What a nice weekend this has shaped up to be. The weather here has been so hot lately, but it has finally taken a turn. The temperatures are down, we've been blessed with a little rain, and there's a feel of the approach of fall in the air. What a great day to spend in the shop with the door wide open.
Last week I finished up the Talon knife for a client out on the west coast. The last eight knifes that I've made have been for custom orders. I finally find myself with the books free and an opportunity to build something that I want to make. I had a couple of ideas that I've been kicking around for a while and I finally settled on one that I think will be a really head turner. Let's get started.
Here's the initial gathering of raw materials that will somehow transform itself into a knife. I call this knife design "Pride". The last time that I made a knife of this design, I made and heat treated a couple of extra blades, so I'm ahead of the curve on this one. The blade steel is my old standby CPM154. The liners will be made from 6AL4V titanium. The front and rear bolsters will be made from zirconium. And finally, the scales and spacer will be made from copper lightning strike carbon fiber.
All the major components have been cut out on the band saw and are ready to be profiled.
The parts have been ground down to the profile lines, leaving just a little bit extra so that everything can be ground down to a perfect fit once the knife is assembled.
Since the spacer is LSCF, which is non-magnetic, I temporarily glue it to a piece of precision ground steel. This way I can use my surface grinder attachment with its magnetic table to grind the thickness of the spacer down to be the same as the combination of the blade thickness and the two pivot washers.
All the parts have been drilled, tapped, and fastened together for the first time to check the fit. As I mentioned before, everything has been left slightly over sized.
I didn't get any pics of the pivot build, but it was built in the same way I always build them. Here the knife is fully assembled for the first time, ready to be ground down until everything fits together perfectly.
Here's the knife after being profile and surface ground down to it's final shape. Looks much nicer now.
Here's the knife after shaping the handle and grinding down to 2000 grit. I also polished everything up on a cork belt which was charged with pink scratchless compound.
I simply couldn't wait to see how the knife was going to look once the zirconium bolsters had been anodized, so I went ahead and colored them. I have to admit that this is one of the best looking knives that I've made to date, and I still have a long ways to go, but I like it! This is really going to be something special once it's complete. I'm going to play around with some texture on the bolsters and see if that adds to the WOW factor before I finish this knife.
That's it for this weeks adventures in knife making. Thanks for following along with me. Check back next week when I hope to make more progress on the Pride knife.
- Brandant Robinson