Detail Work

This is the part I love the most about knife making, the detail work.  Everything up to this point comes together quite fast, but the detail work is what takes the most time and attention.  The following are a few crumby cell phone pics of the progress made this last week.

The handle is almost complete.  At this point, I have several coats of oil finish on the scales.  They need another coat or two before they get a final waxing.  Even in this phone pic you can see how the colors and textures of the burl wood pop into life.  I'm really liking the look of this wood.  It reminds me of molten lava.  The Damasteel bolsters have been polished to a perfect mirror finish.  Even though they will get etched in acid, it's still necessary to bring them to a mirror finish in order to get the best etch to bring out the beauty of the Damasteel.

At the end of last week's work I had the blade mounted on my hand sanding jig.  In this photo the blade has been finished up to a 600 grit hand-rubbed finish.  It's hard to see the beauty of the satin finish in this photo, but you'll see it when I take some good pics upon completion.

Here is the process of how the Damasteel bolsters are etched.  The jar is filled with sulfuric acid which etches away the different steels of the pattern-welded steel at different rates which brings the layers into view.  I found that a 1 hour dip in the acid at room temperature gave me the best etch.  After the etch, the bolsters will get a light sanding with 2000 grit paper and a quick spin on the buffing wheel with pink scratchless compound.

I chose to do my favorite file work pattern, the twisted ribbon, on the spacer for this knife.  This step is very time consuming, but is certainly worth the effort in the end.  I've said it before, but file work and these kind of details are what make handmade knives so unique and valuable.

This blurry photo is a shot of the liners for the knife.  Instead of file working the liners like I usually do, I chose to try something a little different.  I chucked up a tiny carbide burr in my rotary tool and added a stipple texture to the edge of the liners.  Let me tell you that this was a pain in the backside.  That edge is really narrow and I about went cross eyed trying to focus on what I was doing.  Thank goodness my magnifying visor showed up that very morning.  Perfect timing!  I'm still not sure how these liners will look in the end, but I'm hopeful that after they are anodized, the texture will become more apparent.  It will be interesting to see how they turn out.

The pics that I took of building the lock and detent didn't turn out well enough to post, so if you want to know how I do those steps, I guess you'll have to scan back through previous posts.  Sorry about that.  The knife at this point is nearing completion.  I still need to build a thumb stud, anodize the liners, polish out the bolsters, etch my mark on the blade, and sharpen the edge.  I hope to finish this knife build up next weekend.

Thanks for following along with me on this build.  If you want to be added to my email list to receive notifications on when new knives become available, just send me a quick email with "Subscribe" in the subject line.  You can unsubscribe at any time in the same manner with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line.  I only send out emails periodically when new knives are available or when I decide to hold a sale, so you won't be inundated with unwanted messages.  I appreciate all the support and would love to hear your feedback via email or a comment here on the blog.  Thanks for stopping by the Robinson Edge.

-  Brandant Robinson