Forging A RARE $16,000 Tactical Art Knife

I'm crafting one of my most impressive knives yet but there's a problem to bring this artistic Vision to life I must conquer the following a carbon fiber handle with 24 karat gold inlays that is not a pretty start a black diamond Pummel nut serving as a glass breaker a complex alternating twist to Mascus forged blade a handle that looks like it was dipped in glass I sanded through the finish right here and right here so I'm going to start back all over again my name is Kyle Royer and I'm a master bladesmith the first thing I want to do on this fighter is Forge the Damascus for the blade I begin with 1084 and 15in 20 strips of Steel I weld around the seam of every strip of Steel sealing the pieces up so no atmosphere can get inside the Billet after letting the Billet soak for a few minutes I Forge weld the Billet together with my 40 ton hydraulic press the 15 and 20 was a slightly different width than the 1084 steel so by grinding the edges down I can get everything flush if I left the 1084 wider it would fold over around the 15 and 20 layers leaving cold shuts all down the edges of my Billet one of my all-time favorite things in knife making is forging out the Damascus billets I love seeing the scale form on the edge of the Billet and slowly peel off the edges as I Forge out the Billet I also love the colors of the Billet when you first take it out of the forge it's so bright and yellow and as it cools down it turns into into this creamy smooth dull red color after getting the Billet drawn out to length I can let it cool grind the scale off cut the Billet in half and Tack it back together with the welder then it's ready to go back in the Forge for another forging session what this is going to do is basically double the number of layers in the Billet since we cut it into two pieces I don't know what it is about that barbecue sauce but that sweet Baby's R barbecue sauce almost always gives me heartburn and I hardly ever get heartburn from anything I'm not joking why you laughing I have a lot of doubts and concerns in my mind right now about how this Damascus pattern is going to come out I've never done this pattern before and I don't know how it's going to look on the finished knife the pattern could look good once I get the Billet done but by time the blade is ground and heat treated and finished will it still look good will this Damascus be a good pattern to even start out with am I going to have days and days into this pattern and then have to start over because it didn't come out I've got our two pieces Forge welded together and draw them out this time we're not going to be multiplying the layers what we're going to do is draw it out into a small square bar and prepare it for twisting I get my brother and my dad to help hold the torches on both sides of the Billet so it'll heat up quickly and evenly and then I can twist up a small section move on to the next and continue all the way down the the bar something else you may notice is I'm twisting each spot a different direction I'll twist one right hand and then I'll twist the next left hand and then in the end when we have all four bars stacked on top of each other it should give a little bit of a Chevron effect where the two different direction twists meet each [Music] other after twisting up all the Damascus I Forge the bars back into a square shape it's taken me over 2 weeks to get to this point with the Damascus I've spent a lot of time working on the practice pieces getting the right size and the proper number of twists the proper distance apart from each other and then actually working on this Billet too with all the practice pieces I did and then this actual Billet there's quite a bit of time already invested into this fighter spent a good amount of time laying out our four bars I think this is how I want the pattern to look the two bars in the center of the Billet they mirror each other and then the two on the outside are staggered offset to the center but they mirror each other on the outside so I think it's going to look really cool here's our bellet all ready to go we've got all four interrupted twist bars on here I've got them all sealed up with Mig welds so we can heat it up to four dwelling temperature everything's nice and clean and fits pretty tight so it should go well hopefully got a lot of work in this piece so far I lightly Forge welded all four of our Twisted bars together I don't have a lot of extra material to reduce everything down so I very delicately press everything and hope that I get good clean Forge welds after getting the Billet Forge welded together and drawn out slightly I grind all the Mig welds off the side of the Billet and then begin forging in the tip shape of the blade I want the pattern to follow The Cutting Edge of the blade all the way out through the tip that's why I'm forging the tip up into such a weird shape right now I Mark out places for the ricasso and tang and then begin drawing them out drawing out the Tang can be pretty stressful on the Damascus pattern sometimes but it looks like everything's staying together very well if the four Twisted bars didn't Forge well together very well I would probably start to see that as I draw