Hey folks, welcome to the channel. I'm really
excited about today's video. I finally show you the build where I do my knife for the
challenge against Dave at Evader knives. If you haven't seen the video where I make the
damascus, go watch that one. I'll put a link up here. Go watch that one first where I issued the
challenge and made the damascus. In this one I'm going to show you the knife that I've built. I'd like you guys to please go down in the comments and comment on this build. Go watch Dave's build and comment
on his video. Let us know which one you like. Remember, there's no winner or loser. You guys
watching both videos, that's the real win for us! So without further ado, I want to show you guys
my design. Yes, I'll be doing a quillion dagger! Let's get right into it guys. This baby's going
to be 16 inches, tip to pommel. Obviously it's a dagger so it's going to have four bevels. We're
going to have some some parts to do on the lathe. We're going to have a fluted handle, maybe
with some wire inlay and a screw-on pommel. This is going to be probably, most
definitely, my most complicated build yet. The first thing I want to do is isolate the
steel for the tang and for the ricasso because those flares are going to be at the edge so I
want to get the steel I need for the tang first. This dagger was much longer than the amount of
steel that I had, so I couldn't just cut it out. I did have to forge as much
as I could to save on steel. I also didn't want to thin out the blade too much. Because it was a dagger and
was going to get four bevels, I wanted the center to have a bit of meat to it. I want to try to keep that as close to 3/16 as I could. Now I'm getting some length with the
press and just putting in a point. This will give me a little more length and
also it's thickening up the blade a little bit. Don't worry the rebar,
is getting cut off. That's just where I was holding it before
and I've got it reversed right now. Here goes my first attempt
at putting in the flares. This ends up not working too well but I gave it a shot. I'm trying to spread out the
steel that I used to make the flares and it's just not going where i want it. At this point I'm just looking at it and contemplating
what I'm going to do. I'm just not happy right now. Here it is after the initial
forging. If I put the pattern on it , there's already some things I want to
change. First off, the little flares here did not turn out well, which is fine, because
I actually have enough steel to to redo those. I'm actually going to make the blade just a little
bit wider until it tapers here. I don't like it, now that I see it cut out, the tang is way
too small, which is fine. I kind of figured that. I have the steel to make that a little wider.
I want the ricasso a little wider as well. I was really happy with the damascus on this one.
While I was grinding I actually forgot it was damascus. There's no inclusions, no nothing, and it's so
fine you can't see the pattern.. can't see it yet! I put the pattern on it and I filed out the
flares here so those look pretty good right now. It's still pretty thick so now we're going to take it
to the surface grinder and grind that down. Then we'll put our bevels in. I've got this all
surface ground. Next operation... I want a fuller in the very center of the blade that goes
from right above the flares to about seven inches. As the blade tapers
to the front it will just disappear. We're going to do that with a ball end
mill and take it down the blade. Let's go! The fuller is even on both sides. This was
all filed out. I also milled the shoulders. It looks pretty good. It kind of looks like
a rocket ship! Now to put the bevels in. Putting the bevels in this knife was certainly
the most stressful thing. It's such a narrow blade. There's such an easy propensity to put a facet
on it or change the angle you're holding it at. Plus they're really long and they're four
of them so lots of challenges on this one. Having a fuller in the center of the blade
actually helps quite a bit in case you oops a little bit. You don't have to meet at a perfect
line. The the fuller had a couple of uses here. After three or four hours, I was pretty
happy with the blade. It was pretty nice and even nice and flat on the sides.
Now we're ready for the heat treat. Of course the blade's already been normalized and
it's gone through some thermal cycling. Now we're doing the quench. It was actually
pretty uneventful. Things went well, no warps at all. Although I sped this up in the video, you really
need to make sure you leave your blade in the oil for at least 10 seconds, usually more like 20.
