Stainless - No Cigar

I thought it turned out pretty well, considering.  The epoxy doesn't really hold, even though I roughed up the tang. I had to re-glue one side and the other is loose at the butt. Oh, well.  It also looks sort of ugly. I guess I could have done better.  If I have to, I bought two cobalt 1/8th bits, and I could try to pin it, but I would really just start over.  Something ain't right with the front of the handle. (It does look better in person.)

The wood is a slightly different type of South American hardwood from shipping crates. It's a little softer than the other I was using and doesn't shine up as nice. I'm deducting 4 points for minor blemishes, 4 points for weak glue and 4 more for general ugliness: make it an 88/100.

The End of Act 1

I need to get new belts and my friend said he would give me a small belt sander, so I'm not grinding any metal right now, but worn belts work pretty well on wood, especially the #80/100 grit is much more forgiving. I managed to do most of this with the coarse belt. It's the same unknown wood I'm using for scales; this was a roughly wedge shaped piece of waste wood. Cut the kerf with the edge of the sander and used a lot of my new-found inner radius "talent".

Good practice, plus I'll be set if I get any letters on the other side of the metal detectors.

My friend gave me two sheathe knives that had gotten rusty on one side from being in the sheathes for at least twenty years. One is a big fat Pakistani bowie that's thick enough to grind the rust off, which I'm in the process of.  I'll post photos when I'm done.  This one is kind of cool: tight stag handle, hard, thin and very flexible blade and only light rust, which I'm taking off by hand because the blade is so thin. Too bad it looks like a bread knife, but it would be quel formidable in a between the ribs application.  Think I'll stick with bread.

My next project, which I didn't put handles on before because it's too hard to drill stainless. But now that the epoxy only knives are holding up well, I'm just going to glue it and grind it. Then I have the last damascus blank, that I still haven't figured out how to handle.

The first four Damascus USA knives, done for now.  Time to order more steel.

First Four Finished

Improving...

Two Finished

After a whole lot more sanding w/ 600 and 1000 grit. I just noticed in the photo that I missed the front radius on the feather. Oh, well, it's done, and not really a glaring error. I'm taking off a few points for minor wood errors and 4 for the botched finger notch. I give myself a 92 overall for that one. The dagger turned out really well; the lines, fit, and symmetry are good, the front cleaned up well. The wood could have been shaped a little better.

Ugly finger notch and slightly mismatched wood - 92 out of 100. I need a belt sander with a small diameter roller, about two inches.

Only minor blemishes and slight lack of finish (which I could still do, in theory), so I'll take off a couple of points, plus two very small detail flaws for a 96 on this one.

What not to do.

Much Hand-Sanding Later

I'm pretty pleased with the way the dagger is turning out. Although I did sand on the steel, I did much better keeping the original curves.  I'm sanding them with 600 grit now, but I need to do a bit more belt-sanding on two of them.
I should have sanded the fronts before I glued them; the end wood will look raw against the polished parts.  I'm using the edge of the workbench to do the concave radii and work around the handle so all the compound curves will look right. I'm deducting about 5 points for the unsanded bolsters and about 2 points for working the damascus. I think this will finish out about 90 out of 100.
I dug into the steel on the boot knife pretty bad. I need a smaller roller. In trying to  work down to an even curve, I took out too much towards the blade and there's almost no metal where it comes to a point, plus sanding into the steel so deeply heated the blank enough so the scale is loose on one side.  I might be able to skoosh just a little epoxy into the gap and re-clamp it. Frankly, I messed this one up.  Minus about 20 points for gouging in so deeply.  If I can salvage it, it should finish out between 75 and 85.  I need to be more careful with the machine tools; it's too easy to take off too much, but I am improving. 
It looks like the epoxy only works well, but the pins are stronger and the alignment can be more precise.  I'm going to get some 1/8" nickel/silver wire and I need some brass for the bowie, maybe from Dixie Gun Works.

