Don Nguyen's WIP (large photo heavy)

[wannaforge]

Hey Don, love reading your posts and watching your progress and it is very educational. Hope to have a forge setup by spring, and its posts (threads) like this that I can read over and over. Thanks for bringing us along on your journey, and for greenhorns like me its invaluable.

[Don Nguyen]

Thanks for the response wannaforge.

I think the most important thing about these threads is understanding what went wrong in the processes :)

[Don Nguyen]

I got some stuff done over the past few days. After I got the finish on the blade, it was time for handles!

Here is the knife with one scale wood glue'd to one side and drilled. The second scale is glued on there now too, ready to be drilled.




Using some of the glue already on there and some pins, I cleaned up the front of the handle area.



Some more.



Now for the epoxy and clamps.



I didn't really take any other photos after this. Just waited till they were cured and then shaped them out on the belt sander. It was kind of an experimental stage, seeing what handle shapes do what and stuff. I ended up with something that I half-like It's already been used during Thanksgiving. Patina has been established.



















The end product I'm not fully proud of. I made a little thumb grove on the left side of the handle, and ended up thinking it was dumb. I messed up the finish while sharpening, so I did some fixing with sandpaper. It kind of made the knife much, much more sloppy than I wanted it to be. Overall though, it was a very good learning experience. Next time, I won't limit myself to a Thanksgiving time-limit, and work at my own pace to finish it up. Cuts very well, and is fairly stick-less when it comes to food. Can chop potatoes without much sticking at all. Cuts tomatoes and pops hairs.



UPDATE: I just used it for real real this time, preparing some pico de gallo. Doesn't really cut that well. Even though I got it to where I thought it was fairly sharp, it had trouble chopping tomatoes and maneuvering through onions. Can't push cut a tomato at all (not that I was aiming for a true push cut, just wanted to break the skin easily, which it doesn't), even though it pops hairs. Looks like my idea of fairly sharp isn't as sharp as I want it to be

Time to practice sharpening again.

Also, the spine isn't rounded at all, so it was pretty dang uncomfortable.

[pkrankow]

Fixing the spine is easy at least, a few minutes with some fine sand paper or a hone and it will be contoured to a less sharp profile. You can also use a scraper and make the back edge trapezoidal.

It looks like a nice carver. How is it on cooked foods? How sharp was it after use?

Phil

[Kwisatz]

I really like the styles of knives you showed us. One of my goals it to make an entire set of cutlery for my kitchen. I will be keeping tabs on this thread for tips!

[Don Nguyen]

I have finished my fourth knife.

I decided a while back to not fumble around with any unknown steels, and stick with a known, simple steel. I chose 1084. I already had this one forged and ground out from a file, so I decided to finish it anyways.











There's so much that went wrong or sloppy, but I'll leave those to you for nitpicking (patina, fit/finish, maker mark [ghetto], saya, HT, etc) I learned a butt-ton making this one, and hopefully for future works I wont repeat the same mistakes. Much.

Thanks for checking! Sincerely,

-Don

[Tagg]

Congrats! Awesome. Can't wait to see your future knives.

[VaughnT]

That's a great product for a new maker. You have an eye for design, now you just need to work on the manufacturing of that design. Overall, though, two thumbs up!