keith_beef
04-03-04, 05:57 PM
Well, I'm not offering advice, I'm asking for some.
You might have seen the little Pecos Caper that I posted in the Gallery. I made up this blade mainly for two reasons:
1. I badly bodged my attempt at the Felleskap, and no longer had enough black vulanised fibre material to start again, but I had enough to do this smalled knife,
2. Having badly bodged the felleskap, I decided I should practice on a smaller piece of work before trying the felleskap again.
The first job was to roughly cut out two pieces of black vulcanised fibre and key the steel of the tang and the spacer by a quick rub with 80 grit paper. Then glue one of these to the tang, with slow setting Araldite dyed black. When this had set, I drilled through the 6mm holes, effectively using the holes in the tang as a jig for drilling the fibre.
A couple of days later, I glued the fibre on the other side and drilled through again.
So, at this stage I had a tang with slightly oversized spacer on each side of the tang, and the holes drilled.
Next, I got a piece of curly birch out of the store, and marked out the shape of the tang on it. Then, I sawed it into two halves, hoping to "book match" the pattern.
Well, I think that perhaps this isn't a very useful thing to do with curly birch. The pattern changes too quickly through the wood. Unless the cut is perfect first time, and no more thickness needs to be taken off the faces that are newly exposed, the faces don't match at all.
Anyway, I now had two halves, allowing me to turn the block "inside out".
But I hadn't sawn very straight, and I had to use my plane to get the faces flat and even. I rubbed down what had been the outer surfaces of the block, which were to mate against the spacer material glued to the tang, by taping prograssively finer sandpaper to a polished granite slab. Then I used the 80 grit paper to key the surface of the tang and the wood, and I glued on one slab.
After a couple of days, I drilled the 6mm holes through this scale, and then glued on the other. A couple of days later, I did the final drilling all the way through.
At this stage, the slabs were still plainly rectangular...
So, I made sure the cardboard and duct tape "sheath" was in good shape, and I clamped this in the bench vice, and set to cutting the scales to shape by using a coping saw to follow the steel tang as closely as I dared.
Then, I used the plane to shave down the outside curve down to as close as possible. I couldn't do this on the inside curve, but Firewood helped me out with this :D
Then sandpapers and a bit more carving with Firewood to take off the edges, and it was ready to get the 6mm mosaic pins and the 6mm thong ;) hole. I measured the length of the holes, and took off a shade to make sure that the metal wouldn't stand proud of the wood after finally rubbing down or through wear...
I mixed up a little bit of Araldite, stained black again, and used a toothpick to smear a little bit of glue on the inside of the holes, and tried to drive the pins into the holes. They were a tight fit, probably the holes are not quite straight from being drilled in four steps. Driving them in distorted them a little, and maybe I made them a tad too short.
A couple of days wait, again, and it was time for a final (I thought) rub down with sandpaper (taped to the granite slab and wrapped round wine corks and brass rod) before treating with "kitchen worktop oil". This looks to my untrained eye to be little more than a mixture of linseed oil, a little bit of tung oil, and cobalt siccative. But if it's approved for kitchen worktops, then it can't leave much of a toxid residue, and should be pretty water resistant.
Oh, I forgot to mention, I drilled out two 3mm holes at the same time as the 6mm holes, but in the end I filled them with black stained araldite, just to keep moisture out while I'm trying to find something suitable to use as a pin in those.
So, after that lengthy preamble, my question is "did I do things in a sensible order"?
I'm doing another knife, using the same full-tang construction with two slabs and contrasting spacers. This time, though, I'm doing things slightly differently;
1. I'm using white fibre to contrast with dark Leadwood,
2. I'm shaping the wood to more or less the shape of the tang before I saw it in half.
The Leadwood is quite a lot harder than the birch, and very dry and a bit brittle, too. It makes a lot of very fine powder as I saw or rasp it.
KKK.
You might have seen the little Pecos Caper that I posted in the Gallery. I made up this blade mainly for two reasons:
1. I badly bodged my attempt at the Felleskap, and no longer had enough black vulanised fibre material to start again, but I had enough to do this smalled knife,
2. Having badly bodged the felleskap, I decided I should practice on a smaller piece of work before trying the felleskap again.
The first job was to roughly cut out two pieces of black vulcanised fibre and key the steel of the tang and the spacer by a quick rub with 80 grit paper. Then glue one of these to the tang, with slow setting Araldite dyed black. When this had set, I drilled through the 6mm holes, effectively using the holes in the tang as a jig for drilling the fibre.
A couple of days later, I glued the fibre on the other side and drilled through again.
So, at this stage I had a tang with slightly oversized spacer on each side of the tang, and the holes drilled.
Next, I got a piece of curly birch out of the store, and marked out the shape of the tang on it. Then, I sawed it into two halves, hoping to "book match" the pattern.
Well, I think that perhaps this isn't a very useful thing to do with curly birch. The pattern changes too quickly through the wood. Unless the cut is perfect first time, and no more thickness needs to be taken off the faces that are newly exposed, the faces don't match at all.
Anyway, I now had two halves, allowing me to turn the block "inside out".
But I hadn't sawn very straight, and I had to use my plane to get the faces flat and even. I rubbed down what had been the outer surfaces of the block, which were to mate against the spacer material glued to the tang, by taping prograssively finer sandpaper to a polished granite slab. Then I used the 80 grit paper to key the surface of the tang and the wood, and I glued on one slab.
After a couple of days, I drilled the 6mm holes through this scale, and then glued on the other. A couple of days later, I did the final drilling all the way through.
At this stage, the slabs were still plainly rectangular...
So, I made sure the cardboard and duct tape "sheath" was in good shape, and I clamped this in the bench vice, and set to cutting the scales to shape by using a coping saw to follow the steel tang as closely as I dared.
Then, I used the plane to shave down the outside curve down to as close as possible. I couldn't do this on the inside curve, but Firewood helped me out with this :D
Then sandpapers and a bit more carving with Firewood to take off the edges, and it was ready to get the 6mm mosaic pins and the 6mm thong ;) hole. I measured the length of the holes, and took off a shade to make sure that the metal wouldn't stand proud of the wood after finally rubbing down or through wear...
I mixed up a little bit of Araldite, stained black again, and used a toothpick to smear a little bit of glue on the inside of the holes, and tried to drive the pins into the holes. They were a tight fit, probably the holes are not quite straight from being drilled in four steps. Driving them in distorted them a little, and maybe I made them a tad too short.
A couple of days wait, again, and it was time for a final (I thought) rub down with sandpaper (taped to the granite slab and wrapped round wine corks and brass rod) before treating with "kitchen worktop oil". This looks to my untrained eye to be little more than a mixture of linseed oil, a little bit of tung oil, and cobalt siccative. But if it's approved for kitchen worktops, then it can't leave much of a toxid residue, and should be pretty water resistant.
Oh, I forgot to mention, I drilled out two 3mm holes at the same time as the 6mm holes, but in the end I filled them with black stained araldite, just to keep moisture out while I'm trying to find something suitable to use as a pin in those.
So, after that lengthy preamble, my question is "did I do things in a sensible order"?
I'm doing another knife, using the same full-tang construction with two slabs and contrasting spacers. This time, though, I'm doing things slightly differently;
1. I'm using white fibre to contrast with dark Leadwood,
2. I'm shaping the wood to more or less the shape of the tang before I saw it in half.
The Leadwood is quite a lot harder than the birch, and very dry and a bit brittle, too. It makes a lot of very fine powder as I saw or rasp it.
KKK.