out the Tang the Tang's being put through so much stress as it's drawn out that if the forge welds weren't done well things would start to come apart [Music] once the blades drawn out and cooled I surface grind the sides on my 1958 Benton Harbor Michigan koville surface [Music] grinder whoa there's our Damascus that looks really cool I love how it follows the edge right here that's going to look awesome got the blade rough ground and have a 120 grit finish on the bevels just to reduce the chance of the blade cracking when we Harden it I'm going to pop it in the electrically controlled Heat Treating Kiln oven at uh, 1550 de we're going to let it heat up soak a little bit and then quench in some nice warm Parks 50 to hopefully Harden this thing up super hard the Blade's been soaking for 10 minutes the oil is 110° it's time to harden our blade pop it out up and down a lot nothing dramatic turn the oven off and wipe it down with a towel thing not towel can't think t-shirt yeah that's what they're called blade looks pretty nice I don't think it warped at all go ahead and check and see if it's hard now with a chainsaw file it's good and hard I'm going to let the Heat Treating oven cool down and then temper this thing at maybe 410 or 15° for a couple hours once a couple hours have passed the blade is done tempering and and I can continue grinding the blade bevels grinding this blade I have one major fear the blade grind I've chosen for this knife is one of the most complex I've ever done and I'm very concerned that I may mess it up and have to start completely over on my Damascus I take my time trying to be as careful as possible one small slip up could ruin the blade or at least cause me to have to grind it down thinner for you it's only been a few minutes for me I've invested many days into this knife now and if I have to restart because the blade grind was too complex for me to handle it would be [Music] devastating after spending many hours at the grinder the blade came out very nice I didn't destroy it I've taken the blade as far as it'll go for now next I'm going to focus on the guard I put the blade in a carbide file guide and use it to guide where I'm going to Mill a little bit off the sides of the Tang this will leave a tiny shoulder on the Tang so I can get a beautifully tight guard fit got the Tang cleaned up nicely it's h a 220 grit finish on the sides and have the top and bottom cleaned up as well the next thing we need to do is fit our guard I think we've got a piece of metal that's plenty big so we should be able to work with this no problem we're going to be making a pretty thick guard at about a/2 in thick I don't have any 1/2 in thick metal so we're just going to use this 1 in thick metal and cut it 1/2 in long and then I'll start grinding and milling and processing this down into a piece we can make our guard out of it can be really handy if you keep stock oversized larger than you think you need as long as you have tools to process that stock down it gives you the flexibility to make whatever you want in this case I've got a giant chunk of mild steel and I can cut it up with the band saw and process it down with the Grinders in the mill to get a nice piece the exact size I needed the bulk of the material's already been removed with the mill but I still need to go in and gently remove a tiny amount of material all around the corners in order to get the ricasso to fit into the guard I put a bunch of layers of duct tape around the blade and that'll allow me to clamp it very very tightly in the Vise then I can put the guard on and use a special punch that goes around the tang and drive the guard on with a hammer we're going to drive it on and then we'll remove some material with a file and keep driving it on over and over again until the ricasso leaves a mark around on the guard I call this rotary tool I'm using the high-speed Dental Burr and I'm using the tiniest of carbide burs to remove a small amount of material to make the guard fit perfectly to do this work with the dental bur I'm looking through my engraving microscope so I can see exactly what I'm doing more clearly [Music] I messed with fitting the guard for quite a while and finally got it to a place I'm happy with you still have to lightly tap it in place you can't quite push it on by hand and in order to take it off you have to lightly lightly tap on the end of the Tang only like once though and then it pops off I believe it's going to be about perfect though by the time we finish the blade and do the etching on the blade and the the Tang will get etched and stuff I think the material will all be a little bit smaller and this should fit on by hand the reason I need the guard to fit on by hand is because this is going to be the kind of takedown where the customer is actually encouraged to take the entire knife apart and put it back together we're going to make a cool takeown tool and everything for it because you probably don't want to have your customer get this nice knife and then make them go buy an anvil and a hammer and have to bang on the knife to get the guard off now that the guard is fit the next thing to work on is the handle we're going to make a frame that goes around the Tang on the top