Here is the design for the last knife I am making. It is a bit larger and hopefully will be better than the other two. ( If I can finish in time.)

Before rough cutting the blank on the band saw, I drilled the holes for the handle on the vertical mill. I used the machine's digital readout to pinpoint where I wanted the holes to be. 

Afterwards, I proceeded to rough cut and grind the blank

While quite good, the knife I recently finished was not the knife I wanted to end with. I originally anticipated that making knives would be easier and that I could make a multitude of knives while learning dozens of different methods. I am a bit disappointed with the fact that I have only mustered two knives in three weeks. I want to make my last knife be a bit nicer, to be my final achievement that encompasses this entire project. So I have decided to make one more because currently I am not yet proud of what I have accomplished. This last knife I am making as the final fruit of my labors in learning these skills.

I finally needed to get down to sharpening. This is one of those things where one either clueless or a master of the subject. I needed to become the latter, so this wasn't going to be easy. Learning it requires extremely tedious sessions of trial and error and a steady hand. I began by submerging this Japanese water-stone in a jug of water and started scraping away at it whilst holding the knife blade at an incredibly steady angle of about 20 degrees. The leather strap has polishing compound in it and was used to straighten the edge and help it hone after I used the stone.

I am very good at grinding a piece steadily mainly from my practice during this project. This step requires that I do this for a very long time until I get a feel for what works. To test what works, I was constantly slicing up pages in a book to see how the paper resisted the slicing. Eventually, I got a feel for how to do it right. I got it to the point at which I could shave with it.

This is after I began shaping the handle

And I am using same old tung oil.

I've accumulated about an inch of dust on the grinder since the project began.

Would make one hell of a pencil sharpener...

I now needed to finish the metal to its final appearance. I used both jigs again to shine up the metal and get rid of the black from the oil quenching.

Here I put the final grind on the top of the knife.

This is the knife blade's final appearance. (aside from the sharpened edge.)

I then used epoxy and clamps to finally make the wood bond with the metal. 

Here I am showing the handle of the knife fitted to the handle. 

Those two blocks of wood are the handle off of the knife, In this configuration I did most of the woodworking. I mainly only needed to do the work in the hard to reach areas, such as the front of the handle, where it meets the knife.

The following day I heat treated the second knife, by now I am familiar with this process.

Heat the metal until it is orange at 1500 degrees and then submerge it in a pot of motor oil.

I then tempered in the toaster oven I used earlier for two hours at 400 degrees to soften the blade.

I then set out making the handle, I didn't do anything different in this area because I was more focused on perfecting the skills from the previous attempt than trying something new. 

I again, used curly maple and planned on staining with tung oil for this next knife. 

I drilled the holes in the metal a bit larger than the pins I was going to be using, this gives me a strategic advantage we in the machining world refer to as "Fudge Factor."

In addition to making holes so that the knife pins leave room to slide around, I managed to test the fit on the knife and did most of the woodworking like this. It meant I could shape the handle while it was not mounted to the metal, this way I could keep the blade pristine. 

Here are the grinds I made from the jigs I made in the last post. You may notice that the bevels are much more steep and less blunt than on the last knife. It will likely make a better slicing blade.

Also, After sifting through stains to use for the previous knife's handle I settled from a choice recommended by www.bladeforums.com, tung oil. Fortunately we had a can in the wood shop.

I ended up applying the stain three times over. It looks outstanding but the finish will eventually wear off and need to be re applied. 

Here is the jig I made for grinding the bevel on my next knife, It is a block of wood with an edge 5 degrees to make a 5 degree bevel. I can use this by clamping the knife to the block and use this to create a consistent edge along the knife.

Equipped with this new board I placed on the grinder, I can move more freely with more space to use my jig. 

I also plan on creating another jig for grinding the flat faces. 

Here is the flat grinding jig I also made. This one is nothing more than a square piece of wood

Between using the belt sander , a file, sandpaper, and my own grinder, I got the outer edges of the knife down to smooth knife handle appearance. it took a bit of work, but was easier than anticipated. I did not document this part because of how tedious it was.

 

To reflect, This knife was really silly in shape and barely practical, no part of the knife edge is flat, it is all curved, and it is too short and wide. I made the bevel too steep so it is likely that it will not sharpen particularly well because the point is so blunt in shape. It does, however look fairly impressive and feels exceptionally sturdy. It will look better with a bit of oil or stain on it.


The only thing left  to do was stain and sharpen the knife, but since I was completely exhausted I instead began designing my next knife. I plan on doing this one with a bit more planning. The design will be a bit more basic and instead of freehand grind the bevel, I will do what I  should of have done before and use some kind of jig.

Waiting for the epoxy to harden on the knife, I ended up working on my grinder. It has a large pulley wheel that is poorly made and wobbles, it also is much to large and makes the machine slower. I needed to replace the pulley. I ended up finding one but it had a smaller inner diameter than the old pulley, and the shaft was 3/4'' diameter while it needed to be 1/2''.

 I threw the axle on the lathe and took her down to the right size to fit. 

Here the axle is fitted with the new pulley. 

The geinder now has a new pulley ands moves much faster. the old pulley is on the right. 

I now had to make the handle. I did not initially anticipate how difficult this would end up being. I needed pins to hold the handle together, as is the standard on most kitchen knives. I also needed to get the wood and somehow glue it to the metal.

Here I am on the lathe making the pins. This was a real pain.

That pin was useless so I ended up using some steel brazing rod meant for welding or brazing metal.

For the wood handle I went upstairs to the wood shop and got some slices of curly maple wood.

I now needed to glue the wood to the handle. I was considering JB weld or epoxy. I eventually settled on Epoxy.

The question: Little dab'll do ya or Bigga da gob betta da job? There is simply no middle ground. 

Here I  clamped the handle to let the epoxy harden

To deal with the hardened but horrible looking knife blade I ended with, i setup both the grinder and the buffing wheel. The buffing wheel simply polishes the metal by spinning rapidly. I set it up in the vertical mill because it can spin faster than most of our other machines and more speed is more good. 

the wheel is the fuzzy wheel in the drill chuck. 

Here is the knife after I cleaned it up with a buffing wheel and the grinder.

I then found that using the buffing wheel to clean up the knife at this phase in the process was a rubbish idea and went back to my trusty grinder. Using an abrasive belt rated to about 200 grit I was able to turn the knife into this.

here is the knife after a little bit of work

This is, mind you what the final appearance of the blade will be.

After a bit more work.

Waiting for heat treatment to finish...

That there is a widowmaker.

Made in Israel, who woulda guessed?

I digress