5 Tips for Grinding Better Bevels on Your Knives - Grind like a Pro!

hey guys you're a simple little life one question I get asked a lot is how do you get such nice grind lines I'm by no means an expert on the subject there's a few things I've learned along the way that have really made a difference and help them prove my grinding process so let's go to the belt grinder and I'll show you 5 tips to bringing better bevels on your knives all right cut number one and this might be the cheesiest tip you've ever heard but I do believe it's the most important and that is this when you approach the grinder you need to do it with complete confidence you need to come up to the grinder and know that you're going to own that grind your bloodline ok maybe not like that but you get the idea if you come up to your grinding you're stuck grinding your knives and you're all like nervous and timid and be like oh I sure hope this works you're not going to get a good result that's just how it is even though if you've never really ground a lot of knives before and if it's a new experience for you I do believe that you know when you're trying something new ignorance and confidence are the two keys to success just have confidence just tell yourself you know what we're going to make something great we're going to turn out a really nice bevel we're going to grind a nice knife if you do that that's a single most important thing and that's something that is continually renewed as well even if you've ground a hundred knives you need to come up to your grinder and say you know what I know what I'm doing here I'm going to do it properly and we're going to do a really great grind on this bevel here so that's my first tip grind with confidence alright tip number two belt selection this has been huge for me and made just a massive impact on how I grind my knives now when I first started grinding I did what most people probably do and that's just buy aluminum oxide grinding belts and they're certainly useful they do good things but I will never let you belt touch a bevel of mine ever again I don't know what it is about them sometimes I think to kind of load up they'll wear unevenly as compared to like a ceramic belt also if you ever have any debris built up or you know your platen isn't quite perfect or something on your contact wheel these things offer no forgiveness they're so flexible but any slight imperfection translates straight to the bevel and I just I can't stand doing bevels with aluminum oxides now I'll use these for like spine work and profiling and stuff like that and on handle shaping they're definitely handy I still buy these belts but I never grind bevels with aluminum oxide belts let me show you what I do use I'll run you through my typical setup for grinding a bevel so I first started writing I like to use a really really aggressive belt this is my go-to belt for that it's a Norton blaze 36 grit and the reason for that is that when you're first grinding your initial bevel it's nice to be able to start your grind and complete the grind on the entire blade length before you have to stop because it's too hot dip it in water to cool it down and with a coarser belt your blade will heat up less you think of it as the finer the belt the more tiny little braces are can be in contact with the material the more contact the more friction the more friction the more heat so especially when you're getting those initial grinds put in and you're starting out if you had a really fine belt or a finer belt that you you had to stop because it got so hot it'd be really intrusive you know you could like to start a grind and it gets too hot to hold you'd have to dip it in water and then kind of continue that one I find it really makes a big difference if I can just start a bevel and pull it all the way through without it getting too hot and I can hold on to the entire thing really really makes a big difference also these ceramic ones they're a lot more rigid than like Lumina mock sides and some of the other belts they really help keep a nice flat rigid surface to work off of after that I'll go to again a ceramic belt this is a Norton this is an or wax x200 not a fine fine belt but definitely a lot finer it really pulls all the really high marks out of the 36 grit and typically I'll finish everything up clean it all up I'll do like 90% of my grind with this with a 36 grit and then the last five 10% with this belt right here and this is pretty much what I take it to before heat-treat after heat-treat I'll come out and clean everything up with one of these 3m trivac belts these are fairly new belt to me and I absolutely love them they've got a lot of forgiveness in them but they produce an incredible surface finish so love love love these belts once that's all done I'll come and grab some service conditioning belts and this is a fine belt and this is a superfine think of this as scotch-brite on a belt really really does a great job but just putting a really nice satin finish on your bevels I've been experimenting with a superfine lately and I actually find that it actually loads up with material much worse than the fine and so when a brand new works great but after you for a few levels of starting to get really weird lines and artifacts in there so I've actually kind of gone away from using the superfine so much pretty much clean everything up with just the fine service conditioning belts one more tip on belts when I'm working my belts like my staple belts my go-to belts what I like to do is I'll check wherever I'm ordering and see if they've got to pick a belt up and never use before you know I'll buy like one maybe two of some type of belt just to try it out you may find this belt is just going to like up your grinding game and be like wow this is like my new go-to belt for this step of the process you might find something it's like well you know what that kind of sucked I'm never going to order that one again but if you just try them out kind of one at a time you'll really get a sense of all the different options that are out there so that's what a huge advantages of a two by semi cube grinder is that there's so many different options for different belts and abrasives if you're using smaller grinders like one by 30s I mean if that's all you have just let er rip keep going with it but just know they're you typically constrain to like aluminum oxides and abrasives that are mostly probably designed for woodworking but when you get into the big grinders it's all nice to have all these different options and that's what I'm saying tip number two is finding the right belt makes a huge difference in your grinding tip number three is a bit of a contentious woman I don't really know why Florida George you know what when you're just getting into knife making it can be very very difficult to get nice consistent bevels put on so why not use a grinding jig to get you started I did and a lot of people get all up in arms saying Oh blah blah blah I don't know why I like really come on we're learning here to do this jig this was super simple all I did was a piece