Making a Knife

Okay, I promised it, and here it is. This is more of a walkthrough than instructions, but here it is.


I'm making my sister a knife out of 1080 carbon steel, to be handled with pink and purple denim twist micarta (made using this method, but rolling and twisting before flattening).

Visit my blog - eagleeyeforge.com to see more of my projects (mainly knives).


Let's burn it!

When using a new steel, you need to test it, either do it yourself, or have a competent assistant help. Here, the new shop assisant boots is testing my 1080 steel. :)

This is forging the knife, I took a handful of photos, so just follow them. They explain better than me.

this part is where I use an angle grinder to rough grind the knife. The pics only show the work done on one side, but it's implied that you do the same on the other side.

Pic 1 - I don't like the transition of the handle to blade.

pic 2 - cleaned up with bench grinder.

pic 3 - my awesome clamping setup

pic 4 - use the angel grinder with 36 grit flapper to clean handle area

pic 5 - get the blade area as well
 
pic 6 - get the spine and blade areas

pic 7 - better

pic 8 - bevel still needs work

pic 9 - there ya go!


Now that we've rough ground it witht the angle grinder, we move on to rough grinding step 2.

First I use a file to even out the areas i ground with the angle grinder. Then I use my belt sander set-up to clean everything. Then I flatten even, and smooth with handsanding to 120 grit. (use a hard backing on the sand paper).

I take a block of home made micarta, flatten one side some to see the pattern, then cut out my scales.

Then I use the sander, then sandpaper, to flatten one side.

Go ahead and drill the holes in the tang, and then the handle scales (match the holes on the scales up to the holes on the tang.

Then I pin just the scales together lightly, so that I can shape the front some ahead of time.

Okay, heat treating. I'm not going to explain this much, as I hardly understand it as well as I should. But I will tell you what I did.

First, I triple normalize. Heating above non magnetic and air cooling, with descending heat each time (my last one was actually just below non magnetic).  Then I heat it above non magnetic and quench in preheated oil (peanut I believe).

Then I tempered it in the oven at 375, and then 400. Do some tests for yourself and decide what you like.


pic 1    - knife cooling from a normalizing heat
pic 2-4 - heating
pic 5-6 - preheating oil
pic 7    - the quenched blade (as you can see I edge quenched it, you'll see why).  

If you remember in the HT step, I edge quenched it. I did that because 1084 is a shallow hardening steel, so I was hoping to get a quench line by doing that. To check and see what I got, I sanded it to 220 grit and dipped it in ferric chloride for a minute. After rubbing off the oxides with a paste polish, I could see a faint hamon. If you do not want a hamon to show, or you did not edge quench, you can skip this step and step 9.

Now that I knew I had a hamon, I decided to polish it to a mirror shine. (if I didn't have a hamon, I would have given it a satin finish). I worked from 220 grit to 1000 grit, using an oil with the sandpaper. After 1000 grit, I buffed it with my dremel and some green buffing compound.


pics 1-2 -  sanding progress

pics 3-4 - knife at 1000 grit

pics 5-6 - mirror polished knife.

To get my hamon to show really well, after it was polished I needed to etch it. I didn't go with ferric like in the test etch, but with hot lemon juice.

Clean the blade with soap and water. Dry it, wipe it down with acetone, wipe down again, wipe down again. DO NOT TOUCH THE BLADE NOW. Whatever you do, you don't want a trace of oil, buffing compound, fingerprints, or anything else in there that will mess up the etch.

Then I heated up lemon juice, and rubbed a cotton ball soaked in along the blade, keeping the blade wet with hot lemon juice. Do this for at least 15 minutes. Spray with windex (diffuses the acid, or else it can continue to eat at the steel and cause flash rust). Wash the blade, and rub off the oxides with a paste polish. For better results, repeat. (do not repolish to mirror, just etch from where you left off at the last etch).


pic 1 - things for etching. Plastic tray, knife, hot lemon juice, and cotton ball in a small clamp for holding it.

pic 2 - after first etch, oxides not removed

pic 3-4 - first etch, oxides removed

pic 5-6 - second etch, oxides removed.

Prep your scales and tang by cleaning with acetone, drilling some divots on the inside (avoid doing near the edge where they could be unsightly), cleaning again, then epoxying, pinning, and clamping till cured. Bout all I can say, as for method, you just gotta kind of figure it out for yourself.

Now that your handle is finished, go ahead and shape it into your desired profile. I used the afore mentioned rasp to rough out a shape, then I finished the shape with my sander.

I finish the handle by hand sanding to 320 grit, and then running my dremel chucked with scotchbrite over it really well. I start with the green scotchbrite, and then finish with the white scotch brite (pics 2-3). Now, that finish looks really nice and smooth, but it's not quite right (pic 4).


So, to make it look quite right I coat it with 6 coats of thin superglue, letting it dry between each coat, then sand it to 600 grit, and buff it to a nice shine. That brings out the true colors, and makes it nice and shiny (last pic).

Now you take good photos to show off your creation. Take lots of photos, outside on a sunny day. I took 27 photos to get 6 good ones. Try different backgrounds and props to get something good.