Fathers Day Knives - WIP

[Malice9610]

So I am making some knives for Fathers day for my Uncle, Brother in Law, and Father. 

They are the first run of the new design of Drop Point hunters I am going to make, what with my first design being a bit of pain in the neck for various reasons.  The newer design is much easier to cut out 2x knives from a single 2.5 inch wide slab of stock then the previous design, which helps with preventing unrepairable damage to certain areas of the knife without destroying them.  I am using an angle grinder with a cut off wheel, the first design the blade was much wider, which created a nearly impossible zigzag cut where the ricassos of both knives came within like 1/4 inch of each other. and every single ricasso had a slight nick in it from the cut off wheel that in some cases went half way through the ricasso on one side. 



Top is the template for cutting out, Below that, is the prototype I made to determine how thick I wanted to make the knives as I have to thin them out quite a bit as the stock is 1/4 inch thick.  As you can see from the template to the prototype, I did deviate on the blade shape slightly by tapering the edge portion a bit more then the template shows.  I plan to normalized the prototype in a 3x normalize > 3x harden > 3x temper process and then break the blade to see the grain pattern before doing the other three, I really like the prototype feel in the hand even without handles, so I expect the finished knives will end up being quite nice in hand, but I want to be certain they will stand up to the rigors my brother in law ( avid hunter ) and my outdoorsmen type uncle and father will throw their way.  At this point all three have been thinned out just slightly oversized of the prototype, to allow some room for error on the beveling and heat treating process. 



In this after refining the handles and tapering the blades a bit more, the template has a very straight design to it, Which I wanted as a " standard " of the design, so that I could change it on a per knife basis, Each of these is getting Brass and Bocote handles. you can see in the first photo the lines I am thinking of going with for the pin holes for the blade end bolster. I would like to have all the pins line up along the handle so I suspect I will have to make the blade end bolster longer then I wanted to so I am not drilling a pin hole so close to the finger groove as to introduce a weak point in the blade. The plan is to do each bolster slightly different. and try my hand at some decorative filework on each one. 



I also made this bevel jig, after watching a video on youtube ( Gough Custom channel ). I have found that I spend WAY too much time fiddling with bevels on my cheap 1x30 Harbor Freight grinder. Earlier this week while I was at Home Depot, I found a nice Nicholson cross cut file for 7 bucks, so I decided to buy it, my previous files are all Harbor freight pieces, and to call them garbage is putting it mildly. I brought this file home, and did a quick draw file on the handle of the prototype to see how well it cut, and I was sold on it and Nicholson files after the first pass. very clean cutting. smooth finish. I finished putting the jig together last night, and decided to give it a whirl on the prototype. considering the bevel was already there on the prototype I just attempted to clean it up a bit as I could feel some high spots and see a few along the edge. Between a maintainable angle, and a great file, I had the prototype bevel cleaned up in a lot less time then I could have done using the belt grinder. I am also much happier with how my plunge cut and ricasso end up with this method. The only downfall was having to bevel the corners on my brand new Nicholson file, But I went back the next day and bought another one just like it specifically for the jig. 



As you can see here, there are for sure high / low spots in my freehand grind that the file is slowly cleaning up, I am sure part of it is also getting used to using the jig, but thats why I used the Prototype first, So I could figure out the best way for me to use the jig effectively, I would like to have these all have some " flat " left in them with a clean straight grind line instead of a full flat grind all the way to the spine. 



I have to clean up a bit still on the Ricasso area, my goal is to finish cleaning the bevel on the prototype to match all the way around, but that is easily the straightest edge I have ever created, I am not sure ill be able to clean up the ricasso all the way, as most of the damage was done when setting the plunge cut on the belt grinder before building the jig. 

That is where these all stand as of right now, Tonight when I come home from the day job, Ill be finalizing the placement of the bolsters and drilling holes, and then its off to the jig for the bevels, But before I can do that I need to swap out the 3/16ths rod on my jig for a thicker one, the rod slightly bends when applying pressure and I would prefer it to be more rigid so that I dont have to worry so much about the angle of the file during the cut. I suspect that is part of the reason I have a slightly uneven grind line after using it, is Im bending the jig in the cut and its not cutting evenly. 

[Malice9610]

Here is what I got done today, which is admittedly not that much, but I have ALL day tomorrow to work on them so its not a big deal. 

Top shiny one is the prototype, the one below it I did completely on the jig. Ill never file a bevel on that cheap piece of horrible fright garbage again. both sides took less then 1 hour total to bevel, granted the other side isnt as good as I did the other side first. but I have plenty of room to clean the bevels up still. 



Two things I noticed about the jig that are not mentioned in the video about its construction that I realize are common sense and I should have known better. 

1. When placing the knife on the jig, you need to line up the file to the stop bolt before cranking it down, luckily for me, I gave myself extra room on the ricasso area and can clean the slight difference up without issue. 

2. A36 is tough stuff compared to what they make eye bolts out of, In the short time it took for me to file this out, I wore a groove in the eye of the bolt. So I will be buying another eye bolt tomorrow and will be sanding my rod up to 1000 grit to hopefully negate this.