grind a bit more but here I actually have some WIP pics! This will also illustrate how the rest of the knife (blade) was cut out and profiled.

First I rechecked everything with my template and marked it all again. I also marked some relief cut lines. These are VERY important. It allows you to contour your shape and makes your life 1,000Xs easier getting everything cut out. Notice the chalk and metal shavings all over everything? LOL





Here I put it back in the vise, and start cutting. I probably went through 4+ blades getting the whole blade cut out. Although they were not completely shot, when they started to not cut easily I just swapped them out. If you have ever cut something metal out with a hack saw before you know what I am talking about ;)



Relief cuts galore!



Now I just edge my way into the cuts to remove the material bit by bit.





Here you can see what I have accomplished after a little bit of patience and elbow grease. From here I actually will go back and try to cut out as much as I can with the hack saw. It is easier to cut out all the high points with the hack saw then try to attack them with a file IMO.



Here you can see how it looks after a bit of filing to get all the hacksaw marks out and get my desired shape out of the steel. By the way… all the metal you see is only from that knife. In fact that vise was brand new and this knife was its first project.



Well here is where I stopped for that night. I still have a lot of material to remove to get my shape. I think it looks pretty cool here but overall the tang is way too wide lol.

 
Alright we will flash forward through time here a bit, but here it is after a lot more shaping to the tang. I was telling Todd that I think getting the right shape out of the tang has been more work than anything else so far. It seems that last thousandth of an inch takes forever to haul off lol. I also added my pin holes. I wanted the handle shape closer to spec before drilling the first holes because I wasn’t sold on a particular configuration yet. In fact as of this moment I am still trying to figure it out. All I know is that those two holes have to be there, or at least I have convinced myself of that! I am either going to be adding 4 more holes… or 1 more. Dunno its up in the air now, but here it is after a little more work. I have also draw filed on the grind a bit to get it closer to spec too.







Here is a lay-over with my template. I am actually closer to spec than it seems in the pic, but the edges are starting to roll up from all the sharpie.



And finally here is a shot after I marked up the blade a bit to show kind of what I am shooting for. I still have some more filing to do on handle/tang, decide on what to do for the pins, then drill a lanyard hole. Kinda looks like a knife doesn’t it?
Thanks for watching and stay tuned! Hope you enjoyed! I will try to keep up with the pics and progress, but this thread will be the place for updates and what not. I will also try and make sure to answer any questions or address any comments. This has been so much fun! I want to publicly thank Todd for all of his help, guidance, and kindness towards me. It is not every day that someone like me gets an opportunity to do something like this. This has been dubbed a “Pen Pal Apprenticeship” LOL. I am so very thankful to be working with someone like Todd whose work well it more than speaks for itself. Even though I have done other things I am considering this my first actual knife, and it definitely will not be my last. As far as this one… There is much more to come…
 
THIS... IS... AWESOME!!!! Also nice lookin' li'l blade! it looks like it should be pretty handy!
 
THIS... IS... AWESOME!!!! Also nice lookin' li'l blade! it looks like it should be pretty handy!

Thanks Cbear! Its been an immense amount of fun. Particulars on the blade are 4" blade at around 1.75" at its widest with a 4.5" handle from 3/16" stock of O1 tool steel. Thanks for looking! Its going to be great. :)
 
wow... awesome thread. very cool to be making your own knife. looks like a great little blade. very nice of Todd to help you out too. i'd like to try something like this one day if i ever have the time. congrats. thanks for sharing.
 
Very cool! Can't wait for the updates. Nice knife and nice work using all hand tools.
 
Dang man, nice work. :thumbup:
 
Thanks to all! Hopefully I can get some more done either tonight or over the weekend. Getting real close. Right now I am deciding on pin arrangements and playing around with that. In the meantime, here is a comparison pic with a couple of Beckers so yall can get an idea of scale.

 
Personally I wouldn't do THAT many pins, I'd be worried about splitting the scales. I think 2, maybe 3 at most. But that is also just me.
 
Personally I wouldn't do THAT many pins, I'd be worried about splitting the scales. I think 2, maybe 3 at most. But that is also just me.

Yah, I''ve been messing around with pin arrangements off and on all day. I have marked and erased a lot of variations. Something will come out of it eventually lol.
 
Well, no sooner had I posted about messing with the pin holes had I devised a plan. Basically there is a slight offset between the already two present pin holes so I didnt want to add a third in the middle, but when I bumped the hole size up to 3/16ths" its pretty much not noticeable. So off to the garage I went!

First I measured the distance, found my center, and hit it with my auto punch to mark. If its good to go I give it a couple more hits with the auto punch.


In my experience drilling metal an auto punch can work well but when you want to be really specific you have to go old school. So I gave it some good raps with a larger punch.


Now commence the drilling. I started with a 1/16" bit to start my hole, then bumped to 1/8", then to 3/16."



After drilling I cut off the bur with a little half round detail file.


Viola! I am a happy camper. Even the little things with this project make me happy.


Next I remarked the tang against the template. If you can see the purple line there is an area I have left to remove.


Before filing I like to mark up the area I am working on to make sure I am cutting true. Basically I ended up dressing out all edges a bit more tonight.


Next I measured and mark for my lanyard hole. We have decided on this placement for a couple reasons. I am going for an exposed pommel and I didnt want the lanyard to be in the way. Plus when using the knife in a extended fashion with the butt against your palm I didnt want to fight the lanyard either. Plus some other reasons but I think you kinda get the idea.


Holes are drilled.


Well that is all I have for the night. It might be a couple more days before I update next due to the weekend. On this build we have suffered one casualty so far, but let no man be forgotten or left behind. Poor round file never saw it coming. The knife, not even heat treated has already made its first cut!


Alright guys have a good one!
 
Pretty damn cool, be sure to bring it to Ethan's! I'll work with you by email on how to drink properly.
 
Coming along quite nicely. :thumbup:
 
Pretty damn cool, be sure to bring it to Ethan's! I'll work with you by email on how to drink properly.

I wont be able to be at Ethans, but hopefully this steel will be making it back to Todd soon. On drinking, not sure if I am doing it properly, just doing it. LOL!
 
Wow, what a cool tread. I really cant think of anything else to add to it. Zach (iwouldhurtafly) pretty much hit it n the head. I saw the knife he constructed a few months ago and his enthusiasm about it reminded me of what I experienced when I very first started making knives back when I had no clue or tools. I figured if I could reach out to him and offer some guidance and materials, maybe we could both benefit from it. Man was I right. As you all can see, he has worked his ass off and hasnt let me down. Good job Zach, cant wait to check it out when you sent it back for heat treat.

I will add to this thread as to keep up with the progress with this project, but let it be known that this is indeed Zachs project and his canvas so to speak. There is a lot of work in the pics he has posted. Well done buddy! Who knows, this may start a common thing. The Pin Pal Apprenticeship WILL continute as long as its as pleasurable as it is with working with Zach. Anybody got any ideas, send me a PM.
 
Back
Top