The Raptor knife build is coming along real nicely. This design might easily turn into one of my favorites and I predict that it will also be a popular design among my collectors too. I made some good progress on the build over the weekend. In fact, it's very close to being complete. Here are a few photos to show that progress.
The textured bolsters that I made for my last knife build of the Virtue knife were very appealing and I thought they would suit this knife build as well. It's very meticulous work using a rotary tool with a diamond bit to stipple texture the bolsters, but the results are worth the effort.
Here is the blade after it has been ground and polished up to 2000 grit. If you recall from the last post, the blade is made out of Damasteel which is a popular production Damascus that comes out of Sweden. It's a stainless pattern welded steel made from RWL34 and PMC27. It's some great stuff to work with, looks absolutely beautiful, and performs extremely well as a finished blade. The pattern doesn't show up until the blade is etched, so stay tuned.
Here is the left liner after the lock bar has been cut out. I cut this out using a thin cutting disk mounted in my drill press. The liner is fastened in my drill press vise and hand fed into the cutter to relieve the lock bar.
I'm going all out on this knife, so I spare no detail. Here is the spacer after the filework had been done and polished up. I went with an alternating twisted ribbon pattern for this piece. It's one of my favorites.
Here are the liners after getting some detail attention. The filework along their edges is a climbing vine pattern. I tell you, cutting in the very precise filework on this small scale really put some strain on the old eyes. I went cross eyed on more than one occasion. I think I may need to get my eyes checked.
Instead of the typical jeweling on the inside of the liners, I decided to try something different. I used a diamond cutting wheel in my rotary tool and cut in some texture on the insides of the liners. Once the liners are anodized and assembled, I'll determine if I like the effect or not. Right now, I think it will be a neat and unique touch.
With the blade all polished up, it was time for a dip in some acid. I "borrowed" a bottle of nail polish from my sweet wife and used it to mask off all of the areas of the blade that I don't want to be etched. Those areas are where the washers will contact the blade, the pivot hole, and the back side of the tang where the lock and spacer will contact the blade in the open and closed positions. I used muriatic straight out of the bottle to etch the blade. It took about a half an hour in the acid to get the etch deep enough to show off the Damasteel pattern.
Here is the blade after coming out of the acid. It's a little hard to see the pattern in the low-res photo, but if you click on the pic, it will show a larger view where the pattern is more apparent. I'm quite please with the outcome.
The only things left to do are anodize the liners, mark and sharpen the blade, carbidize the lock face and install the detent ball. There is always a little tweaking to do at the end to get everything just right too. I hope to finish up the build this week sometime. Like I said before, I'm very pleased with how this knife is shaping up. It should be a real winner once completed. Thanks for following along with me on this knife-making adventure.
- Brandant Robinson
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