A Rainy Day's Work

These are the results of yesterday's glue-up. I spent most of today belt-sanding with a couple of hours hand-sanding the feather using dry 360 and 400 grit sandpaper. I don't have anything between 400 and 1000, so this is done for now, but I'm going to round that v-notch out. I couldn't figure out how to polish the inside radii, so I used the edge of the bench with newspaper under the sandpaper. Learn as I go, I suppose.
The long parts of the back and bottom are pretty scratch free and the back radius worked out pretty well. the scales are only short in one small area and I dug the excess epoxy out of the front grooves without scratching the blank. You have to be careful not to sand the damascus because the contrast goes real fast. I'm only using 1000 on the blanks, but I couldn't avoid sanding the tang. It's real shiny but no contrast. I'd take off about 5 points for working the blank. I should be able to make a 100% job on the classic small tang, because I'm sure I'll have to make whatever kind of handle before I install it. Possibly the bowie, too. 
The finger guard is not satisfactory, it might even be sort of dangerous as there is no sharp transition to warn the user that he's getting near the sharp part, but I might be able to sand the radius a little better. that takes off a couple more points, say 8 and a couple more for the bit where the scale doesn't quite reach. If I can pretty it up a skosh, I'd rate it between 85-90 out of a hundred (for a really simple handle). It's the nicest I've made, so far.
These are the five damascus blanks as they are. tomorrow, wife and weather co-operating, it's hand sanding the two glued-only knives to finish. I think they'll sand real fast without the pins. The fine sanding with pins darkens the wood. I like it, which is good because I'm not going to re-do it.

Forward Motion (a little, maybe)

I went nuts with the glue gun today. After I finally got the hang of making scales to rough fit, I made sides for two more of the damascus blades, "bolster dagger" that looks like a thrower, and "lum's boot", a simple curving skinner. The one on top is called a "classic modified", which I must have gotten previously, probably from SMKW, and had put a quickey handle on, after ruining a big block of ebony while I was teaching myself how to make scales. I was smart enough not to glue it so now that I'm getting a little better, I can put it in the project pile. I don't know yet how to use the less-than-full tang design, so I need to do some googling for ideas. I saw where one guy drills out antler and just glues it on, which I may try.

I had my first knife ready to pin and glue, but I couldn't find anything nice so I used welding rod for the pins. It only took about a half hour to make a pair of sides for the boot knife, (I'm getting pretty good with the router and bandsaw) and about an hour for the dagger. I wanted to try it without pins, so I glued the sides with 5-min epoxy (you're supposed to use the longer-setting kind, but they only had about 10 varieties of the quick-set), and just pushed the pieces to look right with the vise loosely clamped, and clamped harder after the epoxy started to set. I can't hardly wait to see if it worked, but if it didn't I can whip up another PDQ

Feather - Day 2

Much hard-stolen time away from what I'm supposed to be doing (landscaping) wasted, trying to make scales. I am getting better, though; I can make one in about a half-hour, now, after about ten attempts. The next-to-the-last one I was just putting the teensiest of touch-ups on the finger relief and caught the wrong edge on the router and tore the bottom out. My technique is now to cut and rough sand the top and bottom edges to closely match the steel, using four 1/8 drill bits for pins, and then routing out the finger notch and using the roller on the belt-sander to notch the front to match curve of the blade. then I CAREFULLY saw the piece in half and and sand the sawn side flat. this ordinarily wouldn't work because I don't have two matching scales, but the wood is so fine grained it doesn't seem to show.

I broke my own rule and fine-sanded to match with the blank in place, because I had already nicked the steel on the bottom. Since this is as basic as possible, I'm going to pin w/ brass (I think I have some brazing rod, if not I have lots of old welding rod) or (horrors) buy something shiny if they have it at the Home Depot. Charlton recommends epoxy without pins, so if I can get the scales close enough to the steel without drilling to pin, I'm going to build the next one with just glue. He claims it's as strong as solder, and if it doesn't stick, I can drill and pin it later without damaging the blank.

1-M Feather Modified

This is the blank I'm currently working on; simple, straight back and bottom, except for the finger notch. I have been labeling this knife1. New label will be feather.

knife1 will be just another sour memory