You'll notice at the end here I almost dropped it! The blade was tempered at 400 degrees
fahrenheit for two hours, twice. Now it's time to do the final grinding. I started this
at 80 went up to 120 and kind of left it there just because I was nervous
and didn't want to screw it up. I wanted to grind the bevels down
so that the edges were about 10/1000 thick and they look pretty good. Here it is after final grinding. I'm really,
really thrilled with how this turned out. No major flaws in the grind. It's really,
really even, no facets, I love how this tapers to a point here on this fuller and the
same on the other side. Exactly the way I wanted it to turn out. Everything's
going really well so far. Really fine edge, so looking good. I've got some hand sanded
but before I do that I thought I would get started on the guard. This one I'm
going to turn on the lathe. That'll be my first big lathe project of turning this.
I'm going to take some measurements and basically I'm going to leave this center part.
I'm going to use a three-quarter inch stainless and I'm going to leave this center
part and then I'm just going to take some measurements on these areas and then scribe some
lines. Actually I'll take it down a diameter and then scribe some lines and see if I can replicate
that this is my first major project on the lathe. I'm no machinist guys, so take it easy on me.
I'm sure I'm doing some dumb things, but I had fun. It's a really fun tool to use so I'm sure I'll
be doing a lot more on the lathe in the future. I'm pretty familiar with the mill
and using the mill with my DRO. I'm a math guy, I like precision,
and using the lathe was a little different. You kind of had to get the feel for it and keep going and kind of getting it closer and closer. It's not a precision instrument,
at least the way I'm using it without a DRO. I will say, I think I got this pretty close on the
lathe. I don't see any difference between the left and right quillion. I think they both look pretty
identical. There's the somewhat finished guard. I haven't cut the ends off just in
case I have to put it back in the lathe. Right now I want to mill the center
part flat so that's why I left this. I didn't shape this at all because I
want to be able to put this in the vise. It'll kind of lock it in then I'm
going to shave off the top that'll give me a flat section. I'll flip it over and mill the top and that'll
give me a nice flat section. Let's get her done. There's the guard all milled. The
only thing that's not milled is the slot. Before I do the slot, I want to fully sand
the blade so I get a perfect thickness on the ricasso. If you want some tips on hand sanding
go watch last week's Triple-T video. That gives some good hand sanding tips and I really used
a lot of those in hand sanding this blade. Now I'm milling the slot in the guard and
getting ready to put it on the knife. Since the quillions were on a different
plane than the face of the guard, I had to prop it up in this 1-2-3 block.
That seemed to work to grind it out. There's the guard all fit on the knife.
It fits nicely, no gaps. It's just dry fit and hammered on right now. I'll get it off but i have
some more sanding and file work to do on this. I love it. I love the way it looks.
I think it looks really cool. Now it's time to do this spacer.
Here you'll notice that this is an oval and the handle is going to be round so I have to
transition from an oval to a round here. What I'm going to do is take this, turn it on the lathe to
be this diameter down to this, and then I'll just take this guard off put it on top trace it
on the big side and then just use the grinder just to shape that down. I think that'll work.
Now I just have to turn this on the lathe, take some measurements, mark it on here and turn it
on the lathe. I ended up using a longer piece of stock to do the spacer. I don't have a cut-off
tool for my lathe and I really need to get one. I needed to cut this on the bandsaw so I
needed it to be longer to lock it into the bandsaw. I've got the spacer all done. You
can see it's round on one side and then it's got the oval to match the guard. You'll notice
I put holes for line up pins which are exactly the same as the ones here so it should line up nicely.
