I'd say it was my first ever knifey project but as I was mostly looking on and learning, it's more my respected Elders 
We're from a genetic line of knife makers (J Nowill & Sons) but we're the impoverished end of the line and never played knifeys ourselves although he's definately got the metal in his blood, he's a fabulous metal engineer- so at 74, this is his first sojurn into the old trade
Show an engineer a problem and they'll want to solve it using tools that they're familiar with. I wanted to make a crooked (draw) knife ie single bevel so he started on the milling machine to remove most of the stock.
Now we'd guesstimated the angle of bevel and as it was milled down, a wire edge became apparent, the pass before this learning curve bit us on the beeehinds...
Luckily we'd massively over estimated the blade width anyhow so a quick grind later brought us back to sound metal. We marked and trimmed the tang....
Then rounded the front of the blade. Can I just point out here that Dad has lived long and learned the hard way that his machine handling techniques are actually not recommended by any form of Health and Safety executives- do it like this yourself and risk the consequences!!
Next steps were down to me so no piccies... hardening the blade with oxyacetelyne torch then Dad tempered it as I'm a liability with a torch... So after that, screwing together and heres the finished article underneath
And in use, on top... I couldn't wait to carve some stuff, went straight down the pub and was banned from sitting near the beautiful oak stained bar, they made me sit with the logbasket, can't blame 'em!
Next knifey project will hopefully be a necker with HWMBO, proper stylee, using Sasquatchs' hand bevel jig... a huge big thank you to Chad, btw, for all the encouragement and the jig, I just let the OM do it his way and enjoyed learning from him tbh, next time we'll be doing things a little differently as I'm no engineer
We're from a genetic line of knife makers (J Nowill & Sons) but we're the impoverished end of the line and never played knifeys ourselves although he's definately got the metal in his blood, he's a fabulous metal engineer- so at 74, this is his first sojurn into the old trade
Show an engineer a problem and they'll want to solve it using tools that they're familiar with. I wanted to make a crooked (draw) knife ie single bevel so he started on the milling machine to remove most of the stock.
Now we'd guesstimated the angle of bevel and as it was milled down, a wire edge became apparent, the pass before this learning curve bit us on the beeehinds...
Luckily we'd massively over estimated the blade width anyhow so a quick grind later brought us back to sound metal. We marked and trimmed the tang....
Then rounded the front of the blade. Can I just point out here that Dad has lived long and learned the hard way that his machine handling techniques are actually not recommended by any form of Health and Safety executives- do it like this yourself and risk the consequences!!
Next steps were down to me so no piccies... hardening the blade with oxyacetelyne torch then Dad tempered it as I'm a liability with a torch
... So after that, screwing together and heres the finished article underneath
And in use, on top
... I couldn't wait to carve some stuff, went straight down the pub and was banned from sitting near the beautiful oak stained bar, they made me sit with the logbasket, can't blame 'em!
Next knifey project will hopefully be a necker with HWMBO, proper stylee, using Sasquatchs' hand bevel jig...
a huge big thank you to Chad, btw, for all the encouragement and the jig, I just let the OM do it his way and enjoyed learning from him tbh, next time we'll be doing things a little differently as I'm no engineer
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