"Pride" Gets a Thumb Stud and some Curves

I had a family reunion last weekend which kept me out of the shop for the most part.  But, even with the family frivolities, I did manage to make a little progress on the Pride knife.  Here's a look at the progress that was made.

The majority of my weekend shop time was spent in manufacturing a thumb stud for the knife.  I know that may will buy pre-made thumb studs, but I really like to make my own to my own design and standards.  As I have stated in the past, I do not have a metal lathe, so all of my turning work is done on my mini wood lathe using files and sandpaper to do the shaping.  Here you can see a piece of 3/16" round 416 stainless steel rod mounted in a Jacobs chuck on the lathe head.  I gave the rod a spin and flatten off the end with a flat file.

Because I am taking progress photos with my phone, this is about as close as I can get to the action before everything goes out of focus in a hurry.  You might be able to make out that I have painted the end of the rod with black marker and scratched the desired length of the thumb stud for reference.  Now that I have a flat spot on the end of the rod, I insert another Jacobs chuck into the tailstock of the lathe and clamp down on a #56 drill bit.  I expose enough of the drill bit to drill the hole as deep as possible without drilling beyond the overall length of the thumb stud.

After the hole is drilled, it gets threaded by hand with a 0-80 tap.

Here I've used a hack saw to cut into the rod at the top of the thumb stud so that I can see the material that I have to work with.  In the photo I'm checking the length once again with the end of my calipers.

Since there really isn't much to see at this resolution, I'll just explain what I have done in words.  Using a set of needle files, I have given some shape to the thumb stud until I'm pleased with the outcome.  I use mostly 1/8" round and three-corner files to do this work.  Once the shape has been cut into the rod, I give it a good sanding to knock off the sharp edges and polish up the piece.

If you squint really hard you might be able to see the screw threads sticking out of the end of the thumb stud.  This is a sacrificial 0-80 screw that has been threaded into the tapped hole and had its head cut off.  You'll see why in the next photo.  At this point, I part off the piece from the rest of the rod with a hack saw.

Now you can see the value of the sacrificial screw.  The threads get mounted into the Jacobs chuck so that I can spin it and finish up the head of the thumb stud.  Since I finished the blade up to 600 grit, the thumb stud will get the same treatment.

Here's a photo of the finished thumb stud.  I sometimes get a little elaborate with my thumb studs, but I elected to keep this one simple and sleek, keeping with the overall theme of the knife.

And here she is, mounted in the blade.  I use a small 0-80 button head screw to make the attachment.  The hard part is grinding down the length of the screw so that it's just the right length.  But, with a little perseverance, I got it done.

The knife is now at the point that it's time to begin work on the embellishments.  I have drawn on the scales a series of overlapping curves that I will use for the basis of my carving and texturing.  I sure hope this works out.  This is all new territory for me.  It would be a crying shame to mess things up at this point in the game.  Oh well, to the brave go the spoils I suppose.

Using a diamond cutoff wheel mounted in my rotary tool, I cut in the curves.  I was shaking like a dog passing razor blades as I tried to keep the curves smooth.  The cuts are a little jagged in places, but I'll clean those up in the next step.  After mopping off the sweat from my brow, I took a moment for my blood pressure to come back down to normal range.

With the basis of the lines cut in with the Dremel, I use a round needle file to start cleaning up the bottom and sides of the cuts.  This worked surprisingly well to even things out.

Here is a final photo of the weekend's work.  The lines are not as smooth as they need to be yet, but they are much better than they were before using the file.  I still have quite a bit of work left to do to get them completely cleaned up, but I can see that my methods are going to work.  My intention is to flute the spaces between the curves and to stipple texture the negative spaces between.  I think this will give the plain stainless scales some real style.

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

-  Brandant Robinson