and bottom of the handle so what you'll see looking at the bottom view of the handle or the top view of the handle this quasi isotropic piece sandwiched by a piece of this on each side of it first thing I need to do is decide how thick the two scales I cut off of this block are mark them out and then go bans on them off I'm cutting out this block of carbon fiber on what I call the world's loudest band saw dad put this thing together and I don't know where this Banda came from but I don't think I've ever heard a piece of equipment this small that makes this much noise I love it though it works really well for cutting out blocks of material and quickly cutting off little pieces of metal and stuff it's a great tool it's just Extremely Loud next I work on flattening out all the pieces on the 2 x72 broadback grinder the pieces have some high and low spots from the band saw blade and the grinder makes quick work of getting everything pretty flat after finishing up on the 2 x72 I move over to the Disc Sander this will allow me to get the pieces even more flat I want all the pieces to fit together so tightly that there's no gaps or daylight anywhere between the pieces when they fit together I got our two frame pieces all cut out and shaped I also lined up the top and bottom frame piece on one of the scales and drilled some holes through it that way we can stick some little tiny lineup pins through there and locate these as we're epoxying them together to hold all these handle pieces together I'm using some very good quality West system glex epoxy I left the finish at 120 grit on all the pieces just to give the epoxy a little bit more to bind to the finer the Finish is the less Peaks and valleys there are for the epoxy to go down into and really bind to the parts I'll let the epoxy set up overnight and then I shaped the ends of the handle something that I had to work on was I needed to thin my Tang just just a little bit so the Tang would actually fit in the slot well as it turns out in a heartbeat I accidentally took too much off and made it so my blade could wobble in the handle a little bit I'm just not happy with how this is coming out I want to get I want to get it really nice looking in there since the customer is going to be able to take the handle apart and see the inside of the handle just not feeling the way this is looking so far so I thought we'd try to pry the handle apart and see how well the epoxy is holding wow I had to pry on that really hard wow the epoxy held really really well it actually peeled layers of the carbon fiber off a little bit I'm going to clean up all these pieces and see how everything looks and we'll think about putting these pieces back together without remaking the [Music] frame I finally have it where I want I think we're ready to epoxy these so I'm going to mix up some more West system and get that bad boy put back on there and let it dry overnight I took all the clamps off let's see if the handle fits onto the blade nicely this time hopefully okay so far so good so far so good oh it fits all the way to where it goes I am so excited that I get to finally move forward on this now now that the handle fits the way I want it to I need to thread the end of the Tang the Tang needs to be threaded so the pommel nut that we'll make later will thread onto the end of it and pull the entire handle assembly tightly against the blade holding everything in place firmly got the end of the Tang shaped for threading but right now it's really hard so I want to O'Neal it so it'll be nice and soft so we'll be able to cut threads in it easier so I'm just going to lightly heat the end up until it's glowing a little bit and then we'll let it air cool after Colonel O'Neal the Tang I let it cool down and and cleaned off all the oxides with the scotch Sprite I'm going to use a little bur life and a 1032 diey to thread it I forget how amazing it is when you have a brand new D it's not like dull and worn out with the teeth broken off it actually Cuts instead of smears they're only like 10 bucks a piece should just throw them away more often I find it's very easy for myself to get stuck in that mode where you want to use something until it just absolutely has no life left in it at all but in reality I need to remember remember to throw things out before they reach that stage and I'll probably save a lot of time and money just switching over to something fresh be it a Dye or a sanding belt or a tap or whatever beautiful I just got a special delivery right here we've got a 3/4 karat black diamond this is going to go in into the pommel nut and act as kind of a glass breaker cuz it's got a really nice sharp point on it it's going to be really cool for this knife I need to practice setting that diamond so I bought some cubic zirconia this should be super fun to work with this diamond I've never set any stones in any of my knives before so this is going to be a world's first for me this is why we do practice cuz I actually messed up already I was trying to see if the hole was the right size and it kind of got stuck in the hole and I was having a hard time getting it out so I decided to just take this leather hammer and lightly tap it in the hole further to see how fit in there