Well folks, another knife adventure came to its conclusion today. The Pride knife is now complete and I must say, it exceeded even my high expectations for this build. Here are a few pics of the final steps of the process.
Here is my setup for jeweling the insides of the liners. I use a small abrasive rod mounted in the drill press and make lots of little swirls. It's a subtle detail, but it's well worth the effort.
Here are the two liners after they have been jeweled. They look good now, but wait until they get anodized.
The lockbar has been cut out of the right liner. It will be fitted to the tang for a solid lockup and a ceramic detent ball will be installed to keep the blade immobilized in the closed position.
Here is my setup for anodizing titanium. It's made up of a DC power supply, a bath of electrolyte, and a few wire leads. By changing the voltage, the color of the titanium can be changed. In this case, the liners and pocket clip will go in at 26 volts for a nice, dark blue color.
Awwww, that's nice! This color will look great next to the red scales.
The face of the lockbar will get a thin layer of carbide welded on in order to keep the lock from sticking in the open position.
The spacer and the spine of the blade will both get a stipple texture. This is done with a diamond point bit mounted in my Dremmel.
The blade gets it's final hand-rubbed finish for a beautiful satin look.
After the final finish is applied to the blade, my maker's mark gets etched in.
Kind of a bad pic, but here's the marked blade.
Here are the two tiny thumb studs that I turned on my new lathe. This is the first time that I've turned stainless steel. It machined really well. I also added the same stipple texture to the face of the thumb studs.
Here's the knife after its final assembly. I'll inspect everything from top to bottom and from head to foot. I'll also add a drop of oil on the pivot. If everything is all working the way that it should, the pivot screw will get locked in place with some threadlock.
Well, what do you think? Me, I think it turned out really nice. I think it represents some of my best work to date. All the colors and materials compliment each other and the differing textures add some real interest to the piece. It will be heading off to its new owner shortly. I hope you enjoyed following along with me on this build as much as I enjoyed it.
Next up will be a four-piece kitchen knife set. I hope you will follow along with me on this new build. Wish me luck.
- Brandant Robinson