The Build Continues

Have you ever had your life changed with a single telephone call?  For good, or for bad, your life can change in an instant.  Luckily, this time, it was for the good.  Because of this new direction in my personal life, my shop time has been limited for the past couple of weeks.  Hence, the absence of any progress on the project knives.  After all the craziness, I was still able to get some file work done on the blades and back spacers.  Here are some pics of the new progress on the Virtue knives.

 



The first step in the process of adding file work is to blacken the edges of the pieces with a black, permanent marker.

The next step is to make some layout lines to keep the file work uniform.  To do this, I scratch lines at 1/8" increments with an Exacto knife.

I chose to do a twisted ribbon pattern on one of the knives.  This pattern starts out using a jewelers saw to cut angled lines at every other mark.  I don't cut too deep at this time, just deep enough to keep things aligned.

I then use a small 1/8" round file to cut grooves in between each saw mark.  I then use a slightly larger chainsaw file to increase the diameter of the round cuts, taking care to round over the cuts at the edges for a more 3D look.

On the left is the blade with the file work nearly completed.  All sharp edges have been rounded over with a three-corner file and the saw marks have been remade on the rounded surface, making the saw cuts uniform.  The next step is to clamp the spacer in line with the blade, making sure everything is butted up tightly.  The process of filing is continued down the spine to the file work termination point.  Butting the two pieces together enables me to make a seamless joint between them.  This makes the file work look continuous once the knife is assembled and the blade locked in the open position.  Done right, the observer has to look very closely to see where the blade ends and the spacer starts.

Here are the two finished spacers for the two separate knives.  I didn't take any pics of the second knife, but the pattern is quite different.  Unfortunately, this photo doesn't show off the file work very well.  I'll take some better photos later on when the knives are finished and you can see the work up close and personal.  File work is very time consuming and can be quite tedious, but in my opinion, it really sets off a handmade knife, putting it on a shelf far above any production knife.

Here the blades are wrapped in stainless steel tool foil, ready to the heat treatment.  The blades will get hardened in the electric heat treat oven, followed by a subzero (- 40 degrees F) treatment in dry ice and two tempers to give a final Rockwell hardness of about 59-60.

 

Well, that about does it for this post.  I hope you are enjoying following along with me on this knife making adventure.  The next step after heat treatment will be to grind and polish up the blades.  That's always the step that worries me the most.  I've messed up a couple of blades over the course of this hobby, which is a crying shame after all the work that goes into them.  But, with the new grinder to work with, my chances of achieving good, consistent grinds have improved exponentially.  Wish me luck.  Thanks for stopping by the Robinson Edge.

 

-  Brandant Robinson

More Progress

I was able to squeeze in a couple of hours worth of work on these two "Virtue" knives.  I managed to make some pretty good progress too.  There is still a whole lot of work left to do on them, but every step gets me closer to the finished knives.  Here's what I was able to accomplish today.

 

 

These are the two back spacer for the knives shown above.  You can see that I have drilled several holes through them.  The reasons for this are to reduce the weight of the knife and to make surface grinding them to final thickness a little easier.  I don't have a surface grinder, so this gets done on my horizontal disc grinder and finished up on a surface plate with sandpaper glued to it.

Next, it's time to set the stop position of the blades while in the closed position.  In the photo above, you can see the stop pins and the blades in place on the two knives.  If you look closely, you can see that the blade tips are not set into the handles far enough to keep the blade tucked safely away when closed, and that's not good.

In order to seat the blades in deeper, the tang needs to be ground a little more on each blade.  This is done with a 1/4" grinding drum mounted in a rotary tool.  It's kind of a slow process and requires several cycles of grinding and fitting to get the blade to close just right.

There, now that's better.  The tip is now concealed inside the handle and the blade stops before making contact with the spacer.

With the open and closed positions dialed in, it's time to get started on shaping the handle on the bolstered knife.  To begin, I like to start by chamfering the outside edge of the handle at 45 degrees.  The chamfer helps me keep the shape consistent as I round off the edges.

Here's the handle after the bolsters and scales have been rounded off on the grinder.  I use a slack belt to work the edges and the flat platen to smooth off the sides.  I finished the handle up to 400 grit on the grinder, the remainder will be done by hand.

Here's a shot of the spine of the knife.  I must admit, I've never really liked the looks of colored liners underneath scales.  That said, I think these actually look kind of classy.  And check out the fit of those dovetailed bolsters.  Nice!

