View Full Version : My first self built Knife
it was my birthday on the 15th and C Claycombe decided to give me one of the best presents I have ever received......... He came down for a week and helped me make my first Knife!!!!!!
I had designed the knife a couple of months before and chris took up the challenge of helping me make it
we started with a billet of 01 tool steel 25mm X 3mm, chris brought some stabilized spalted sycamore back from the states with him, and I had some Mosaic pins which I brought back from Finland
it took a week to compleat, mainly because I dont own any power tools so it was all done with handfiles, sand paper, saw and a workmate
we used the mill at a local school to mill out center of the handle for the mortise tang
The bits:
http://img57.photobucket.com/albums/v174/diabolik/start1.jpg
Chris filing the bevel in my garden where most of the work was done:
http://img57.photobucket.com/albums/v174/diabolik/start2.jpg
This is the heat treatment which was done in my kitchen:
http://img57.photobucket.com/albums/v174/diabolik/start4.jpg
this is the blade sharpened and cleaned and the wood cut in half and leveled
http://img57.photobucket.com/albums/v174/diabolik/start5.jpg
After milling out the 1.5mm on each block the depression was shaped with needle files:
http://img57.photobucket.com/albums/v174/diabolik/P1010018.jpg
then the sides were pined and glued then left in a vice overnight and the handle was shaped in the morning (those are my legs):
http://img57.photobucket.com/albums/v174/diabolik/shaping.jpg
and now its finished:
http://img57.photobucket.com/albums/v174/diabolik/P1010009.jpg
http://img57.photobucket.com/albums/v174/diabolik/P1010001.jpg
http://img57.photobucket.com/albums/v174/diabolik/P1010007.jpg
http://img57.photobucket.com/albums/v174/diabolik/P1010006.jpg
http://img57.photobucket.com/albums/v174/diabolik/P1010010.jpg
I could not possibly have done any of this without the help of chris, who patiently put up with and corrected all my mistakes
Thanks Chris I could not have imagined a better birthday present :You_Rock_
Fantastic work Stuart and Chris ... that's a truly fabulous knife!
ANDYLASER
21-07-2004, 12:26
Well done, excellent work.
C_Claycomb
21-07-2004, 12:34
:oops:
Think you have enough photos there Stuart? :wink:
Stuart rather over states my input :rolmao:
The knife was his design, I supplied the wood, but he had the pins and the profiled blade already. It was Stuart that blagged his way into both the local college and the secondary school :yikes: :o): to use drills and mills. He also did nearly all the filing of the blade and the handle sanding.
About the only thing that I did was file the handle roughly to shape. This was really hard 'cause Stuart has wider hands than I do, I would file a bit and it would still feel terrible, I'd pass it to him and he would beam and say how nearly perfect it felt :aargh4: :lol:
bushwacker bob
21-07-2004, 13:43
exellent job lads. I expect to see a new line on the Kellam Knives site soon :wink:
Looking good Stu, well done Chris!! :super:
please ignore C Claycombe's uttur rubbish about me doing most of the work :roll:
the majority of my imput involved screwing things up with big files :?:
Nah, to *really* screw things up you need a big powered grinder ;)
Nice knife!
Well done Stuart and Chris, superb work. I love seeing stuff like this, you just cant beat the sheer pleasure of designing, working and finishing your own knife. The joy of holding and using something entirely of your own creation is unbeatable.
It is, however, very addictive. ;) :D
Well done guys, great stuff. :biggthump
Stu, how did you heat treat the blade?
Very nice job! Good looking lines on the knife. Makes me want to do the same for myself.
Steve
rapidboy
21-07-2004, 20:47
Nice work guy's.
I like the pins , what about a sheath?
RB
HT - good point Martyn. Is that Brownells PBC or something similar being dropped all over the sink?
Stu, how did you heat treat the blade?
the heat treatment was done in an electronic lab furnace that I borrowed off a friend (it used to be mine)
we have no idea what all the black stuff is!!!! it had us very worried but the blade seems fine we tested it before putting on a handle and what ever it is it does not seem to have adversly effected the blade
Stu, I want that oven!!! Where'd you get it? Can you get another?
sorry Martyn it resides in my freinds lab now, glad you like it though :-)
any idea why we end up with all the black deposits when we heat treat in it?
bothyman
22-07-2004, 08:18
any idea why we end up with all the black deposits when we heat treat in it?
It could be either scale from the metal or dust from the Furnace or a combination of both.
