Almost There

Well, this weekend was very productive and I was able to almost complete the "Panther" knife.  I'm really pleased with the way this knife has turned out.  This time, I remembered to take a bunch of photos, so get ready for some eye candy.  Here's a play-by-play of what I was able to accomplish.

This is what the blade looks like after coming out of heat treatment.  It's black and kind of cruddy looking, but it's hardened and tempered to the best specifications for the CPM 154 steel for use as a knife blade.

After a few strokes on my surface plate with some 220 grit paper, the blade looks bright and shiny again.

If you recall, I left the pivot hole through the tang slightly undersized.  Now, using a carbide reamer, I ream the hole to 3/16 inches so that the bushing will slip right in.

The above photo shows how the blade will stop against the stop pin when in the closed position.  It doesn't quite close far enough, so we'll make some adjustments.

Using a 1/4" sanding drum in my rotary tool, I deepen the point on the tang where it contacts the stop pin.

There, that's exactly what I'm looking for.

Next we'll focus our attention on the locking mechanism of the knife.  First, the back of the tang gets beveled at 8 degrees on the disk grinder.

You can see that I don't bevel the tang all the way to the spine.  I leave about 1/8" unbeveled so that it meets up squarely with the spacer in the open position.

With the blade held in the open position, I scratch the tang line into the liner with a razor blade.  The black is from a Sharpie marker so that I can see the lines better.

Here you can see the outline of where the lock will be cut out scratched into the liner.

In order to cut in the lock, I clamp the liner into my drill press vise and use a thin cutoff wheel in the drill press to make the cut.  I feed it through slowly and cut the lock face a little long so that I can zero it in later.

Once the lock is cut, I clamp the liner in my vice and use some cloth-backed sandpaper to clean up the cut.

Here's the liner after the lock has been completed.

Now I'll focus on tuning in the pivot hardware and surfacing the back spacer.  I bought this little pivot lap from USA Knifemakers.  It works great to zero in the length of the bushing and the pivot pin.

Here's a pic of the bottom of the pivot lap with the pivot pin in the bottom.  Using my surface plate with some 220 grit paper, I press down on the little plunger and grind down the length of the pivot until it's exactly the right length.  The process is then repeated for the bushing.

Last, but not least, the spacer gets lapped down until it is exactly the right width.  Man, what I wouldn't give for a surface grinder about now.

Time for a test fit.  Everything is working well and it really looks like a knife now.

Here's a quick shot of the spine.  The file work still needs to be sanded and polished, but that will come a little later.

I still need to tweak the lock face so that it meets the tang correctly.  To do this, I remove the bolsters and scales and camp the knife in my vise.  I put some tape around the knife so I don't scratch things accidentally.  Using a flat file, I slowly grind down the face of the lock until it engages the tang at just the right way.

Once the lock is dialed in, It's time to get the detent set.  Using a #60 carbide bit, I drill through the top corner of the lock and, with the blade closed tightly, into the tang of the blade.

Using a 1/16 inch carbide blade, I lightly touch the detent hole in the tang to give a slight chamfer to the hole.  Here's what it looks like.

After enlarging the hole in the lock with a #54 bit, I set a 1/6 inch detent ball into the lock.

I clamp the liner into my vise and bend the lock over.  The titanium is thin, so the bend goes easily by hand.

Now it's time to work on grinding the blade.  I run a piece of masking tape where I want my plunge lines to be.  I then clamp onto the blade tang with a small vise grips with a small piece of leather between the jaws and the blade.  Since the blades I grind are small folder blades, the vise grips give me a handle to hold onto while grinding.

I get really focused when I'm grinding blade bevels, so I didn't take any pictures of the grinding process.  I like to add a choil to my blades.  It makes sharpening easier by giving a point of reference.  Since I forgot to add this detail before heat treating, I had to use some diamond files to cut the choil in.  The next step was to sand off the edge of the tang and put a 600 grit satin finish on the curved surfaces.  I simply wrap sandpaper around a small dowel and sand away.

I then flip the blade over and polish up the spine of the blade.  Since the spine has been file worked, I use sandpaper wrapped around a file to polish up the file work details.  Everything then gets a 600 grit satin finish.

I've shown this little hand sanding jig before, but the sanding stick is new.  I made it specifically to sand the curved surfaces of hollow grinds on my blades.  I simple wrap sandpaper around the stick and sand away.  I really don't know why I waited so long to make me one of these.  It reduced the hand sanding time significantly and my fingers don't even hurt.

I chose a nice purple color for the liners.  I think the purple will really compliment the dark maroon color of the Micarta scales.  Anodizing titanium is really an amazing process, but I didn't get any pics.  You can scroll back through previous posts where I have shown this step before.

The finished blade gets branded with my maker's mark.  To do this I use my trusty, shop-made electro etcher.  Looks awesome.

I'm so close to the end that I can almost taste it.  The only thing that she lacks is a suitable thumb stud and her edge sharpened.  I'm really pleased with how this design came together.  It's very comfortable and looks pretty sweet too.

Here's a view of the spine.  You can see how the purple liners look against the maroon scales.  I'm quite please with that.

Well, it won't be long now until I have another finished piece.  I love it when a plan comes together!  Thanks for stopping by the Robinson Edge and following along with me on this knife-making adventure.  Check back soon for the finishing touches.

-  Brandant Robinson