That's about as far as I was able to get today.  The next steps will be to shape the other knife and to add any file work to the blades before they get heat treated.  If everything goes right, I hope to get that done and the blades heat treated on Memorial day.  I think these knives are coming together nicely and I can't wait to get started on the detail work.

Thanks for stopping by the Robinson Edge.

-  Brandant Robinson

Building the Pivot

This weekend was filled with fatherly duties, so the time I was able to spend out in my little shop was quite limited.  In spite of that, I was able to make a little progress on the two knives that I'm working on.  Since I haven't shown how I build my pivots, I took some progress photos of how I achieve this, the most important part of a folding knife.  After all, if the pivot doesn't work right, you don't have a folder.

This is where we begin, with enough parts to complete two pivot systems.  My pivots are composed of a 3/16" bushing, two 1/2" washers and a 1/8" pivot pin and screws.

Here is what the system looks like.  The blade has a 3/16" hole drilled through the tang.  The bushing fits perfectly in the tang hole and will be lapped until it is the exact width of the tang plus the washers.  The pivot pin then passes through the bushing and will be trimmed to length and tightened down with the screws to hold the assembly together.

First, we need to determine the thickness of the blade tang and the washers in order to know the needed length of the bushing.  I use a pair of digital calipers to take this measurement.

Here is the little gizmo that makes lapping the bushing to length easy.  I bought this pivot lap from USA Knifemakers.  The bushing fits into the bottom of the puck and the plunger is pushed down as the whole thing is rubbed on some abrasive.  It works pretty slick.

To hog off long sections of bushings, I used the pivot lap on my shop-built horizontal disk grinder.  I check the length of the bushing often, and when it gets close to the desired length, I switch off the grinder and hand sand the bushing to final size.

Perfect!

Next, the blade tang needs to be fitted to the back spacer so it is in the correct open position.  I leave the spacer long so that it can be adjusted to the correct length.  To do this, I black out the tip with a black marker and use an Exacto knife to mark where the spacer needs to be trimmed to.

After a little grinding, the blade stops in the correct open position.  Check another step off the list.

The screws of the pivot come from the supplier much too long.  I developed this little jig to shorten screws in a short time.  It's just a square piece of titanium that has a tapped hole in it.  I screw the pivot screw through the jig to just the right length that I need.

On the back side, I use a pair of wire cutters to nip off the end.

The screw gets lapped on the disk grinder, giving me a screw of the perfect length.

Next, it's time to get the pivot pin trimmed to correct length.  To do this, I assemble the knife with the pivot system in place as shown above.

A quick spin on the disk grinder takes the excess off of the pivot pin.

The last step to complete the pivot assembly is to deal with the pivot screw heads.  For the bolstered knife, pockets get drilled in the back sides of the bolsters which will allow the screw heads to be concealed below.  The titanium scales get a through hole that the screw heads will fit into.  The above shows the end of this step.

Well, not a lot of progress made this weekend, but that's alright.  Next week should bring about a lot more progress.  I look forward to seeing how these two knives turn out.

Thanks for stopping by the Robinson Edge.

-  Brandant Robinson

The Beginning of Two "Virtue" Knives

Well, it's about time that I got out to my shop and made some sparks.  I've been overwhelmed with spring chores for the last few weeks, not to mention suffering through the flu for two full weeks.  That was no fun at all.  Being sick does make one grateful for his health when it returns.

My next endeavor is to build two knives which I intend to make available for purchase.  I still need to recoup some funds from my grinder build.  By the way, I don't know how I ever got by without a 2"x72" grinder.  It really makes many of the jobs a breeze and has truly sped up my build process. 

I usually like to make one knife at a time in order to focus on the details of that knife.  This time around though, I decided to make two knives at the same time.  I wanted to make another knife like the one I've been carrying for the last year, a design that I call "Virtue," and make it available for sale.  I had two ideas for the same design kicking around in my brain, and since I couldn't decide on which one to make, I elected to make them both.  I hope I can keep all the parts separate since they are both very similar.

Here's the beginning of the two knives.  At the top of the photo you can see a picture of the shape of the "Virtue" design.  I really like this little knife for its utility and comfort in the hand.  It fits perfectly in your pocket too.  You can see the two blades have both been profiled from CPM 154 steel.  The other three items in the photo are two sets of liners and a set of scales that have been temporarily super glued together for profiling.  These are all cut out of 6AL4V titanium.  The first knife design will have these titanium scales which will be textured and carved.  This should make for a very light weight and slim design.  It will also have a lanyard hole at the back for a leather thong.  The second design will have both front and rear bolsters with scales between.  It will also be fitted with a pocket clip like the one I carry everyday.

