New Knife - Virtue

I enjoyed making my daughter a set of kitchen knives, but I have to say, it was nice to start working on a folder again.  I decided to make a knife from my Virtue design.  It has been a popular one, and I really like the simplicity of the design.  Here are a few photos from this last weekends work out in the shop.

Here's where it all starts; the gathering of the raw materials.  The blade will be from CPM 154, the bolsters and spacer from 416, the liners from 6AL4V titanium, and the scales will be made from mammoth ivory.

Here are the major parts after roughing out on the band saw.

I gave my new surface grinder a go when grinding the blade and bolsters flat.  It worked pretty well, but I can tell I need to make a few modifications.  The surface grinding was followed up on the disk grinder for a super flat surface.

Here's the blade wrapped in stainless foil and ready to go into heat treat.

The liners are clamped together and all of the holes are drilled.

The front bolsters have been fit to the liners.  You can see the dovetail detail of the bolsters.

I really liked how the black liners looked on my daughter's kitchen knife set, so I thought I would give them a try on this knife.  I like how the black looks against the light-colored liners.

Scales attached to the liners.

All handle parts are attached and profile ground.  I'm liking those black liners here.

Here the blade has been ground and hand finished with a nice satin finish, ready to be fit to the knife.

That about does it for the shop work this weekend.  I got caught up in enjoying the olympics and spent much more time inside than in the shop.  I hope everyone has a great week.

-  Brandant Robinson