It's been sanded to 220 but I'll match it and sand it all down later. Now on to the
handle. Originally I wanted to use this maple burl dyed kind of purplish. My worry is that
it's just a little too busy and when I put the flutes in it and the wire, there's just too much
going on. I was going to use african blackwood, just because I love that wood. I still may, but I'm going to try this. I like the red. I think red would look really good,
so I'm going to try this bloodwood. I'm going to be turning it on the
lathe. I think I'm going to start there and see what I can get out of that. Who knows,
maybe it's just a test piece. Let's give it a try. I'm sure the machinists are just cringing
right now seeing me turn some wood on my metal lathe. Yes this made a huge mess
and it took me a while to clean this up. I remember shop class back in middle school and
using the wood lathe and I remember how fun it was and now i remember why. It is really fun. I
finished doing the basic contours of the handle on the lathe. It's thicker than normal because
the flutes are going to be concave flutes so that's why. This will be the top point.
I've got it rigged up here this is the jig I used to do wire wrapped handles. I'm using this as
a little guide because I need to put a grid system on here so that I can do the fluting and get it
perfect. That's why these little markers on here. Now I'm just going to put a grid
pattern on here so I can get that done. There, now the way you do these is to draw a line from this one from here to this
corner to this corner to that corner and it will make a spiral all the way around to the other
side that's the next thing. Once I had the grids marked on here I just connected corner
to corner and that gave me those lines. Now a bunch of filing just to take these out. It's actually every second line is going to be the valley and the other one is going to be
the point so it's going to be a lot of work. It's starting to come together. I have the
initial filing on the handle done. It still needs a little work. It's
pretty rough right now. These edges here will be flattened a bit
because that's where the wire is going to go. Overall I'm pretty happy with it. Now
the pommel.. let's go back to the lathe. Sorry folks, I lost the footage for turning
the pommel on the lathe but you get the idea. It's time to do the channels for the wire inlay. I'm going to flatten these out with a file and then figure out how I'm going
to center that channel. Let's do it. I tried a few things to get the channels
for the wire. I ended up landing on using a carpet knife to
mark or score that line in the center then went back with a marking pencil and just
kind of scratched through that. That kind of cut a line to make it a little deeper so that my
file would travel nicely. I then ended up using these Nicholson needle files to make
the channel and that worked well. As you can see, this sure was time consuming.
It ended up taking probably two or three hours to get all these channels filed into the handle.
I think they came out really really nice. I've got the channels
for the wire all filed out. Now I need to drill some holes where
the wire will go into on either end. I'm just going to drill 1/16 holes here and
then there'll be little channels on either end to go into that so they'll get hidden once
the pommel and guard are pressed up tight. There are the holes. I think we're good to go. Okay we're
ready to do the twist for this wire. The way I'm going to do
this is I have my steel wire here. I am going to double it and just straighten it out here. I think I have more than I need. Yep, so i'm going to hook it here. That's way more than I need. I'm just going to crimp this end, twist it, then i'm going to hook it on the drill. And give it a little spin. Okay, from experience this will want to crimp up on you if you try to take
it off. You need to wind it around something. There we go. We've got our twisted wire. At this point I've already fully finished
the handle, sanded it to a thousand. Now I'm using contact cement and putting
it in that groove where the wire goes. I'm doing one groove at a time and filling it full
of contact cement and crimping the end of the wire so it fits in the hole. Then wrapping it
around and crimping it and putting in the other side Sorry guys, I should have zoomed out the camera a
little bit. It's kind of hidden what i'm doing. I'm wrapping the wire around and then i'm taking a
toothpick and just kind of jamming it in that hole with some glue. Just to make sure that that wire is
solid and will not come out of the hole. We're so close now. I'm doing final buffing of the fittings and
getting ready. I've got some white compound on my buffer. Then I go to the buffing wheel. I
get these nice and shiny ready for the final fit up. Thanks folks! I hope you enjoyed this build. I had a
great time doing it, it was super fun. I can't wait to watch Dave's build and see what he's come up
with. If you want to see more throw down damascus challenges, stay tuned. For those of you that
have YouTube channels and you want a challenge, come talk to me. I'm thrilled with the
way this turned out. I can't wait to do more builds like this. So guys, please like
and subscribe and we'll see you on the next one!
