First off, I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I sure did. There is nothing like family gathering around for the Holidays to cheer up one's heart as we celebrate the birth of the Savior of the world. A belated Merry Christmas to everyone!
I still need to take some good pics of the Jaguar knife that I just finished last week so I can get it posted on my "Available Knives" page here on the Robinson Edge. I really hate taking knife photos. I can never seem to get a good image of my knives, so I end up putting it off. Some day I think I might have to take a photography class to figure out what I'm doing wrong.
Since the Jaguar knife is finished, I decided to begin a new knife-making adventure. I recently lost my own Virtue knife that I have been carrying for the last two years, so I thought I would make myself a new one. I'll really miss that knife. I chose a new design that I call "Glaucus" which is named after the Greek god of the sea. It's a small little knife with a blade just a hair over 2 inches. It should be the perfect size to keep in the coin pocket of a pair of jeans or slip into a pair of slacks for Sunday dress. I know I'm going to regret this, but I opted to make these knives at the same time, one to keep, and the other to offer up for sale. I've also always wanted to make a straight razor, so I thought I would give that a go too. I made up razor design some time ago and have been anxious to try it out. I guess three knives at the same time isn't too crazy. I just hope I can keep all the parts sorted out.
Here are the raw materials that I will be starting with. All the blades will be from CPM154, my very favorite steel. Liners are all 6AL4V titanium. The bolsters and spacers for the Glaucus knives will be from 416ss and the bolsters for Polshed (the straight razor design) will be from nickle silver. I chose to use some mammoth ivory for the scales on one of the Glaucus knives and stabilized buckeye burl for the other. I thought that I would use green-dyed and stabilized maple burl for the scales on Polished as pictured above, but changed my mind and decided to use black Micarta since it will be around a lot of water.
After a lot of work, all the parts have been rough cut and laid out. I can already see that I'll have to be very careful to keep from getting all those parts mixed up. I decided to make the Glaucus with the buckeye scales with front and rear bolsters and the other with the mammoth scales with front bolsters only. I really love those mammoth scales and wanted to show as much of them off as possible. I should be able to keep almost all the bark on that mammoth intact if I really careful.
Here are the three blades after being profiled and surface ground. I've center punched some divots where the holes will be drilled for the pivots and for the thumb stud screws on the Glaucus knives.
All blades have been drilled and are ready for heat treatment.
Here are the blades all wrapped up and ready to enter the Evenheat oven for hardening. The blades get heated up to 1850 degrees F, air quenched between two steel plates, sub-zero treated with dry ice and then two temper cycles at 400 degrees for two hours each cycle. I don't have a hardness tester, but this "recipe" should yield a hardness of around 59-60RC.
I accomplished a little more work over the holiday weekend, mostly fitting the bolsters and scales on the Glaucus knives, but I really got into it and neglected to take any photos. I have several days off this week for the New Years holiday and hope to get out to my shop for some extra holiday shop time. Thanks for stopping by the Robinson Edge and a Happy New Year to all.
- Brandant Robinson
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