 

I tried something a little different than I normally do when it comes to profiling.  This time I elected to glue the paper patterns onto the pieces instead of tracing the pattern onto them with a Sharpie.  I've seen many other makers do this and thought I would give it a try too.  It worked pretty well, except for the fact that I couldn't dunk them in water to cool them off while grinding.  The jury is still out on whether or not I will add this step to my future builds.

After much toil and labor most of the parts are ready to be fitted.  I didn't take any action photos along the way (I should probably do a better job of taking pics) but there was a lot of drilling, tapping, counter sinking, grinding, and fitting screws.  You can see in the top, right corner of the above photo two scales for knife #2.  I've had a set of mammoth ivory scales for some time now that have been waiting for the right knife.  I really love the looks of this mammoth, but they were really thin.  I decided that this knife was the place they needed to be, so I glued some dark red spacer material to the backs to make the scales thick enough to use.  I think they will look great when they are done.

Above you can see the liners have been fitted to their scales and bolsters.  I grind the profiles of each piece down very close to the finished shape at this point.  I still leave just a tiny bit extra for final fitting once they are assembled with the spacers in between the liners.  You can't see it in the photo, but the bolsters and scales on the left knife have been dovetailed into each other.  I dovetail at about 30 degrees, which gives it just the right look in my humble opinion.  Don't you just love that mammoth?

At this stage, the handles are completely assembled and the final shape has been established.  I think you can see how both are of the same design, but the final products should be truly unique.  The blades have been places loose in the handles just to see what the finished knives will look like.  Looking good!

Here is where I ended for the week.  Lots of work equals lots of parts.  The next step will be to do any file work on the blades before they get heat treated.  I plan to embellish the bolstered knife with lots of file work, but I'm thinking about leaving the titanium scaled knife "Au Naturel".  I think it will look really sleek with everything all smooth, but I haven't made up my mind yet.

I hope you enjoy following along with these builds.  By the way, these are knives #23 and 24 if you are interested in knowing.  I think I've finally fallen into my own style of building a folder.  Most of what I have learned about folder building I have skimmed off the internet and adapted to my tools and my own style.  Some day I'm going to have to find another maker and visit his shop and compare notes.  Thanks for stopping by the Robinson Edge.

-  Brandant Robinson

Eagle Knife Build Complete

The following photos show the progress that I made on my son's knife this weekend.

I tried another new technique on this knife, that of jeweling the insides of the liners.  It's a very subtle embellishment, but it looks really cool.  I do this by covering the liner in some valve grinding compound that I purchased from the autoparts store.  I chuck a rotary tool felt cylinder in my drill press and lower the felt until it makes contact with the liner.  I allow it to spin there for a few seconds and them slide the liner over and make another mark.  It's a little tedious, but I think it will be worth the extra effort.

Here is a shot of one of the liners after it has been jeweled.  I hope you agree that it looks very classy.  The thing I liked most about doing this is that I don't have to spend a lot of time polishing the inside of the liners, and I really hate polishing the inside of liners.

 

Here is a photo of the blade after it gets a nice satin finish.  I use 1500 grit sandpaper to put the hand-rubbed finish onto the blade.  By the way, my new grinder worked absolutely fantastic when it came to hollow grinding the blade.  I'm very pleased with the new grinder.  It's making my time in the shop much more pleasant.

This picture shows the liners after they have been anodized.  I really love the way the jeweling looks on the blue liners.  Very classy indeed.

I thought I'd post a pic of my hand sanding jig that I just made.  It's really a  simple thing, just a piece of steel angle that has been drilled and tapped to accept a bolt that passes through the pivot hole in the blade.  I put a washer on under the head of the bolt so that I don't sand away that area.  There is also a piece of red spacer material glued to the jig to help cushion the blade and guard against scratches.

 I turn my own thumb studs for all of my knives.  That way, each knife gets a custom thumb stud that fits the design.  I don't have a metal lathe, but my little wood lathes works pretty well.  I use an assortment of files and sandpaper to achieve the design I want.  I drill and tap the bottom of the stud to accept a 0-80 screw that will hold it to the blade.  The wood tool rest is there so I don't damage my good steel tool rest.

I still need to put an edge on the blade, but other than that, it's finished.  I debated whether or not to do some etching or engraving on the bolsters with something to commemorate my son's achievement, but I decided against it.  I did, however, choose to anodize the liners blue, which together with the red scales and white (well, silver) bolsters, give a very patriotic "flag" theme.  I sure hope he likes it and that you like it as well.  Thanks for following along with this build.  The next one will certainly be one that I will make available for purchase.  I really need to sell some knives to pay for my grinder.  Thanks for stopping by the Robinson Edge.

