I always enjoy the challenge of starting a new knife. I love to lay out the prospective materials, knife patterns, and organize my ideas as I try to pin down exactly what I want to build for my next adventure into knife making. This time, I decided to build a new Bobcat knife. The Bobcat design has been a pretty popular one since the first one I made. I hope this one turns out to be something special.
Here is the gathering of the raw materials that will soon become a functional work of edged art. The blade is my favorite CPM 154. The bolsters will be made from a short piece of Damasteel that I had left over from a previous project. The liners will be made from titanium and the spacer will be from 416 stainless. And last, but not least, the scales will be made from stabilized Oregon maple burl.
I took a closer look at the blade that I had made previously and found that I had drilled the thumb stud screw counter sink hole on the wrong side of the blade. It will work great for a left-handed knife, but I'll put it aside for now. Maybe I'll get a special order for a lefty and can put it to use someday. For now, I'll have to start from scratch with a new blade.
Here's the blade after being surface ground, profiled and drilled. I made absolute sure that the thumb stud countersink was on the correct side this time.
Here the blade is being hardness tested following the heat treatment. A solid 61HRC, right where I want it for this knife.
Okay, so I missed a lot of photos for all the steps leading up to this first assembly and initial profiling. I guess I got caught up in the excitement of this new build. I've always liked the profile of this knife design. This one's going to be a real classy knife when it's finished.
Here it is after a couple of hours at the grinder. Everything has been rounded over, smoothed off, and polished up to 2000 grit. It feels really nice in the hand now.
The Damasteel bolsters get dipped in acid. The acid etch brings out the pattern in the Damasteel.
This is where my adventures ended for the week. Stop by the Blog next week for the next update on this build. Thanks for following along with me.
- Brandant Robinson