Rich Hale

Another way is to keep it forged in a rectangle.

Lots of thoughts on this in other threads here,,,,any of those help?

Homeshow do you have any pics of your pattern welded knives?

When someone gets hurt and they have insurance to cover all of their bills...many times that insurance will require them to sue the property owners where the injury happened....Whether the injured party wants to or not....Follow the money.....If someone else pays they do not have to!

REminds me I miss Eric...

We can only imagine...

Years back I used a yellow belt from 3 M I do not remember the number and no longer have any. I made 60 drop point hunters alike from 440 C. Hollow grind on each blade was a bit over three inches. I rough ground all of the hollows before heat treat with one belt. Then I found Norton Blaze and have used it ever since. I make quite a few knives each year. In a typical year I will use about two blaze belts for rough hollow grinding,,then each of them is used for profiling and handle work. I do not have problems with glazing over when working on annealed or heat treated blades. If I did I would suspect speed too low or too high. And I do this work with both high carbon and SS of several types. I do glaze old belts when I grind epoxied handles roughly. Then I do as Wayne suggested and grind on some hard steel a bit. It does not remove the epoxy glaze completely but helps.

In the first pic on the right side there looks to be an area that has not welded. On the top part of the billet that appears to extend towards the middle of the vice. When you find something like that resolve it before patterning. I prefer to do all of my welds with hand hammer. I want to number one make sure I am welding heat and number two I can look for color changes at the same time. If the billet is not the same welding color heat all the way through it tells me. I use a power hammer for drawing out and I do that at welding heat. When I cut, clean and re-stack it is back to hand for those welds. When I pattern I clean and examine the billet to make sure I do not have issues like you may have in this billet. I almost always have some spots not welded near the ends, I cut them off and make sure I removed all problems... I grind ladder patterns much as you did in this modified pattern. And I flatten them out by hand. I have a bit of money in a billet but mostly it is labor intensive. I hate to end up with a failure by taking any shortcut. If you would like more ideas pm me.

The original intent of the supplier list was to have names of places that users of this site are comfortable with dealings with and have had prior successful dealings with. I am another one that has had problems with Admiral and know of two others that have had issues. Why do we have them on the list? if they do not meet that criteria?

USA is one of those listed in the link above.....always good to know those folks are good to deal with.

Is this a troll?

Dave if you read that thread we for sure know it is incomplete...We just wanted to post suppliers that users of this site have dealt with and would suggest others from the site do the same. And the ability for our members to add names any time they would like was set up to help fill in the blanks. So where it goes from here is really out of our hands as far as updates.

I don't suppose you checked the suppliers list in knife making lessons?

Two items that took me the longest to learn were welding the crack of dawn and a broken heart....There are not enough words for me to outline wot they take.

Alternate layers of thin and not so thin...tack weld only one end,,not down the sides or all edges. I wire my billets with tie wire every couple of inches,,,,tightly,,,start weld at tack welded end,,,cut first wire off then weld where it was,,etc. til it is all solid...if thin layers are not tacked in place they can expand without buckling.

Thing,,and Glenn I agree a lot with your thoughts about newcomers. It is for sure a shame that some of them come in and demand attention and that attention is not always of the highest kind they deserve. There have been several threads like this one in the past and I have learned something from almost all of them. Note I did not say I agree with all said but I did learn. As a result of that I have changed my way of approaching those folks quite a bit. I have, in the past, typed in that they should read the prior threads,,or stickies and get back with any questions and I would try and answer them. And a couple of times have been told by them in the chat room that they prefer not to read anything already posted and why don't I just retype it all again in here...as if they would read it no matter where it is posted? So I changed. I try not to say that anymore. I will slay and do often about knife making. That is covered in the knife making lessons I helped prepare in the forums. And so you know: If you hover your cursor over any name at the bottom of your home page it will tell you wot part of the site that person is using. So I wait a bit and check to see if they are looking at the info posted. I give them some time and ask if it all makes sense or if they have questions. A really low percentage of them looks at the information. I f they aer not looking in the information i am done with them.....It is not worth my time to invest any more into anyone that does not really truly seek help. I have a few young folks visit my shop now and then. If I am spending the shop day doing a bit of my work and passing on my skills to them I expect a few things. A big one is that they take notes and listen to answers. If they ask the same question a few times, not write anything down,,,they are not invited back. This site here is not my shop so my rules do not apply. When someone is rude in here I cannot toss them out in the street. I can offer help or not...my call. And wot most folks do not know is that quite often i will send a private note to someone that has posted work that could use help. I simply ask if they would like my comments and suggestions. If they do not wish,,I do not do. And often they say of course I would like your thoughts. I send them and get back two kinds of responses; Thanks but that is exactly wot I wished that to look like,,or thanks,,how can I improve. For the second person I will help them in anyway I can. The other new way I deal with folks in the forum and chat room is to just hanging out and see how they act towards other folks without getting involved. That seems to work out well for me at least. Thing, your comments are valuable for the site. You stepped up and addressed an issue the may not bother only you but others as well. Good to get it in the open. I hope lots of folks read and look inward to see if they are part of the problem you mentioned. As for me I will not forget your concern....however I stopped posting links sometime back. That is likely to stay the same. My old school persona that works well for maybe only me..is not likely to changer much. If someone told me there was something hidden deep in the bowels of this site that I wanted to review I would find it. Period. Aa I learned to smith I traveled across the USA to learn from the best I could find. For someone to say they dont want to click to another page to learn just does not set well with me. If we were closer we could talk more at length over a hot chunk of steel between anvil and hammer.

Use the tools you have made on hot steel,,,no need to harden for that,,,Then reshape as you feel they need...

If all the pros run them that direction why is it called backwards?

Just a thought: use it or not...forge for a few years using things that work for others regularly,,,then try all kind of new things...Yoiu will then know if wot you try works or not as you will have history for comparison.

Scott for all the little stickies that clog teeth that a card does not remove, a pin,,safety pin stright wotever,,works to pop them out,,,,,Follow the channel ,,,,Then add more chalk more often.

Try Pieh tool.

Rockstar I am glad that Thomas cleared up the rubber thing for you.

I have three gassers and all of them the burners are on top. They work fine. Wot does the maker say about turning the forge on its side? And if you cannot open up the shop for a solid fuel forge you may not be able to use a CO producing gasser either. CO is a silent killer and claims lives every year. You must have air into shop and air out.

Rubber is Abrasive.it will dull a cutting edge. Fire hose is rubber lined and will dull a file stored in it. Try for yourself and see.

Jim this may help me see wot more folks think of this and wot works for them...thanks...