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keep it down up there!
Jun 22, 2006

How's it goin' eh?

His Divine Shadow posted:

I dunno if this is the right place to ask this, but I am building a small belt grinder that will use 2x36" sanding belts. I intend to use it to sharpen chisels, plane irons and knives. It'll be a home built contraption like a wooden harbor freight lookalike. My question is where do I want to go slow and where do I want to go fast?

It seems like those that have bigger grinders like 2x72", prefer really fast speeds like 6000 SFM, I assume it's because it hogs of more metal faster and zirconium belts work better at higher speeds unlike AO ones. On the other side there's machines like the sorby pro edge which has a very slow speed like 700 sfm. What gives, why are so many people saying go for speed, but one of the pro sharpening tools on the market goes slow?

Is that just because it's for sharpening and doesn't need to remove as much material as other metal shaping operations, or is there more to it? Perhaps finer grit belts work better on slower speeds?

At any rate I am building this with step pulleys so I can have a range of speeds. I think 890rpm to 3500rpm is a suitable range.

I don't have an answer to your question, but I was wondering what plans if any you are using to build it. Or are you designing it yourself?
I was debating picking up John Heisz's plans, if I can find a decent motor to run it off of. His is 2x72 however.

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His Divine Shadow
Aug 7, 2000

I'm not a fascist. I'm a priest. Fascists dress up in black and tell people what to do.
Right now I am building based on the Bellevue Woodshop plans and modifying them to suit my needs. It'll be a smaller sander. Eventually I'd like to build Johns 2x72 sander, but I am starting off small.

Trabant
Nov 26, 2011

All systems nominal.
Resurrecting the thread because I finally bit the bullet and started on a kitchen knife, so you all get to watch me stumble and fail. Here's my pattern in plywood and the result in steel:



Meant to be a gift, if I'm not too embarrassed by the end result. It's CM 154 steel, far too thick at 1/8", but here we are.

Next up: putting on a bevel using a belt grinder. Made myself a little scrap wood jig/guide so I don't burn off my fingertips any more than I already have. Stretch goal: make some mosaic pins.

Uncle Enzo
Apr 28, 2008

I always wanted to be a Wizard

His Divine Shadow posted:

I dunno if this is the right place to ask this, but I am building a small belt grinder that will use 2x36" sanding belts. I intend to use it to sharpen chisels, plane irons and knives. It'll be a home built contraption like a wooden harbor freight lookalike. My question is where do I want to go slow and where do I want to go fast?

It seems like those that have bigger grinders like 2x72", prefer really fast speeds like 6000 SFM, I assume it's because it hogs of more metal faster and zirconium belts work better at higher speeds unlike AO ones. On the other side there's machines like the sorby pro edge which has a very slow speed like 700 sfm. What gives, why are so many people saying go for speed, but one of the pro sharpening tools on the market goes slow?

Is that just because it's for sharpening and doesn't need to remove as much material as other metal shaping operations, or is there more to it? Perhaps finer grit belts work better on slower speeds?

At any rate I am building this with step pulleys so I can have a range of speeds. I think 890rpm to 3500rpm is a suitable range.

I'd say it depends on your use- sharpening proper you want to go slow, so you don't overheat the metal and ruin the temper. Big belt sanders are also perfect for removing a shitton of material fast, way better than a normal bench grinder. If you're doing shaping or anything where you want to remove material as fast as possible, then yeah a big fast sander with a coarse grit will loving vaporize any material it touches.

So I'd say slow is for sharpening proper, fast is for shaping. Obviously you can do both with either. I sharpen my wood lathe chisels freehand on a medium-speed 2x72 belt sander, just a light touch and dunking the work piece in water to keep it cool.

Trabant
Nov 26, 2011

All systems nominal.
Thread necromancy time. Put a crappy bevel on the blade, had it heat treated, made some pins of steel tubing filled with black epoxy (mosaics turned out awful), and roughly shaped stabilized maple into scales:



Next up: clean up the oxides from the heat treat, attach the handle & pins, shapeshapeshape, etc. But I don't want to make this a log so I'll just post the finished result. At this pace, I'll be done sometime in... November.

Slanderer
May 6, 2007
Feel free to post any minor updates, this stuff is pretty cool and no one else is making anything right now

Trabant
Nov 26, 2011

All systems nominal.
Well in that case :v:

Cleaned up the oxides from the blade and put on the handle + pins. Here it is, last chance to stop:



Epoxied and clamped:



And how it looks while curing, covered in epoxy goop due to handling:



Of course, I managed to drop it as I was unclamping the whole thing :downs:

I don't think I'll get to work on it any more until the weekend, which is just as well because I've learned not to push my luck while things are at least moving along.

