The Chef Set Continues

With the paring knife finished up last week, I spent this week working on the boning knife for my daughter's chef set.  I didn't get as much shop time as I had hoped, but I made some good progress on this knife and a little more work done on the last two knives of the set.  I don't know how it happened, but I lost several of the progress photos I took along the way.  My phone has been acting kind of weird lately, so that's probably the problem.  Anyway, here's the progress.

Here is the boning knife attached to my hand sanding jig.  you can tell that it's much too long for the small jig.  I'm used to finishing 3" folder blades and most of my equipment is designed to suit those needs.  This nearly 7" blade overhangs the edge by a couple inches, which was a little precarious with the point aimed at my gut, but I made due and came out the other side without any wounds.

600 grit hand-rubbed finish accomplished.  Pretty!

Onto the handle fittings.  The front and rear bolsters are blocked out and scales book matched and ready to go.  I'm not to proud or confident to confess that I skipped a step and messed up this set of scales,  I got in a hurry and forgot to attach the black fiber liners before fitting the scales to the bolsters.  A great big OOPS!  If this knife wasn't intended to be part of a matching set of knives, I would have left the knife unlined and went on my merry way.  But, since it's part of a set for someone whom I love, the scales were scrapped.  As luck would have it, I had enough leftover box elder burl to make a new set of scales from the same block as the other knives.  I'm so happy the block was a little over sized to compensate for my boneheadedness.

Rule number one of knife making is take your time and think things through.  When you get in a hurry, you end up making big mistakes.  I still make my fair share of mistakes, but I try to learn from them and do better next time.

The front bolsters get drilled to fit the holes in the knife tang, pinned together, and the front faces matched and finished up to a 600 grit finish, just like the blade.  Once these are installed, finishing the front faces is extremely difficult.  That's why the faces get finished before they get installed.

The bolsters get their dovetails ground in and are ready to be attached.  I also use a tapered pin reamer which turns the cylindrical holes through the bolsters conical.  This way the pin has room to expand as it's peened into the hole, locking it to the tang very securely.

After some work at the anvil, the front bolsters are attached and the excess pin stock is ground away.  I love it when bolsters just disappear like they are supposed to.

The scales get their liners glued to the backs and the beveled faces where they mate with the bolster dovetails.  I simply love how this black liners look against these blond scales.  Sometimes things just work out right.

Well, folks, that's the end of the photos, but not the end of the progress made on the chef's set.  I was able to get the scales fit to the boning knife, the rear bolsters attached, the scales epoxied and pinned in place, and the faces of the handles ground flush after the epoxy had cured.  I also made some headway on the hollow grinds of the utility and chef's knives and started hand sanding the utility knife.  If you want to see how these steps were done, everything was accomplished in the same fashion as the paring knife build, so you can refer back to the previous posts if interested.  If you have any questions, leave a comment or shoot me an email and I'll be happy to answer.

Thanks for following along with me on this knife building adventure.  This week I hope to get the time to finish the boning knife and make more progress on the other two.

-  Brandant Robinson