if I lightly tapped on it and the CZ completely shattered on me I was not expecting that I guess that's why CZ is like $2 for a little thing that big and a diamond you know a clear Diamond that size would be thousands of dollars so I'm going to cut that off and we're going to practice again thankfully we have I don't know 10 or 15 of those czs we can practice with I need to keep practicing setting this Stone until I'm very confident I can do it on the real thing I do not want to break that real black diamond or mess up on the setting and have it come out all crooked or weird in the end of the Pummel nut once I got the right size hole on the end of the metal I can take the CZ put it in the hole and then take my engraving hand piece and Hammer the metal clothes around the CZ and hold it in place I've never done anything like this before so I am not sure if this is actually going to work wow the Graver remarkably loves to just be right down in that Groove between the diamond and the uh metal even though this isn't a real diamond it still looks really pretty when you turn it in the light all the reflections coming off of the facets are pretty cool so first I'm just going to cut it down to the size that my real pommel nut will be approximately and then I can shape the end and clean up the end a little bit more there's actually not going to be that much metal revealed on the very top it's mostly going to be the diamond you see okay I learned something here if I ever go to set a clear Diamond I need to make sure that I cleaned it off really well before I set it you can see a fingerprint on this CZ well it's not on the side that you can clean it's actually on the bottom side up underneath there that you can't get to anymore next time I set anything clear clean it off really well first no fingerprints my second test came out really nice I definitely like it we're ready to move on to the real thing now for the real thing the process is pretty much the same but the stakes are much higher now I'm working with a real diamond here and I don't want to mess it up we've got a nice little place for our Black Diamond to live with just a little bit sticking up so we can use the engraver to smash it over and hold the diamond in place at first I just Smash in small points before doing the entire circumference of the metal I do it in the same manner that you would tighten lug nuts on your car rim I tighten one do the one across from it do one across from that one and go in an order like that to try to keep the diamonds [Music] [Music] centered I messed up setting the stone and it was in there kind of crooked so I had to cut it out with the Dremel tool and make another pommel nut because the other one was getting too short so we've got a brand new pommel nut here and I'm going to try setting the stone for a second time this time I'm going to take it out and check how centered it is and make sure it looks good before I really start hammering it in there it's still able to be moved around a little bit right now I think that looks pretty good looks very centered I'm going to go in and lightly keep working that uh closing the metal around the diamond and try to keep a close eye on on it second time's the charm the diamond is nice and centered this time and securely held in place I don't think this is going anywhere anytime soon now that the diamond's set I can take it to the lathe and clean up the metal close to the diamond on the end of the pommel nut the pommel nut is pretty much finished for now we'll have to do a little more finishing and then gun blue it later it has a 1500 grit finish on the top and down in that little Groove next thing we got to do is make it so we can do our first official assembly of of all these parts this will be my first official try at fitting the handle guard pommel and pommel nut all together I think that feels really good actually our guard handle pommel and pommel nut are all fit together nicely the next thing to work on is shaping it all into an actual handle instead of big giant rectangles the first component I want to shape on is the guard I need to get the top and bottom of it at least roughed in and then I can base the rest of the handle profile off of that rough and guard shape I use a combination of the 2 x72 Grinders and a really large bit on the milling machine give up don't give in never lose hope don't let go of theise it [Music] ain't I just rough the shape in with the mill and the grinder once that's done I can move to files clean up and fine-tune everything and that's pretty much it for the guard shaping it's looking very nice at this point I'm already over 100 hours into this build I'm very happy with how the guard shape came out I love the nice little radius we have right here where the top part of the Guard like meets up with the rest of it it was really hard to shape that with the files but I got it exactly looking how I wanted it to the next thing we're going to work on is the handle it's time to get this bad boy shaped up with most of my handles I start by profiling the handle this way and getting it all flattened this way but in our case both of those things are pretty much finished since we made the handle out of scales and we put that frame