of angle iron and I cut the top off so it wasn't so high I drilled them tap the 3/8 hole here put a 3/8 bolt with a jam nut on there and now I can move that bolt up and down and adjust the angle that I'm coming up my platen on my contact wheel keep in mind though if you're using a grinding jig it's pretty much good for flat grinds and straight grinds once you get into contact wheels and different curves and stuff like that this is not going to do any good I don't do any grinding with a jig anymore I've gone strictly freehand and I actually get way better grinds and now that I'm doing it freehand and since then I've actually tried going back to the jig and even you know perfectly straight grind I'll come to my jig and I just can't get as good a job as I can freehand now and I think it's just a certain disconnect when you're grinding freehand you're very very connected you feel exactly what's happening using a jig it's all kind of translated through the jig and keep that in mind you don't have a true sense a true feel of what's happening when you're using a grinding jig but by all means if you want to start grinding knives and you're having a difficult time freehand use a jig a one tip if you want to get away from using jigs and the way that I did it without start my initial bevel with the jig kind of put it in there fairly heavy go like 50 percent of the way and then take the jig away and finish the rest up freehand at least that way you've got your bevel started you've got a reference point to start off of and that really helps me when I want to get away from using jigs help me get into freehand grinding and now I just love freehand grinding but jigs totally okay and another type of grinding jig I use this from all the time still is a plunge line jig all this is two pieces of old one tool steel I've drilled and tapped the quarter inch thread on the one side and just drilled a quarter inch hole in the other and then I've not heat-treated this because I wanted to have a little bit of flex in it and essentially once I bolted it together I took it to my flat platen and ground it perfectly flat and now what you can do is simply put your blade through here clamp this down and as you're grinding you've got a stop so you can get your plunge lines on both sides stopping the exact same point and again when were using this I'll typically kind of rough it in get about like 50% of the way then I'll take this off and finish it up freehand but it's really nice really quickly and accurately established very consistent plunge lines from one side of the blade to the other so tip number three in grinding jigs no issues with those whatsoever alright guys tip number four now we're actually getting to some of the technique one thing that's helped me a lot is the way that I think about my platinum or my contact wheel I now think of these as a work rest or a work surface a place to work from rather than just the work rest that comes on the machine what I mean by that is that say if you're getting into your grind and you know I need to bring this bevel up a little higher rather than just kind of coming out of here and taking a blind stab what I will do is I'll bring the entire bevel up to it get the whole thing resting nicely gently now I've got a starting point now this is where I'm going to work from so if I want to grow that bevel what I'll do is I'll hit there get it all even and just apply a little rotational pressure I'm going to exaggerate this obviously but I'll basically come like this all the while keeping this firmly pressed against the contact wheel or platen whatever you're using what that does is it allow you to grow the bevel and maintain this exact same radius or the exact same flat plane if you're on a flat platen and it just keeps that level even the entire way same thing if I've got my pebble high enough but you send out my edge a bit I'll bring it here touch it there boom I've got my datum point I've got the place I'm going to start from and I'm never going to leave that place essentially I'm just going to adjust and twist a little bit either way from there so I can twist it this way obviously exaggerating here again but now I can bring it like that I'll send out my edge and keep the same even bevel all the way across really really makes a huge difference when you're grinding your knives [Music] alright guys last tip we're going to wrap it up with is a finishing tip now when I'm trying to finish up my bevels and you know you want a really nice transition you want this nice sweeping plunge line in here what I will do is I'll run my belt intentionally off center like off the edge of the wheel or flat platen right now I'm about a quarter of an inch off sometimes they'll even go up to three-eighths of an inch depending on how much sweep I want in that transition but it really allows you to just start blending this and bringing these parts together here so we come from our bevel really nice sweep transition to this flat part and it just really helps it gives a little bit of forgiveness a little bit of cushion there and you can just gently blend things together like that obviously switching the different sides of the wheel for the different bevels that you're working on but this is a really really handy tip and this allows you to do some really really nice finishing work in one of the more difficult areas cleaning up this transition right here alright and to wrap it up just remember that there's no substitution for practice practice practice if you want to grind better knives grind more nice I need mail the other day from a gentleman and he said I ground my very first knife today and they've socked my bevel sucked what do I do I kind of do the legs thank dude welcome to the club the more knives you grind the better you get at grinding and that's just how it is and that's also a beauty belt knife making is that whichever with every single knife you make you get a little bit better in the future so hopefully some of these tips will help you guys out let me know what you think in the comments below you'll find them useful you have other tips to add go ahead Andy in the comments and thanks for watching the video guys I hope you enjoyed it be sure to give it a like and if you haven't subscribed to the channel already please consider doing so and I'm going to leave a few other random videos up in here for you to enjoy thanks for watching guys Cheers [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Simple Little Life

Views: 373,211

Keywords: how to make a knife, knife making, knife maker, belt grinder, grind, grinding, how to grind better bevels, how to, knife, blade, diy, knifemaking, homestead knives, knifemaker, blacksmith, simple little life, maker, knives, walter sorrells, grinder, making a knife, alec steele, making, wranglerstar, forged in fire, do it yourself, sword, how to make knives, shop vlog, youtuber, homemade, forging, make, learn blacksmithing, edc, blades, custom knife, how to make, jig, tutorial, blade smith, tool

Id: HCATdQjQ_so

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Fri May 19 2017