Rotten Cookies
Nov 11, 2008

gosh! i like both the islanders and the rangers!!! :^)



Made a knife to beat up around the shop. I found a handle with an opening of 1/8" x 3/4" and two set screws. So of course I made a knife blade that could slip in there. Shaped it on a belt sander as best I could, filed it, heated it with a torch and dunked it. It works. Not pretty, but it works. The point is already getting dinged pretty good from getting dropped on concrete.




Not a knife, but I made it at the same time roughly. Used a hand knurler. The head is two thicknesses of 1/2" and two outer pieces of 1/4" welded together then ground flat. The faces were hardened, or rather "hardened" to the best of the ability with a torch. That is to say, I guess it's harder, and the face doesn't dent as easily.

Trabant
Nov 26, 2011

All systems nominal.
^ very cool! Really digging the knurling.

Latest in my ongoing saga: put a small secondary bevel on the very edge and shaped the handle:



I'm also building an accompanying gift box -- you can it in the upper right corner. That became even more loving irritating because of the splintery nature of the wood I chose.

Up next: sharpen the edge, polish the blade (hopefully removing some of those scratches), wax the handle, and... that's it? I think.

wormil
Sep 12, 2002

Hulk will smoke you!
S2 of Forged in Fire starts this month, 10th maybe edit: Feb 16th.

wormil fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Feb 7, 2016

Trabant
Nov 26, 2011

All systems nominal.
And finally, some glamour shots of the finished knife and box:











The box is made of some raw, driftwood-looking maple (because the handle uses maple too) which I will never use again. It splinters like crazy, even in parts where it didn't have the knots, which made the box a really goddamn annoying part of the project.

Anyway, things I've learned/would change:

  • Thinner stock would've been a much better choice, as the final profile is more convex than I'd like
  • You have to be very firm and even when grinding, else you're left with scratches that are really difficult to remove. You can see them in the pictures, although the worst offenders are strategically hidden
  • Grinding the handle & pins was much easier and faster than I thought it would be. Getting a smooth, scratch-free bottom of the handle... not so much.
  • The CM154 steel takes a really good edge (which I had professionally done for fear of wrecking the blade)
  • Respirators are a really good thing, and I hope I used them consistently enough to avoid contracting black lung or some other Dickensian disease

Overall, I'm happy with my first knife ever, and I'll probably do it again but... This poo poo is hard, yo.

Rotten Cookies
Nov 11, 2008

gosh! i like both the islanders and the rangers!!! :^)

E: ^^^ I really love that handle. Great job!

"Hey, what the hell is this stainless doing in the scrap bin?"
"Oh, that's been around for like, a year? and it's just been taking up room."
"So.... I could just take it and make it useful after hours?"
"Uh..... sure?"




4" handles, 8" blades on the both of them. Made from Abandoned Mystery 14ga stainless steel.

CAD and a plasma table made this very easy. Also, I just went at it with the big-rear end belt sander to get some rough bevels. Though now I'm probably gonna send them off to be heat treated somewhere else. (Should I have waited until they got back to put the bevels on them? Maybe.) Annealing, hardening, and tempering can be fickle, I know. I don't have a kiln at the shop and I honestly don't want to gently caress around with fabricobbling a heat chamber to hold these things at 1400*F for 45 minutes then up to 1950*F for 15 minutes or whatever because I know it'll probably be a poo poo show. It's worth it to me to just chuck the $20 at the chunks of metal to have them magically be slightly harder when they come back.

Before that, though, I must do some detective work to find out what kind of stainless this is, exactly. And by detective work I mean call up our supplier and ask them what stainless they carry.



It's also fun for me to look back at the first knife I posted in this thread. It was a couple years ago made at home over maybe a week or two? and now that I work in a metal shop I kinda take it for granted that I can do something like this in less than half an hour.

wormil
Sep 12, 2002

Hulk will smoke you!
I haven't made anything since the sawblade knife but I've been accumulating more tools to make it easier. I had no metal working tools at all except a bench grinder and hacksaw.