piece in the middle both the scales are the same thickness so everything's already profiled side to side it's good to go there and we pretty much profiled everything right here except for this this needs touched up just a little bit before we move on to shaping the rest of the handles so that's what I'm going to start with first I'm trying to be as safe as I can while working with this carbon fiber I'm wearing rubber gloves because you can get tons of little splinters just from grinding on the carbon fiber they get between your fingers and they're really annoying and itchy I'm also wearing a respirator as much as possible and I've got a giant vent fan sucking all the Dust Away from the grinder I do a little layout on the end of the handle up against the guard letting me know where I can grind material and where I need to stop carbon fiber is difficult to grind but not as bad as you might think there are three things though that make grinding carbon fiber worse than grinding something like stabilized wood or mammoth ivory one is that the dust is really bad and you definitely don't want to breathe it two is that the carbon fiber pretty hard on your grinding belts three is that the carbon fiber grinds away very [Music] slowly I'm done shaping the carbon fiber handle I love how it came out it is super cool I was a little unsure there for a little while cuz this handle is a shape I've never quite done before I've done similar ones but especially this part right here it's got this really nice flat area with this kind of little rest for your finger right there and then this area is raised I've never done a handle shape quite like that I love how it came out the relation between the guard and the handle is looking good we have one more thing that needs to be shaped and that's our Pummel cuz right now it's just a big old rectangle I'm going to be doing what's called a museum fit where the handle material is larger and there's this little rounded corner where it meets up with with the pommel and in our case the guard as well I like to call that little rounded Corner the bnos because it reminds me of bnos Corners that my dad and I used to put on the Custom Homes we built when we did drywall work instead of the giant 1-in Corners that dad and I used to do on drywall the corners on the handle are only going to be about a 302nd of an inch radius so much much smaller but still kind of the same concept [Music] I'm done shaping the outside of the pommel I've got a 320 grit finish on it and it's somewhere between 30 and 40,000 of an inch smaller than our handle material we still need to dome the end of the handle so that's the next thing I'm going to work on to hold my piece I've just got a block of wood here and I drilled two holes that are the same distance apart as these pins I should be able to just stick it in the piece of wood and take it over to the grinder add a little bit of blue Dam layout fluid dry it off with a hair dryer and Scribe some [Music] [Music] lines with all the shaping done on the end of the Pummel this knife is rude really starting to shape up I love how the handle looks and the relation between the shapes on the handle the guard and the blade how it all works together I'm working on the gold inlay on the carbon fiber handle I already did the front part of the handle right here and it came out really really nice and this is the first time I've ever inlaid into carbon fiber or any kind of handle material as far as I can remember the next area I'm going to work on is this area we've got these lines that meet up here at a nice little corner and then they swoop down the handle and follow that grind line I've never done gold inlay on anything like this before I've pretty much only inlaid gold into metal I use the dividers to give myself a layout line for the first line of gold now that I've got the layout done I'm going to start cutting in the groove for this I'm going to use my high-speed Dental bur normally you crank this thing up and have it spinning super fast but this diamond coated disc I'm going to cut with cuts the carbon fiber so aggressively that I need to turn this thing down as slow as it'll go basically before the uh the thing stalls out this part is terrifying I have to muster every bit of focus and concentration that I can in order to cut this groove straight if I just jerk or have one little muscle spasm I might make this groove go way off course and completely ruin this gold inlay I finished cutting the grooves on this side of the handle the next thing is to dovetail the bottom of the groove right now the groove is kind of rounded at the bottom and I actually want to open up the bottom so that when I smash the gold in it locks it in place so here I've got a small carbide Burr that I've ground to customize the end of it and it has four sides and those four sides actually do the cutting and I'm going to just go in there at the bottom of the groove and cut a little bit of a dovetail on both sides of the groove all the way down this part also takes a tremendous amount of concentration if I slip and make a wrong move with this little Point it'll eat deep into the side of my handle or might make a groove or a spot somewhere that I do not want one if I don't