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

No Progress

As I may have mentioned, the missus is not too crazy about me "sittin' around on the internet all day" or "wastin' a lot of time out in that 'shop'", so you can imagine how much she enjoys my "sittin' around bloggin' about whatever you're doin' out there", which turns out to be doodley; hence, no pictures of the slabs (third pair, so far on k1.2) which I'm rough sanding to be just a hair oversize. I have to route out one finger notch (which I don't know how I'm going to do, yet), then just fine sand to final fit, pin and glue, with a minimum of freehand sanding, bevels, radiusing, etc. As basic as possible. If I can't do basic I'm not going to be able to do anything fancy, obviously. I've seen where some guys make all-wood knives for practice, so I'm going to, at some point. I've certainly got enough pieces to practice on. Meanwhile, here's my dog, taking time to smell the roses.

I feel kind of bad for all the wood I've wasted over the years, including a really nice piece of ebony that I ruined with a router trying to freehand something or other. The good news is I'm using scraps from furniture projects, of wood that was originally the crates that epay comes in. The crate wood is harder and denser and darker than (almost) any domestic hardwood. I know it will make good handle material, but plain. And simple. Like me, only more patient and careful.

Knife #1 - day2 - Shot!

I expect to have problems, I'd I know I'm prone to cutting corners and rushing things. Today's effort was textbook screwup. Couldn't quite get the wood scales to match the inside radii in the brass. the first picture shows how many attempts before I got a pair to almost work. The second picture shows how gnarly the bottom the bottom turned out. Bailout time. I'm going to just start over. The crack in the brass is too sloppy even for me. The blank is still almost untouched which is what's making this so difficult. All my practice knives were just slabbed oversize and sanded to match the steel. I'm finding it much harder to disassemble, sand, and reassemble repeatedly, but I'm finding shortcuts like making one fat slab to fit and then carefully sawing in half to make two matching pieces, and drilling from the good side to have any splintering show on the bad side. Now that I know I don't have any junk I can use, I'm going to go as basic as I can. A well made simple knife is better than a crappy fancy one.
I like well made and fancy, like the kind I could buy from Charlton right now, but then what would I blog about? At least I appreciate why they're expensive; this ain't like making wallets at summer camp.

After Sanding

Top photo shows mock-up after sanding brass on a belt sander with #260 grit. As feared it's a little small, but I can still make the back of the knife correct. The front bolsters came out pretty well off the roller, but I can't get into the finger groove to sand. Will try manually. I'm pretty pleased, except for the bottom issues. The lesson is, don't cut any corners. If something almost works, don't use it, but I'm disregarding it in this case, so that if I'm wrong I get to kick myself twice. Besides, until I glue it, I can pretty easily disassemble and start over. On the other hand. that was a lot of work. On the other, other hand, I could use the practice.

After Fine Grinding

I have the brass about right; slightly larger than the tang. Ideally, after sanding, it'll be perfect on top and especially the front, where I'm trying to match the arc of the blade relief.

Blade with Slabs in Place

This was the first mock-up to check if it would work at all. The brass doesn't quite reach on the bottom, but I'm putting wood over that and hoping it will look okay with epoxy in the gap, which will be a flaw, but maybe not too bad, I'm going to concentrate on making the the top, front and rear correct and leave all the ugly underneath. I already nicked the steel there, before I realized if I didn't want to scratch the damascus I need to dissasemle, reassemble, and check repeatly. It turned out to be around twenty times. Radii are difficult on a grinder.

Blade #1, day 2

This is the two sides pinned together with 1/8" drill bits. This keeps them aligned while I drill out the three larger holes, two of which will be used to clamp them together for rough grinding. The two on the left will be removed and the one on the right is a slight problem. To use those I need to drill through the blank, and it turns out that damascus is as hard as it's supposed to be. My first two exploratory borings with a 1/8" bit left an almost unperceptible dimple. Not good. I made the mistake of trying to drill about a 1/2" hole in a piece of stainless and literally trashed every small bit I had, The larger holes are punched in the blank, I may be able to drill it and pin it w/ brass if I buy a couple of expensive bits. If not, I think it will strong enough with pins, rivits and glue.