MartiniDave
22-07-2004, 08:43
Stuart,
Great looking knife, you must be delighted.
I'd like to know a bit more about the heat treatment too if possible. Especially temperatures, times any quenches etc. Would make a nice tutorial.
Cheers,
Dave
C_Claycomb
22-07-2004, 13:00
That furnace was a right royal pain to play with :lol: I had thought that it would make the job eaiser, but I am really not so sure that it did.
The powdery stuff has to be some form of oxidation reaction between the air and the hot steel. The furnace wasn't sealed at all and the hot blade was exposed to lots of air. I want to post that picture up on one of the US knife forums and see what they say, the scale adhered much less than it does with a propane furnace.
With a propane furnace you can take the blade out and check with a magnet, then put it back and the temperature of the furnace does not change. That electric furnace cut out every time the door was opened and then fluctuated before settling back to temperature, as a result we had to rely on the control being calibrated accurately. We aren't really sure what the temperature got to. The blade did get hard on the quench...tempering was much more difficult.
There are a lot of good tutorials on knife making already out there:
http://www7.taosnet.com/ebear/metal/heattreat0.html
http://www.engnath.com/public/manframe.htm
http://www.knifenetwork.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=1
I spend a lot of time looking up information from such sources and would not feel anywhere near qualified to write anything on it at all!
MartiniDave
22-07-2004, 13:09
Thanks for the links Chris, that's tomorrow lunchtime taken care of!
Dave
I'd say it was a little bit of carbon burning out of the surface due to the oxidising atmosphere .. probably hardened fine under that .. if you use it again, get a small bottle of CO2 or Argoshield .. and squirt some in before closing the door to blast the oxygen out and replace the atmosphere with an inert gas .... it will reduce the scaling and oxidising on the surface ..... other than that. sounds like a very controllable way of HTing
I have now finished the sheath for my knife so I thought I would show the finished project
(WARNING THIS POST CONTIANS CHEESY CATALOGE STYLE PHOTOS)
The sheath is made from Kydex covered in buckskin and hand stitched, the screws hold in place a Tec-Loc belt loop and the rear screw adjusts the tension with which the sheath hold he knife in place. (it wasn't an intended feature it just worked out that way)
I used Kydex because i like the way that the knife locks firmly into place with a satisfying 'Click' but i did not like the way it looked hence the buckskin finnish (matches the colour clothing a usually wear too :roll: )
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v174/diabolik/sheathfront.jpg
this is the back, and you can see the details of the belt loop
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v174/diabolik/sheathback.jpg
and this is the cheesy cataloge shot, sorry to subject you to this but i couldn't think of any other way to show how it looked on the belt (yes i tried a close up shot but it made the knife look huge!)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v174/diabolik/knife.jpg
I chose this orientation as i aways cross draw my knife (a habit from using puukkos which are always cross draw) and this set up means that i can sit down comfortably without my knife digging into me
so thats it..... Knife finished :o):
Super stuff Stuart! Nicely done indeed! :biggthump :You_Rock_ :o):
Where did you get those snazzy looking Tec Loc clips from? :wink:
Very nice... looks good :-)
Ed
bushwacker bob
08-08-2004, 08:05
Stuart, great job on the sheath but no firesteel loop?
Watch out or Freemans will be headhunting you :o):
C_Claycomb
09-08-2004, 07:59
I was thinking it was more of a GAP type photo, what with all the khaki!! :lol:
Nice sheath Stuart, I am really looking forward to having a look at it close up.
You know...you could have used easy to find black kydex, given that you have covered it all, instead of really rare, hard to find, brown kydex :wink:
Still boggling at the cost of those tekloks :yikes: I am going to try getting mine from the US. I haven't checked if Blade Tech will ship here, but I am sure that someone will.
I used the light brown kydex sheet for the sheath and kept the nice dark brown one.
the opening at the mouth of the sheath is brown on the inside where as if i had used black kydex it would have been black, so i suppose the colour is being used a little
I do tend to where khaki a lot, it has to be my favourate colour for clothing
Excellant knife mate, very impressed, you'd better be bringing it to the meetup.
K thats another project on the long list that I really want to do but really don't have the time at the moment....
Blade Tech do ship to the UK, but charge you an arm + ancilliary limb for the shipping. Then you get slammed for duty & VAT.
I've got some white Kydex in 0.040 too... No idea what I want to use it for, yet. About the only idea I've had is a sort of urban camo effect with black.