Also Forged in Fire started yesterday, looks like this season will go a little smoother. First build was a war hammer.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

I really enjoyed the first episode. I felt bad for the lady because I think she would have done better if she'd started with a better piece of steel, and I felt bad for the dude who got eliminated first because he also picked the wrong steel to start with. It's interesting how the show frequently presents the contestants with a challenge they had not anticipated or prepared for in their normal practice, like "what sorts of unidentified scrap metal are likely to be usable carbon steel?"

On the other hand I really wish they'd show more of the actual fabrication, and the dude who is always trying to look like a badass as he waves around a knife going "It will keeel" is really annoying.

Trabant
Nov 26, 2011

All systems nominal.

Rotten Cookies posted:

[...] now that I work in a metal shop I kinda take it for granted that I can do something like this in less than half an hour.

:argh:

Kidding, just envious :)

Rotten Cookies
Nov 11, 2008

gosh! i like both the islanders and the rangers!!! :^)

While I didn't want to face the possibility before, I have confirmed that the Mystery Stainless is in fact 304. Which means it has very low carbon and basically can't really be hardened. So..... I got myself some show blades. Whoops! At least it was free ish.




To be fair, I should have guessed that first since I think it's what we most commonly use in the shop when we need stainless. But I know we have used 400 series before for some specific jobs. I held out hope that it was some leftover 440. I should've known better.

Rotten Cookies fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Feb 18, 2016

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

You could give carburization a shot? (I have no idea if you can carburize stainless)

wormil
Sep 12, 2002

Hulk will smoke you!
I was glad no one was sent home because their blade was the wrong size. That's so lame of a contestant. At least this season they tell them what the tests will be.

ihopeirememberthis
Sep 8, 2011
Just checking in as someone who makes knives. I'm working on a couple of Loveless style fighters at the moment but my cheapo belt grinder has just died, will post pics once they are done.

Slanderer
May 6, 2007

Trabant posted:

And finally, some glamour shots of the finished knife and box:



The box is made of some raw, driftwood-looking maple (because the handle uses maple too) which I will never use again. It splinters like crazy, even in parts where it didn't have the knots, which made the box a really goddamn annoying part of the project.

How'd you make the box interior? Did you just trace the knife's outline onto the two end pieces and freehand with a router?

Trabant
Nov 26, 2011

All systems nominal.
Nope, wasn't as refined as that. I took three cutoff pieces and cut/sanded them to the shape of the blade, then glued to the bottom of the box. Here's how they look under the flocking:



Pieces A and B were easy, just straight cuts. Piece C needed a scrollsaw and spindle sander to get the right curve, but none of it was terribly complex. Used the same approach on the handle holder/notch.

But if I were doing it again, I'd try to do the whole interior out of one piece. If you look at the original picture, you can see seams where A+C and B+C joined together, and I wish I had avoided that. I figured the flocking would make it uniform. No dice.

mattwhoo
Aug 26, 2009
Hello knife thread. I just started getting into knife making about a month ago. This is my second attempt I think it turned out well.



I did not really take any pictures during construction. The knife is 3/16" thick 1084. I did the heat treat myself in a modified grill with lump charcoal and air being blown in from a shop vac. Hand sanded to 600 grit. The handle is Bolivian rosewood with a Danish oil finish.

mattwhoo fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Mar 9, 2016

wormil
Sep 12, 2002

Hulk will smoke you!

That is excellent, I really dig the shape for a kitchen knife.

His Divine Shadow
Aug 7, 2000

I'm not a fascist. I'm a priest. Fascists dress up in black and tell people what to do.

Uncle Enzo posted:

I'd say it depends on your use- sharpening proper you want to go slow, so you don't overheat the metal and ruin the temper. Big belt sanders are also perfect for removing a shitton of material fast, way better than a normal bench grinder. If you're doing shaping or anything where you want to remove material as fast as possible, then yeah a big fast sander with a coarse grit will loving vaporize any material it touches.

So I'd say slow is for sharpening proper, fast is for shaping. Obviously you can do both with either. I sharpen my wood lathe chisels freehand on a medium-speed 2x72 belt sander, just a light touch and dunking the work piece in water to keep it cool.

I've finished this project more or less, turned out completely different than I had planned, but I can use 2" belts ranging from 30" to 39", perhaps more. Making step pulleys so I can have different speeds, so I can use it as a grinder or sharpener.
https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2819334&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=308#post457079212

Trabant
Nov 26, 2011

All systems nominal.

mattwhoo posted:

Hello knife thread. I just started getting into knife making about a month ago. This is my second attempt I think it turned out well.



