Making a couple of knives
I have knives to do just about all chores that I need them for but have never had a dedicated skinning knife. I was put off the skinning design when I worked on the first high country station after leaving school, as the knives provided for keeping the farm houses in meat and the dogs fed were of the skinning design and I found them to have way too much belly for much of the work that needed doing, so I bought a straight bladed knife with much less belly and have never used a skinning knife again.
Recently I was talking to the farrier and I asked him if he had any worn our farriers rasps and we got onto talking knives as he is also a beef worker and the upshot was that he dropped off a broken rasp a few days later.
After making up a pattern and annealing the rasp I was ready to make a start
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Re: Making a couple of knives
The rasp was 5mm thick which is way too thick for a knife so I started the grinding off of the teeth. The fine side was easy but the coarse side took quite a bit to get back to the depth of the teeth dimples. I wanted to just leave the suggestion of the rasps origin in the finished knife so eventually bought it back to 3mm thick.
This was about half way on the coarse side.
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After a while I had the shape nearly right
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Re: Making a couple of knives
Spent an hour on it this morning and got the handle drilled for the rivets and the lightening holes. Got the start of the grind done just to mark in the rear lines.
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Re: Making a couple of knives
Finished the bevel grind which leaves the edge at .025-.03 then polished it back with 220 grit paper. The top edge of the grind was almost at the spine so I blended it all together. Will stay at this stage until it gets cold enough for me to light the fire for the heattreating.
Not sure what I am going to handle it with yet but suspect I may just do a plain hardwood one without the contrasting buttcap and bolster.
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Re: Making a couple of knives
I had been talking to Gert (email) and had mentioned the knife and he sugested that he send me some giraffe bone for the handles so when that arrived and it was time for the next stage so with the tip from a buff horn and two halves of Giraffe bone, I headed up to the shed
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First chore was to grind a flat on the bottom of the horn so it would sit flat on the bandsaw then grind two flats on the tip so I could hold it with a pair of vice grips s I could run it into the fine hacksaw blade (24tpi) on the bandsaw. Then it was a case of shaping it while the two sides were still together. The pin holes were drilled and the two halves could be seperated. I used a pair of pins that were fractionally smaller that what will be used for the final assembly so the holes stay nice and tight
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Re: Making a couple of knives
A couple of hours after lunch saw the handle slabs shaped to fit the buff horn bolster curve. A generous margin arround the edges and even the bolster curve is not a perfect fit at this stage. They wont get the final fit untill after the blade is heat treated and the bolsters are fixed in place.
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Re: Making a couple of knives
It was way too hot here yesterday but I lit the fire and got the blade heat treated. At the same time I annealed another file so I can make a decent boning knife. Then I ground the griaffe bone thinner from the marrow side so I could keep the aged drying fissures on the outside of the bone which I want to retain in the finished handle.
I will get the blade polished this afternoon and fix the bolsters in place. I have drilled right though the horn but I will have to set the brass pins 3/19 into one side and let them set before fixing that side to the blade with 3/19 of pin through the steel for the second bolster to fit to. That way when the epoxy has all set I can fill the rest of the hole with black epoxy so that when it is all shaped and polished the holes should just about dissapere. That will look better to me than seeing the ends of the brass showing through the black. I will be able to do the handle slabs with hidden pins without the through holes though as I will have the bolster edge to hold the bone against to drill the pin holes.
This is the blade after it came out of the fire
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And with the scale off and (nearly) cleaned up with 240grit W&D
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This is one side of the horn bolsters with the pins set 3/16 into the inside face.
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Re: Making a couple of knives
While I was on another site the other day I saw a really nice boning knife and I had an old file -----so drew out a pattern for one with a 5 1/2 in blade and annealed the file when I heat treated the skinning knife blade.
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Got it shaped and the blade ground down to a .02 edge
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Re: Making a couple of knives
First job today was to cut the pins on the one bolster to the correct lengths.
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Then it was a case of mixing the epoxy and clamping it all together where it will sit till tomorrow when I can do the final fit of the giraffe bone handles.
Whie I had a little time to spare I made an aid to stoning in the primary angle. It is the same angle as my
bench stone stand but with it being able to be held in the vise it will be easier to form the edge. Sort of like a Lansky but easily made in any shed.
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Re: Making a couple of knives
and this morning the bolsters were set so I could finish fit the bone handles. With the hidden pins cut and a little bit of bone dust in the epoxy it was time to get them clamped together for the day.
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