use enough force and impact on the gold it won't fill out the dovetails at the bottom and stay in place properly I've got all my grooves cut in I've also dovetailed them so our gold will fill out the dovetails when I smash it in and it'll be mechanically locked into place the gold we're going to use is 24 Karat 25,000 in thick gold I'm just going to smash it in using my engraver hand piece and a brass rod on the [Music] end right off the [Music] bat if I don't use enough force and impact on the gold it won't fill out the dovetails at the bottom and stay in place [Music] properly I finished smashing All the Gold in it filled out the grooves pretty well there was a couple places where the grooves were a little bit on the large side so I hope those look okay once I get everything sanded speaking of sanding I'm going to start sanding everything flush with some 320 grit and and see how this gold inlay looks this is always my favorite part of doing gold inlay when you get to sand off the excess gold get everything cleaned up and see how your inlay truly looks I just finished sanding the handle to 600 grit and that 600 grit actually leaves a nice satiny finish on the gold which is going to help it dance around in the light a little bit more I think it's going to look really good with the 2K finish over it at this point the handle is completely ready for the 2K finish it's going to take a number of days to apply mini coats on there and let it Harden fully and then sand it all and get it looking finished for the finish I want to do we're going to use spray Max 2K the 2K means two component there's a little container inside of here that you actually break open and mix it in with the rest of it once you do that you have a limited shelf life on this because it'll start to harden even in the can so you have to use it up within a certain amount of time time to release the catalyst and [Music] Shake that's already looking really cool oh this is exciting it instantly looks really really cool just with one light coat on after doing our first three coats I let the handle dry for2 4 hours we're now ready to scuff up the finish with some 600 grit sandpaper so that the next three coats will adhere to the first three coats better by the way I am super happy with how this is looking so far it immediately added tons of shine to the handle the chto up here on the edges of the handle looks super super cool when you put it in really bright light and move it around it just dances I can't wait to see what it looks like when we get all nine coats on here and get it polished out so why do I even want to do this 2K finish on the handle well the journey started over a year ago at the Atlanta blade show I took a knife that had a beautiful piece of stabilized wood for the handle and this piece of stabilized wood was extra special because when I sanded it out and buffed it it came out so shiny and beautiful it kind of looked like it was dipped in glass and ever since then I've been on a journey for some kind of a finish that would be repeatable that I could use on other materials too the 2K finish so far has been the closest thing I found on my my journey to kind of repeat that process and be able to get that finish on different types of materials it seems to be very durable and it can make your pieces look like they're dipped in glass if that's what you're going [Music] [Music] for wow look at that this is getting so exciting I hope this comes out it's sure looking really good right now we applied all nine coats of the 2K finish on the handle and let it dry inside for about 9 days it should be completely ready to go for finishing my plan is to hand sand the handle with, 1500 grit to get rid of all the little imperfections in the spray finish then go over it with 3,000 and then begin buffing it to get it polished up real nicely [Music] o that looks good oh that looks even oh that looks really good what I'm sing out right now are the little imperfections there's high spots and low spots and some light orange peel I'm trying to sand all that out lightly with a little bit of 1500 grit so everything's nice smooth and flat once I'm done sanding I move over to the buffing wheel but instead of buffing compound like I normally would use on the wheel I'm using a 3M car Polishing Compound this stuff is designed for polishing finishes like this and in all my testing it was by far the best finish I could possibly get if you use regular buffing Compound on this 2K finish it just smears and does not look good for the most part the handle came out looking amazing it looks like it was dipped in glass but I had a couple trouble areas that I had to sand on a lot and because of that I sanded through the finish right here and right here burning through the Finish happened from me sanding this area right here there was some kind of a weird texture that I just thought was on the last couple layers so I sanded through it not realizing that I was actually going through pretty much all the layers so that's why we got a little bare spot there and the same thing happened with this bare spot I was really focusing on sanding out some weird little bubbly things right here we only got the those weird bubbly things though right here and