Mark_Bartlett

Dog Bone Quillon Dagger This is the dagger from the pinned WIP on this forum. Blade: 300+ layer 1080/15N20 ladder Damascus from Randy Haas at HHH Damascus.Guard and Fittings: 4140, mild steel, stainless steel. Hot blued.Handle: Mammoth ivory with stainless pins and escutcheon plate.Sheath: Leather and deerskin belt sheath by Tony Beard.Blade length: 10-5/8"OAL: 15-3/4"$2600 Shipped in the US. Outside the US, please message me.Prefer Paypal. Most other forms of payment accepted. Email moosetrax@live.com

Aldo Bruno. Google New Jersey Steel Baron. He's hands down the best steel supplier in the country.

Yea, I'm gonna have to watch this one. Great job thus far.

Part of the mix will settle on the bottom. I leave mine in the pot and break it up with a piece of rebar before I light the burner and then stir till it's dissolved again.

THIS IS A HOT CAUSTIC BLUING SOLUTION. WHILE IT WILL NOT HARM THE TEMPER OF YOUR BLADES, 275 DEGREE BOILING LYE AND FERTILIZER WILL MOST DEFINITELY HARM YOUR SKIN, EYES, LUNGS, HAIR, SINUSES, AND ANYTHING ELSE ON YOUR BEING THAT IT COMES IN CONTACT WITH. I ASUME NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR INJURIES INCURRED BECAUSE YOU CAN'T READ OR GRASP BASIC SAFETY MEASUREMENTS. PROPER VENTILATION AND PROTECTIVE GEAR (RUBBER GLOVES, SAFETY GOGGLES, GLASSES, FIRE EXTINGUISHER, ETC) IS REQUIRED. I mentioned toward the end of my dagger WIP that I'd make a separate thread on how I blued the fittings. This recipe is something I found courtesy of another maker on facebook on the Blindhogg Custom Gunworks web site. The author had some unknowns that I tested myself. Such as using stainless wire instead of their recommended black iron wire and using a stainless stirrer without issues. So as for the recipe itself, I CAN NOT TAKE CREDIT FOR IT. I'm only passing along the information to you folks in this forum with some added experience that I've had with it. There is no big several hundred dollar tank and heater system and station here. Just a $15 ceramic coated canning pot, a thermometer that will read to 300 degrees F, 5 lbs of sodium hydroxide (lye) and 2.5 lbs of sodium nitrate mixed with a gallon of water and heated to... drumroll please... 275° F. Well below anything that would damage tempered hardness. This is as close a recipe as you can get to a commercial caustic bluing salt. Pour one gallon of distilled water into the pot. SLOWLY add 5 lbs of pure sodium hydroxide to the water while stirring. The mixing will begin an exothermic reaction that will raise the temperature to around 240°. Once thoroughly mixed, slowly add 2.5 lbs of sodium nitrate. NOTE: Ammonium nitrate can be used as long as it is pure. However it will create ammonia gas and needs to be very well ventilated during mixing. Once mixed, turn on the burner and heat the mix to 275°. Continue stirring. When everything is mixed and dissolved and at temperature, parts that have been finished to their final grit and polished, etc. and degreased thoroughly can be submerged into the solution. Maintain a low boil at 275° by slowly adding back water that boils off. Once the desired finish is achieved, soak the parts for a few minutes in hot tap water. Then rinse thoroughly and wipe dry and spray with a water displacing oil such as WD40 to insure there are no salts left in or on the material that will cause corrosion. Some people even soak in oil overnight. Notes: parts should be hung in the solution, suspended where they do not touch the bottom. No aluminum can contact the salts or it will neutralize them. Parts will turn black after about 30 minutes. Some may develop a purple dull sort of finish. That will wipe off with a wet rag. It's a soot from the salts boiling at the bottom of the pot. If you're doing larger parts such as long damascus blades, you'll just need a tank to fit those dimensions. Stainless is also an option provided it doesn't have handles held on by aluminum rivets. They'll be dissolved by the solution and when they fall in will neutralize the salts. (Ask me how I know) If the parts aren't dark enough, place them back in the salts. Sodium Nitrate is often found as 16-0-0 Nitrate of Soda in farm supply stores or on eBay. Sodium Hydroxide, (Lye) can be found on eBay as well or through pressure washing supply sources. Dedicated soap making suppliers such as bramble berry are considerably more expensive. For larger applications, the recipe can be doubled or halved again and added provided your burner is still capable of heating the extra volume of solution to the required temperature. Enjoy.