I did not really take any pictures during construction. The knife is 3/16" thick 1084. I did the heat treat myself in a modified grill with lump charcoal and air being blown in from a shop vac. Hand sanded to 600 grit. The handle is Bolivian rosewood with a Danish oil finish.

Wow, really nice!

keep it down up there!
Jun 22, 2006

How's it goin' eh?

Looks like the youtuber Trollsky is gonna be on Forged in Fire. That should be a fun episode. I love his youtube videos.

mattwhoo
Aug 26, 2009
Me again this is knife #3 this is an 8 inch chefs knife with a simple walnut handle. I wanted some nicer wood but I was impatient. I really need to bust out the good camera and build a light box and take some better pictures.

Rotten Cookies
Nov 11, 2008

gosh! i like both the islanders and the rangers!!! :^)

mattwhoo posted:

Me again this is knife #3 this is an 8 inch chefs knife with a simple walnut handle. I wanted some nicer wood but I was impatient. I really need to bust out the good camera and build a light box and take some better pictures.



You make nice knives. I like the understated handle, personally.

Slung Blade
Jul 11, 2002

IN STEEL WE TRUST

Rotten Cookies posted:

You make nice knives. I like the understated handle, personally.

For real.

Nice work mattwhoo, keep posting.

mattwhoo
Aug 26, 2009
Thanks Guys. Here is #4 and 5 in the works. I need to heat treat and then finish grinding them.



I took some better pictures of the last one i did still need to build a light box or something.

Much better detail of the finish I got on the blade. Ignore my fingerprints at the top.


Trabant
Nov 26, 2011

All systems nominal.
Really nice work! I'm a fan of the plunge line in particular. I find pretty much all of knifemaking challenging, but making those clean particularly so.

wormil
Sep 12, 2002

Hulk will smoke you!

Beautiful knife and I like the profile but one thing, it looks like the heel(?) comes down past the edge at the plunge line. Seems like it will prevent the blade from cutting all the way through.

I had half a saw blade left from my previous knife and started messing around. This will be my last saw blade knife, I'll pick up some 1085 for future projects. Also want to build a belt grinder.



mattwhoo
Aug 26, 2009
Knife #4 I made this for a friend she picked the scales. They are spalted and dyed maple. I used a water based poly for the handle.



Closeup of the handle


And one more view. Still need to build a light box.

Slanderer
May 6, 2007

wormil posted:

Beautiful knife and I like the profile but one thing, it looks like the heel(?) comes down past the edge at the plunge line. Seems like it will prevent the blade from cutting all the way through.

I had half a saw blade left from my previous knife and started messing around. This will be my last saw blade knife, I'll pick up some 1085 for future projects. Also want to build a belt grinder.





What was your process for cutting out the knife's profile?

Trabant
Nov 26, 2011

All systems nominal.
^ Good question, that's very clean.


mattwhoo posted:

Knife #4 I made this for a friend she picked the scales. They are spalted and dyed maple. I used a water based poly for the handle.

Don't think I've ever seen dyed scales -- pretty cool effect.

wormil
Sep 12, 2002

Hulk will smoke you!

Slanderer posted:

What was your process for cutting out the knife's profile?

Angle grinder mostly with some touch up on a bench grinder.

Trabant posted:

^ Good question, that's very clean.

Thanks. I still need to finish that one.

mattwhoo
Aug 26, 2009
Here is number 5. I did not like this knife when I first started making it. Now that it is done I really like the way it came out. This was my first hidden tang handle. Something I will not attempt again until I at least own a drill press. The blade is about 8" the handle is about 6" but it's balanced really well.



The handle is black & white ebony and olivewood.

mattwhoo fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Apr 25, 2016

keep it down up there!
Jun 22, 2006

How's it goin' eh?

mattwhoo posted:


And one more view. Still need to build a light box.


Here is a pretty cheap solution for a light box that you can collapse down.
https://imgur.com/a/HEvul

wormil
Sep 12, 2002

Hulk will smoke you!

mattwhoo posted:

Here is number 5.

I like it, the handle is beautiful. Did you burn it in since you don't have a drill press? The shape is almost seax kitchen knife.

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mattwhoo
Aug 26, 2009

wormil posted:

I like it, the handle is beautiful. Did you burn it in since you don't have a drill press? The shape is almost seax kitchen knife.

No I used a hand drill and some files and a bunch of swearing and a good amount of vodka and a metric poo poo ton of epoxy. I looked online and found some examples of some broaching tools people have made/used I am now in the process of making one. I will post some pics of it when It's done.

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