Thread: Knifemaking photo-essay (1)

I make most of my knives using steel from large circular saw blades (nominally L6 grade carbon steel), although I have also worked with D2, 440C, and Uddeholm Elmax.

The large circular saw blades are about 3.8 mm thick. Using a 9" angle grinder with cutting disc, I cut out rough blanks. I anneal the blanks by heating them to 760°C, and then letting them cool slowly in the furnace overnight. The annealed blanks are now soft and can be readily drilled, filed, ground, and sanded.

The numbers refer to the images below.

1) Top - rough blank cut from a saw blade; bottom - annealed blank. Note the hard, adherent black oxide skin on the annealed blank.

2) I clamp a template to the blank and scribe around it.

3) Rough grinding the profile using a 200 mm bench grinder.

4) A shameless plug for Abbot and Ashby 200 mm bench grinders! I've had this grinder more than 20 years, it's seen a lot of use, and is still going strong. What I like about them:

powerful;
work rests are made of heavy gauge steel;
the grinding wheels are spaced well away from the motor;
can accommodate 32 mm wide grinding wheels (as shown).

1) Finishing the profile grind using a flat platen linisher.

2) Grinding the curve at the butt.

3) Forming the finger grooves using a narrow-radius linisher.

4) Removing the hard black oxide skin. I'm doing this job with an aluminium wheel backing the sanding belt, which gives an aggressive cutting action.

1) Drilling 1/8" holes. When drilling small holes you can hold the blank by hand.

2) Drilling 8 mm holes to lighten the tang. Note the blank is clamped to the work table.

3) Surface grinding the blank. I use a belt sanding surface grinder with a 60 grit belt. The milky white cutting fluid is water containing 3% soluble oil.

4) Hollow grinding the blade bevels. The linisher has a 250 mm diameter contact wheel. I rough grind the bevels with a 60 grit belt, and then grind them with 180 grit. The bevels are ground by hand and mirror imaged by eye -- no jigs are used.

Three views of the knife blank. Note that, even though I don’t use a grinding jig, the edge is centred (bottom image).