Thread: Brian's First Blade

Just a suggestion...... when your hollowing the blade be sure to leave 1/16" of thickness on the cutting edge. This will help to avoid warping of the edge during the heat treat & quenching. After the heat treat & tempering you can finish the hollow grinding.

Originally Posted by randydance062449

Just a suggestion...... when your hollowing the blade be sure to leave 1/16" of thickness on the cutting edge. This will help to avoid warping of the edge during the heat treat & quenching. After the heat treat & tempering you can finish the hollow grinding.

What he said.

Additionally, In the future you might want to do the rough grinding first before you shape the rest of the blade in detail.
When you are grinding it is easy to make minor mistakes. Especially near the toe and the heel, because those places are the first and the last to touch the belt / wheel. If you leave some 'spare' instead of shaping the blade to final shape, those mistakes will be in the part that you will remove anyway, rather than in the actual heel and toe.

Thanks guys. My edge is about the thickness of a penny right now. I left the blade a little wide so if it does warp along the edge I can take a little off and still be ok.

I have another blank that is still in a square point form. I am thinking about shortening the blade and lengthening the handle and making a fixed blade. If I do, I will make sure I leave a little on either end to cut the mistakes from.

looking good so far brian...... i would rock that one!!

Got the grind issue fixed thanks to the great guys on here! Thanks again gentlemen!

Hopefully I can get the high spots on the faces taken care of, then hand sanding and heat treat.

Glad it's almost done!

Let's see some pictures!

Groovy, I'm at work today and ran off without grabbing the blank. I meant to bring it with me so I could study the grind a little and determine where I needed to file. I spent all last night messing with it. The Craftsman half round file I was working with is quite coarse on the round side, and as such tore the crap out of my fingers as I pushed it along. I'm hoping to get the grind done tomorrow and partially sanded. The goal is to send it to HT by the end of the month.

Ouch! The pains a man will go through to create greatness

Yeah I am looking forward to seeing what you come up with. I been dabbling in some restores off Ebay with mixed luck. Hand sanding is for the birds and the vintage W&B have a steel that just laughs at anything but stone. Have been toying with a Dremel but that is spotty and dangerous at best and doesn't give you the glass flat finish I am looking for. Renting an apartment otherwise I would setup a shop with a wheel. Bought a tumbler but don't have experience re-pinning scales and the ones on these blades I don't want to disrupt. Am starting to think of just giving up and sending them off to a real pro to finish up. They really were some nice blades before I got in the way trying to remove the pitting. Pits are gone but unlikely they will ever look good again without a master hand and the right tools.

Anyone interested in saving me from total destruction?

New pictures and a bunch of questions.

I've sanded the front side, an it looks pretty good. The grind is a little off towards the heel, but the face is flat from spine to edge along the entire length of the blade.

The reverse is not as good. The tip and the heel are both a little off.

Here's the big thing. I'm not sure if it's worth going forward with the build given the possible grind issues. I had no idea what a smiling wedge entailed. I should have started with a flat wedge first, but it a little late for that now! So, can I send this thing to someone in here and have them look at it and tell me if I should even bother heat treating it?

My alternative option is to make it a semi-Kamisori with a western grind. I could get the handle hot enough to hammer it out a bit, or just leave it as is.

I'd rather have someone more experienced look at it first.





The grind is pretty much dead on between the black, but gets worse at the ends.

Well......Mr. Lewis commented on my grind issue thread, and as such, I just decided to leave it as the big wedge and see what happens. Best case it shaves great, worst case I have a pretty razor shaped paperweight. I went ahead and took it up to 1000 grit with wet/dry+windex and then polished with Mother's. I'm sending it to Mike Blue for HT. Apparently he uses salt and it only leaves a thin blue oxide, so the further I take it now, the less sanding I have to do after.

I'm a little concerned because my edge thinned out a lot when I fixed the grind issue and then a little more when I sanded. Oh well, if it potato chips, it potato chips. See paperweight comment above.

Pictures! You can see the grind issue, especially on the heel on the reverse side. There are some [several] file marks on the tang and blade faces. I am leaving them. It would remove too much metal to take them out now.

Getting excited and nervous to send it off to HT. It's getting real now!