Intro & a few questions.

[Rod Hart]

Hi guys, the name is Rod & I'm 23. I've been collecting & using knives since I can remember, my first being my grandpa's old boy scout knife. I appreciate the simplicity & function of one of mans oldest tools. I was drawn to knife making by an old family friend, Harvey Keen, when I was in eighth grade. I have a couple of his knives & I can only hope to become as skilled & knowledgeable as him. Unfortunately I haven't learned too much from him, he lived in Laramie WY (now somewhere GA) & I lived in CA. I have under my belt four years of metal shop, Metal Fab/Welding ROP (MIG, TIG, Arc welding, Lathe & Mill experience), he passion for new ideas, extreme attention to detail & several unfinished knives (do to living in an apartment till my wife is done with nursing school). I can't find my "$50 dollar knife shop" or "Custom Knife making) so those are the first on my list of to do's. I look forward to building friendships on here & learning as much as I can from anyone willing to help. Thanks!

QUESTIONS:

Since I live in an apartment, & limited to stock removal for now, for at least a year more I was thinking of asking my boss if I could cut my patterns out with the plasma cutter. Will this have any effect on my steel? Like cutting torches & carbon.

 

When I have a place, what jigs do I need to build for hollow grinds?

 

I have more questions but the wife needs to organize her nursing classmates schedules. I appreciate your time & I look forward to hearing from real craftsman. Thanks again

 

Rod Hart

[KPeacock]

Rod,

 

Welcome aboard. spend a bit of time clicking through the archives for a wealth of information. On slow days I can easily spend hour upon hour looking through the old posts. A lot of the questions you'll have are answered in there somewhere.

 

As far as cutting out a blank, I think a plasma cutter would work just fine. you would be well served to cut the blank a wee bit oversized and file off a bit around the edges just in case you have a carbon loss issue, but I think the carbon will migrate enough that there wont be any trouble here.

 

I've filed all of my bevels in by hand. it isn;t as slow as you might imagine. to keep things even I use a magic marker to color in the blade and then use a compass to scratch in where I want the bevel to start. this as worked pretty well for me to keep things pretty close to even on both sides.

 

I stumbled along a link a few weeks ago that illustrated how to grind the bevels with a 4.5" angle grinder. I have not made one yet, but it should be easy to duplicate. http://myhome.mweb.co.za/~20022586/jig.htm

[Rod Hart]

Thanks for the suggestions! I have been tearing through pages & pages on these forums. There are a lot of knowledgeable people here. I especially enjoyed the Hunter tutorial by Mr. Serge P., he lives just down the hill from my old home in Placerville CA. He really painted a good picture of a process that I can modify to fit me, my situation, & my knives. I really like that link you gave me, I might just make one of these on one of my weekends. I can't wait till I finally have some time to get a process figured out this winter, I have a full binder of designs & ideas that need to be tested. Thanks again!

 

Rod

[RedNeckLeftie]

Hello Rod, and welcome to the "madness." While I avoid hollow-grinding, I do most often cut my blanks with plasma. The biggest issue I have run into with "simple" carbon steels (10xx, W2) is the HAZ. Because it is so small, the main body of steel will auto-quench the HAZ, resulting in a mighty hard ring around 2-4 sides of the blade. This area cannot usefully be worked with files or sen; it must be either ground out or the piece must be normalized before working. I recommend doing a search on "normalize" here and in the metallurgy sub-fora. I find normalizing to be faster, easier, and cheaper on belts than grinding all that hardened steel away...Of course, your skill/current will determine how much of an issue it really is. I pretty much always run a 50A heat, but I'm a self-taught novice...

 

Thanks,