My first self built Knife

[Stuart]

it was my birthday on the 15th and C Claycombe decided to give me one of the best presents I have ever received......... He came down for a week and helped me make my first Knife!!!!!!

I had designed the knife a couple of months before and chris took up the challenge of helping me make it

we started with a billet of 01 tool steel 25mm X 3mm, chris brought some stabilized spalted sycamore back from the states with him, and I had some Mosaic pins which I brought back from Finland

it took a week to compleat, mainly because I dont own any power tools so it was all done with handfiles, sand paper, saw and a workmate

we used the mill at a local school to mill out center of the handle for the mortise tang

The bits:

Chris filing the bevel in my garden where most of the work was done:

This is the heat treatment which was done in my kitchen:

this is the blade sharpened and cleaned and the wood cut in half and leveled

After milling out the 1.5mm on each block the depression was shaped with needle files:

then the sides were pined and glued then left in a vice overnight and the handle was shaped in the morning (those are my legs):

and now its finished:

I could not possibly have done any of this without the help of chris, who patiently put up with and corrected all my mistakes

Thanks Chris I could not have imagined a better birthday present :You_Rock_

 

[Adi007]

Fantastic work Stuart and Chris ... that's a truly fabulous knife!

 

[Ed]

Nice pins ;-)

Ed

 

[ANDYLASER]

Well done, excellent work.

 

[C_Claycomb]

Think you have enough photos there Stuart?

Stuart rather over states my input :rolmao:

The knife was his design, I supplied the wood, but he had the pins and the profiled blade already. It was Stuart that blagged his way into both the local college and the secondary school :yikes: ): to use drills and mills. He also did nearly all the filing of the blade and the handle sanding.

About the only thing that I did was file the handle roughly to shape. This was really hard 'cause Stuart has wider hands than I do, I would file a bit and it would still feel terrible, I'd pass it to him and he would beam and say how nearly perfect it felt :aargh4:

 

[bushwacker bob]

exellent job lads. I expect to see a new line on the Kellam Knives site soon

 

[Gary]

Looking good Stu, well done Chris!! :super:

 

[Stuart]

please ignore C Claycombe's uttur rubbish about me doing most of the work :roll:
the majority of my imput involved screwing things up with big files :?:

 

[ESpy]

Nah, to *really* screw things up you need a big powered grinder

Nice knife!

 

[Martyn]

Well done Stuart and Chris, superb work. I love seeing stuff like this, you just cant beat the sheer pleasure of designing, working and finishing your own knife. The joy of holding and using something entirely of your own creation is unbeatable.

It is, however, very addictive.

Well done guys, great stuff. :biggthump

Stu, how did you heat treat the blade?

 

[ssj]

Very nice job! Good looking lines on the knife. Makes me want to do the same for myself.
Steve

 

[rapidboy]

Nice work guy's.
I like the pins , what about a sheath?
RB

 

[ESpy]

HT - good point Martyn. Is that Brownells PBC or something similar being dropped all over the sink?

 

[Stuart]

Stu, how did you heat treat the blade?

the heat treatment was done in an electronic lab furnace that I borrowed off a friend (it used to be mine)

we have no idea what all the black stuff is!!!! it had us very worried but the blade seems fine we tested it before putting on a handle and what ever it is it does not seem to have adversly effected the blade

 

[Martyn]

Stu, I want that oven!!! Where'd you get it? Can you get another?

 

[Stuart]

sorry Martyn it resides in my freinds lab now, glad you like it though

any idea why we end up with all the black deposits when we heat treat in it?

 

[bothyman]

any idea why we end up with all the black deposits when we heat treat in it?

It could be either scale from the metal or dust from the Furnace or a combination of both.

 

[MartiniDave]

Stuart,

Great looking knife, you must be delighted.

I'd like to know a bit more about the heat treatment too if possible. Especially temperatures, times any quenches etc. Would make a nice tutorial.

Cheers,

Dave

 

[C_Claycomb]

That furnace was a right royal pain to play with I had thought that it would make the job eaiser, but I am really not so sure that it did.

The powdery stuff has to be some form of oxidation reaction between the air and the hot steel. The furnace wasn't sealed at all and the hot blade was exposed to lots of air. I want to post that picture up on one of the US knife forums and see what they say, the scale adhered much less than it does with a propane furnace.

With a propane furnace you can take the blade out and check with a magnet, then put it back and the temperature of the furnace does not change. That electric furnace cut out every time the door was opened and then fluctuated before settling back to temperature, as a result we had to rely on the control being calibrated accurately. We aren't really sure what the temperature got to. The blade did get hard on the quench...tempering was much more difficult.

There are a lot of good tutorials on knife making already out there:
http://www7.taosnet.com/ebear/metal/heattreat0.html
http://www.engnath.com/public/manframe.htm
http://www.knifenetwork.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=1

I spend a lot of time looking up information from such sources and would not feel anywhere near qualified to write anything on it at all!

 

[MartiniDave]

Thanks for the links Chris, that's tomorrow lunchtime taken care of!

Dave