Dustin Quade

The grinder works fine for my needs which are definitely hobby level so you can take this with a grain of salt there. I did make one modification to this grinder which is to remove the shield on the small wheel at the top of the grinder. Alignment was a bit annoying and sometimes the edge of the belts would bite into the shield which was bad and wrecked a couple belts starting out. Other than that i have zero bad things to say about it and frankly for the price i think its a great tool especially on sale.

Thanks! I will definitely suggest this to him as an option because yea that price would be way outside the budget.

One of my co workers is looking at retiring and getting into fabricating things like gates and fire place screens that kind of thing and he wants to invest in a 4'x8' plasma cutter. He wants one that does automated cutting based on input CAD plans. His budget is somewhere between 10 to 15 thousand dollars. Any suggestions for this equipment would be greatly appreciated.

Thats totally fair, I only didnt ask ask for critique specifically because its my expierience that just posting on this site pretty much garuntees some critque anyways I think I will work on your suggestions in an attempt to salvage the knife, no need to toss it aside just yet.

Thanks for the heads up, i did not know that but I did do a spark test and a harden/break test as well before working with it. Always better to be safe than to spend hours working on a piece of mild steel Thanks very much for saying so

So a friend of mine gave me a whole bunch of truck bearing raceway steel for me to use in my smithing. I had done some research on the steel and was excited to give a proper knife a try. The main issue I had is that I’m used to working from flat stock which making a knife blade out of it is not too bad in terms of hard hammering. This stuff though comes in this weird profile which all needs to be flattened out first before you can really start the knife shaping process. I have also been working damascus mostly lately and don’t usually forge down the bevels on those so I don’t mess up the pattern which meant I was a bit out of practice. So after getting the stock down to about a rectangular section i started forming the blade shape handle and forging in the bevels. This was the first knife I tried with a handle that has a finger groove for the index finger, my handles are also usually a bit on the small side so I made sure this one would have a nice long handle and to my credit at least I got those parts done. Then it went to the grinder and made a personal mistake, see I had left the blade pretty rough from all the hammering and so I figured I would use a convex grind to get out all my rough work and knew it would leave me a nice edge for chopping which it did, however I just hate the look of it, can’t really say why but I just can’t stand it. I usually do a flat grind and I wish I had just gone with the norm here. What I had not thought of was that the convex grind basically turns the blade surface into a big arc, that meant putting my mark in was also annoying since there wasn’t a proper flat surface for me to rest it on. Over all this knife is the worst I have made in a long long time and something I can’t even sell because it’s just an embarrassment but what I will say is that the steel itself held up remarkably well. After it was all made I wanted to test the steel and so I got the edge shave sharp then chopped a 2x4 in half and the edge still shaved so I guess at least that was a win. The blade is also nice and true for straight which is another win.

It is shorter than the handle of my store bought chefs knife and is about the length of a steak knife handle but the bulge of this handle fits comfortably in the hand without passing through it so it just felt good to me. I guess someone with larger hands would not find it as comfortable though. I could have simply flattened the bulge for more length but i like the way this shape feels.

My god man the creativity of your handles never ever ceases to amaze me. What a cool idea!

So this weekend i have a meet with my local smithing group and I wanted to try to sell some damascus billets. I figured a good way to drum up the sales would be to bring some example billets but also some samples of things made with them. To that end i am bringing some other projects and this knife. Since it is a blade i will likely sell after the meet i felt it was a good opportunity to use my new makers mark. I still need some practice stamping however, I was afraid of damaging the stamp so i just wasnt hitting it hard enough. I know that is silly but thats the truth of it. I have since put it on 3 other projects (herb chopper, bottle opener and small pocket knife) with much better effect, the top here didnt sink deep enough and dissappeard in the grind and polish. Im still happy with the blade over all though. I find that since i got my 800 grit belt that my patterns are coming out clearer after the etch.

I love these sorts of projects! Well done.

So my shop is called King's Valley Forge and a good friend of mine made me up a really great logo. So after a couple years of project making i finally set aside enough money to have my own touch mark made. I converted the non text portion of the logo into a shaded image and had that turned into the stamp. Below is a picture of the stamp and of a piece stamped with it. Super excited to put this to work and finally mark the projects i have worked on and am proud of.

Oh man i actually did not preheat the anvil. My teacher had told me to do that when I work in the winter and i totally spaced on it. I will definitly make sure to do that tonight.

So your saying that if i am running a reducing forge the joint will have some scale because i took it out an exposed it to air but its an ammount that can still allow for a forge weld to take, but if im running an oxydzing forge i will have too much scale in that joint to make the forge weld possible now?

Well this is the first time i have had an issue with a forge weld like this. I dont know what forge i have and i would hate to have a part of my knowlege base be pernicious I found an old post about these differences between these two forges. And it looks like there is a way to try and figure it out, Frosy posted this "It's been discussed repeatedly scale WILL form on hot steel in open air. PERIOD. A forge with a neutral or reducing atmosphere: gas, coal, charcoal, electric, etc. can NOT form scale there is NO oxygen to oxidize anything. To check, shine up a thin piece of steel and put it in your forge hot and running. If the surface appears clean till it's the same temperature as the forge it is NOT scaling up." But i do have a question. In that post Iis is said that no matter what forge you have scale forms on metal when the piece meets oxygen. So if thats the case then there is scale in that joint whether i have an oxydizing or reducing forge since its in the air now and has been since last night, so doesnt that mean that the joint on my project is scaled up making that forge weld much more difficult no matter what type of forge im running and the question about what forge type i have will only come into play in future projects right?

Lol i always "Try to use superb technique" im just not that good at it sometimes. Is my forge running oxidizing what? The main thing is that there is at least a shot at getting the weld to work so that is what i will attempt to get done tonight.