-  Brandant Robinson

File Work on the Guardian Knife

I truly enjoyed the Easter weekend.  I had a great time just spending time with my immediate and extended family, eating burgers and shooting the breeze.  Amid all of the festivities, I didn't get to spend much time out in my shop, so I didn't get the knife finished as I had hoped.  But, I don't regret it at all.  I did, however, get a little time in the shop and made a few strides of progress on the knife.

Before I can get the blade heat treated, I need to get all the file work done on the spine, since the blade will be too hard to file after heat treatment.  The tools above are those that I will need in order to produce the pattern that I have chosen for the blade spine and the spacer.  They are a ruler, exacto knife, two round files, a three-corner file, and a jeweler's saw.

The first step is to black out the edge to be filed so I can see my marks.  I use a black sharpie marker along the top edge of the spine of the knife and the spacer (shown above).  I then use a ruler to mark increment lines of 1/8" to get the proper spacing for the pattern.  I do this with an exacto blade.  I used to make the lines with a sharpie, but the lines were too broad, hence the exacto blade.  If you look closely at the photo above, you will see the first diagonal mark that I started with the jeweler's saw on the far left of the spacer.

I really got into the zone when I started filing and forgot to take progress pics along the way.  But, you can see above the final product.  This is a simple design that I call "V's and O's" along the blade spine.  The name is kind of self explanatory.  The lines are cut with the saw and the semicircular cuts and done with a round file.  I think this pattern will look good on this particular knife design.  Now that the blade has been filed, it's into the oven for heat treatment.

The next step after heat treatment will be grinding the hollow into the blade.  That's the part I have been looking forward to since getting my grinder finished.  I can't wait to see how the grinder performs.  I'll give everyone the lowdown when I get to that point.  Thanks for stopping by the Robinson Edge.

-  Brandant Robinson

Guardian Build Continues

I got quite a bit done on my son's knife today and took some progress pics along the way.  Like I said before, I have a tight schedule on getting the knife done, so I'm working as fast as I can.  Luckily I have a couple extra days off from work this week, so I should be able to squeeze in quite a bit of shop time over the next couple of days.

 

I tried a new technique with fitting the scales to the inside curves of the bolsters.  I usually make the front bolsters first, followed by the scales, and finish off with the rear bolsters.  This way, I only have to fit one joint at a time.  But, in my exuberance to get this knife made, I accidentally skipped a step and made the rear bolsters before the scales.  In order get the correct contour, I used some Sculpey clay and formed it into the scale slots on the handle.  I put the Sculpey clay and knife into the oven at 275 degrees for 15 minutes to harden the clay.



Here is one of the Sculpey clay templates after it has been hardened.  It worked pretty well.  I was worried that the clay would shrink, but it didn't.



 

I decided to use some of my dyed and stabilized maple burl for the scales for this knife.  I sliced them thin on my band saw and super glued the Sculpey clay templates onto the burls.

 

I used the Sculpey clay templates to grind off the excess wood from the burl scales.  I forgot to take progress pictures while making the scales, but this is what they looked like after being shaped and drilled to accept screws.

Here is the tang of the blade after grinding in the lock ramp.  I use my disk sander set at 8 degrees to set the angle of the lock ramp.

I use a black sharpie to color in the inside of the right liner along the bottom where the lock bar will be cut out.  I also screw the spacer to the liner so I can get the right open location for the blade.  Once the pivot assembly is installed and the blade in place, I use an exacto blade to scratch along where the tang meets the liner.

You can see in the above pic the scratch mark where the lock face will be and the additional scratch that runs the length of the liner where the lock will be cut out.

I use a small Dremel cutoff wheel mounted in my drill press to cut the lock bar free in the liner.  The liner is held in a drill press vise and I manually move the vise into the cutoff wheel to make the cut.  I leave a little extra material at the lock face so I can fit the lock to the tang down the road.

Here is a picture of the lock after it has been cut.  I use small strips of sandpaper to polish up the surfaces of the cuts.

After assembling the handle completely, I round off the edges of the bolsters and scales and get everything fitting tightly.  I also polish the entire handle and put a satin finish on the bolsters, liner edges, and back spacer.  I think it is turning out quite nicely.

I'll be adding some file work on the spacer, liners and the spine of the blade.  But for now, this is where I had to stop.  I should have time over the next couple of days to make a lot of headway, if not finish the knife completely.

Thanks for following along with this build and for stopping by the Robinson Edge.

-  Brandant Robinson