Finally gathered the cash and sent the dagger from my WIP thread to Jim Cooper. I'm still new and learning who does what and how and it was an absolute pleasure to send this to Coop. Thank you to those that followed along.

Thank you everyone. This was a definite learning experience. Salem, Thank you. That stabby part was something that I've always liked. Like Cashen, not so fond of the blades that stay full width till they're 2" from the tip. Daggers need to push through stuff.

Since the etching process is straight out of Nick Wheelers world famous WIP, I'll not bother with pics of the blade going in and out. The bluing process is another step that I'll do a separate post on because quite frankly while the info is available, it can be hard to find without ending up on an FBI watch list. So for now, I'll leave you with the all-but-finished pic of my first dogbone dagger and we'll wrap this up. Thanks for all the kind words through this project. The encouragement means a lot.

And lastly, heres the final image for a while. I've got a half ton of cleanup and some other stuff to work through before this is finished. And while it's whole, it's assembled, and it's sharp, it's far from done.

Now with the pins not being structural, because I like to be able to remove pieces right till the last time it goes together, I opted to go with something that I've seen from John White, and more recently Veronique Laurent and Jean-Louis Regal. Pin the ends... Some people don't agree with this and that's fine. I wasn't fond of the idea myself either. But with the tight tolerance of the guide pins (going back to the start where I brought up the necessity for good bits and accurate pin stock) the scales have to be pried off the frame as it is. So I no longer see as much of an issue with this. I drilled 3 of the 5 spacers so that the dowels would butt against the #2 spacer and leave plenty sticking into the scales. Then put the spacers back on the handle and drilled the holes into the ivory. I used the Grobet handpiece with a 1/16" bit because The hand piece can run considerably slower than my drill press with the foot control that allows me to stop it without fumbling for a switch if something goes wrong. Then something similar for the end cap under the finial except for that part I made a sacrificial plate that I used to transfer the holes perfectly to both the butt and the cap.

Time for pins. I've been dreading this because it's not being done in the traditional method and even now, they aren't permanently attached, and I hate anything overly repetitive. Like 18 stainless button head rivets. But anyway, I took the pins, chucked them in the drill, and polished them. Then trimmed them to length and turned down an undercut behind the head to allow it to bend easier. Then the pin heads are bent over in a block that is only slightly steeper than the handle facets to account for the pins springing back.

And now the escutcheon plate that almost made me throw things. Small piece of stainless, beveled edges, and two pins is the norm. once I have the bevels ground, I put two pieces of a 3x5 card on either side and set my big file guide down on them. when the guide is clamped to the plate, it leaves a few thousandths stuck up over the guide face. This is how I've been trying to go about this and had a makeshift one from when I did the push dagger. Works much better with this oversized guide. Then I soldered the pins to the back into some recessed holes. I located where I wanted the plate and marked the holes for the pins. Filed the excess solder off the back, and heres where things took a turn. The plate warped in the soldering process and refused to sit flat. So I had three choices, Leave it with a gap, break off the pins and flatten and try it again, or, screw it... Yes, screw it. I found a #48 drill bit, drilled the holes all but through the plate, and threaded them with a 2-56 blind tap. Then counter bored the back of the holes, flattened the back of the plate, and put two stainless 2-56 screws in it. and I'm done for the night. I'll play with it some more tomorrow.

Everyone knows about hand sanding so I won't spend much time here. What I will show you though is a little dimple in the ricasso. And how do you get it out without tearing up the world. I watched a video (highly recommend it too) of the gentleman at Greenfield guitars building custom acoustics. His apprentice was fitting some spalted maple pieces into a trim ring groove. While most of us would say flip the grinder on and ever so lightly bump the piece against a belt or disc, he was putting a little bit of pressure on the work piece and gently rotating the disc by hand with his other thumb. I've found it's easier and less likely to screw something up if I hold pressure on the ricasso against the platen and with the drive belt off, roll the belt by hand, repeatedly checking progress. I left it with just a slight mark that is all but gone now after hand sanding the blade.

Separate comment for this. I was asked over on facebook if I used EDM stones. Not really. I have a few odds and ends of diamond hones and rods and some ceramic and a few hard Arkansas stones and such that I use for the task of cleaning up plunges and such. But all my hand sanding is done with sandpaper and backing blocks.