A new lot of knives

**Von Gruff** · 14-05-2017, 07:12

On another forum the guys decided they should do a group buy so these will all be done together for them.

**Von Gruff** · 14-05-2017, 07:13

The following day they were all rough bet profiled. Nine round butt skinners on top with a pair of boys knives, 2 light hunters, a reverse angled hunter skinner, 2 wapiti hunters and 3 boners. May get the egdes all tidied up with fines belts tomorrow and start cleaning up the faces.

**Von Gruff** · 14-05-2017, 07:15

It was a good day in the shed today with 13 blades having the main bevels ground in and taken to 240 grit but the grinder motor was getting warm enough and I needed a spell from leaning over it so left them for today.

And moved on to another project I had needed done. I have a dozen 18 in bar clamps but that is not enough to do the handles on this group of blades if they are all ready at once so I got a length of 4 inch channel iron at the scrap yard and had it cut into 1 1/2 in strip. This afternoon I started the process of turning them into handle clamps by drilling and tapping a hole in one end for a 12mm threaded rod. I had got a couple of 1 metre threaded rods and will cut them into 110mm lengths.
So this is the ones that have been tapped and the rest waiting to be done.

The end of the threaded rod is turned down on the grinder (no lathe for me) and a groove is made to except the head of the clamping piece which is just a short length of 20mm rod that has a hole drilled to suit the turned down end of the threaded rod, then a cut each way with the cut off disc on the angle grinder

And the cut ends can be taped into the groove to make for a clamping piece that is able to swivel and or clamp up to slightly uneven angles. All that is left to do is to weld a handle on the end of the rod and maybe a washer on the end of the clamping head to increase the size but that may be unnessary.
I will have to clean them all up of rust etc but this one is just put together to test the theory.

**Von Gruff** · 19-05-2017, 06:38

Have your blades all ready for heat treating now with their individual handle scales all marked for each knife with the name of the recipient scribed onto the tang so that will do for this week. There are different handle requests with some having bolsters (jarah or ebony) but all having scales from a rimu board I had set asside for them . There are a couple of foriegners in there with one having jarah scales and the hidden tang with brass jarah and beech. There were some that wernt part of the group buy that are set asside for now but they will be attended to after these are completed.

**Gert Odendaal** · 20-05-2017, 17:23

Excellent Von Gruff, I love your knife designs, it really is functional and proper designed. I still need to try and make time for my knife making hobby ...at this stage the rifles are taking a lot of time from me...

**Von Gruff** · 20-05-2017, 20:46

Be carefull Gert, it soon goes past being a hobby into an obsession.

**Von Gruff** · 22-05-2017, 02:46

I got a few more blades from the drawer ready for heat treating so it will be all done in one session. With all the clamps finished and painted I should have no problem getting all the handles sorted without having to wait for apoxy to cure before removing the clamps for another batch.

**Von Gruff** · 22-05-2017, 21:07

The blades are all heat treated and tempered so the next few days will see a lot of hand sanding and many sheets of W&D paper to get them all up to a 600 grt finish

**Von Gruff** · 25-05-2017, 06:31

Have finally finished getting these blades handsanded after the heat treating so they are now ready for the handles but that is going to wait for a couple of days as I have something else to do in the meantime.
This is how I do all my handsanding with 220, 360, then 600grit papers round a 3/4 in square hardwood block.