I present to you....knife number 5!!!

[Jonathan Smidt]

Hey all, forgive the many posts of knives of subpar quality, but with each post, following the comments I get here, I feel I am better able to grow in my quest to become an at least decent bladesmith lol.  That being said, without further a do, I present to you knife number 5 (gonna give it to my dad for christmas)  Blade is 1080 steel, guard and pins are brass, and I uses buffalo horn for the scales.  As always, criticism and comments welcome and appreciated!!

[Frosty]

Nothing to forgive Jonathan, we LOVE pics. I'm not a bladesmith so I'll keep my opinions to myself, let the guys who know what they're talking about educate us both eh?

I gotta chip in on the photography though, I do have some expertise there. Your framing is good, towards the top of the shot is where the subject should be. Lots of reasons for that but I'll let the statement stand unless you want a lonnnnng post.

The background needs help. Paper is fine and torn pieces is a good touch. Unfortunately the color is too close a match to steel so the blade tends to blend in. Dark green or dark red are good background colors for shiny steel and either will make the brass or bronze hardware pop visually. A fuzzy blanket makes an excellent background. 

Lighting is a problem shooting shiny things and you can see how part of the blade is glared out. There are a couple tricks, shoot outdoors on a cloudy day is probably the best without using special equipment like a difuser box. Another good trick is to tape a single ply of tissue paper over the flash to difuse the light. If you have to use hard light then align it on the olique. Shine it at a low angle and take shots from different angles, this will let you see how the shadows lay and you can pic the best of the batch.

When I shot I probably would've gone through a couple 36 pic rolls of Kodachrome for each side and maybe more. Electronic cameras and Photoshop are de BOMB! Still, there is something special about shooting on film (wet.) You take your shot and that's IT.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Jonathan Smidt]

Frosty, not going to lie, of all the types of advice/comments I was expecting on this post, I must say, photography advice was not one of them haha.  That being said, I shall take your advice and put it to good use, I suppose just taking single snaps with my phone to post really don't provide the best images to allow people to best observe and critique my work haha....maybe I'll break out the wife's camera...got her a Cannon EOS 60D a couple years back that needs some dusting off hahaha.

[Daswulf]

When you are grinding and sanding don't get overly aggressive with rougher grits like what is left on the blade. And don't move on until you've got the previous rougher grit sanded out. You will end up with a much nicer blade finish that way. Leaving grind marks in a blade , when you are going for a clean looking blade, makes it look hastily made and amatureish in my opinion.  If you are taking the time to go through all the work, a little extra time sanding out grind marks is well worth it in the finished product. 

[Jonathan Smidt]

^When doing it by hand, does the blade get clean and polished with each grit of paper as you go up? and is it better to sand wet or dry?  A lot of these I've just been going through trial and error with.  I have 220-2500 I can use to hand sand, but not sure what it should look like at each stage before moving up in grit.

[Steve Sells]

have you tried reading through the knife making classes here? I had thought it was covered pretty well there

[Jonathan Smidt]

29 minutes ago, Steve Sells said:

have you tried reading through the knife making classes here? I had thought it was covered pretty well there

If it's in one of the archived-esq ones I haven't gotten to reading through those yet, I'll try to poke around and see if I can dig them up

[Daswulf]

With the grind marks I see in the blade 220 probably won't take them out, you need a coarser grit to start with after grinding. Yes the blade will clean up as you go through the grits and at 2500 grit it should be pretty shined up. But you need to be sure you sanded out the previous grits scratches before moving to a finer grit. A backing block helps with keeping the finish smooth as well if sanding by hand. 

As as far as sanding dry or wet it depends on the paper you have and generally I wouldn't start sanding wet until you get to the finer grits like the 220 and up.  Just my opinion.  The real goal is to just not leave the grinder scratches. 

 

 

[Jonathan Smidt]

2 hours ago, Daswulf said:

With the grind marks I see in the blade 220 probably won't take them out,

Thanks, I'll go get the gauntlet of grits from 60/80 up, and try to see what I can make happen!