right here I don't know if I sprayed it on on a weird angle or put it on too thick or what but something I did there caused that weird problem and I had to sand it to get rid of it and burn through so I'm going to start back all over again we're going to rough up the handle and probably do a full-blown nine coats uh to build it up nice and thick again hopefully we won't get those weird little bubbly areas and redo this finish you don't need to see that though hopefully it'll come out looking just like this handle minus the two little places that didn't work out and it'll be all good to go from that point cuz for the most part this looks dipped in glass so while that's drying I'm going to work on the engraving on the fittings we're going to be doing the xcal logo in solid gold we're also going to have a couple of these lines that go across the garden Pummel be gold as well this pattern that we're going to do on the guard and the Pummel kind of represent the feature wall that xcal has in their building it's this really big wall that has these lines across it kind of going in a similar fashion to what I've drawn here and then a couple of the lines have lights in them instead of lights I'll have a couple of lines that have 24 karat gold in them instead I'm going to start with the pommel and just like with everything else I want to give myself some layout lines to follow so we're going to cut in the border of the pommel first I love engraving there's something so satisfying about taking a chisel sharpening it up and then shoving it through your metal piece and cutting away metal shavings and chips until you've created whatever design you're going for the grooves are ready for gold inlay next I need to anneal the gold so it's nice and soft to inlay but I have to be very careful if I get the gold a little hotter than it needs to be it'll melt right off um oops maybe that handheld torch was a little too much heat let's switch over to the lighter and hopefully I can get the gold glowing hot without completely melting it off like before my gold wire isn't quite the right size for the grooves I've made so I'm going to draw the gold through a draw plate and that'll reduce its size just a little bit the draw plate is a really neat tool it's got carbide inserts in it of progressively smaller and smaller holes all you have to do is get the end of the wire through the hole and then you can pull it through with pliers and it essentially stretches the wire out and makes it a tiny bit smaller diameter on the other side of the die [Music] it's such a satisfying feeling to take this soft gold wire and just smash it into a Groove and then sand it all smooth and see your gold inlay finished now that the gold inlay is done I need to add a few more grooves that go across kind of in the same type angular pattern that don't have any gold in them the engraving on the pommel is done next I focus on the Guard the guard however will be slightly different I want to add X Cal's logo in to one side of the guard and inlay it in Gold I had a custom xcal logo stencil made up from IMG this is the same type of stencil I use to mark my own personal logo I get the xcal stencil centered up on the guard and electrochemically etched through the stencil I could have laid out X Cal's logo by hand but I thought it would be much ER just to have a stencil made up electrochemically etch it so I'll have a good Mark and then cut it out and engrave it deeper for the [Music] gold there it is looks really good got to make it deeper dovetail it put some little teeth at the bottom and then we'll smash some gold in [Music] there [Music] I finished inlaying the 24 karat gold into the xcal logo the next thing I want to do is outline the Border by first marking it with dividers and then cutting it in with the engraver so I'm going to spray some D so I can see the lines I'm about to create a little easier from here I'm just repeating what I already did on the Pummel I add layout lines around the outside border cut those in with the Graver add the gold into those lines and then cut the rest of the lines in that don't have any gold once I'm done with this side of the Guard I repeat the process on the other side of the Guard the only difference being there's no xcal logo on the other side it took a couple days but I just finished the engraving and I'm super happy with it I think it really really resembles the feature wall that xcal has in their building and I just love it we've got all the gold lines that represent the lights on the feature wall and then uh all the lines without gold in them just represent the the little grooved lines on the feature wall I think those gold lines are really going to pop once this is gun blued they should just be glowing kind of like the lights are on the actual feature wall let's have a little sneak peak first time I'm seeing this Damascus since the blade was finished there it is wow that gold really Pops I love how you can see the individual bars in the in the Tang too that's pretty cool going to go hands sand those oxides off with some 3,000 grit and then put it back in for another soak in the fer chloride I'll tell you the reason I'm just now finishing the blade I like to stop on the blade and focus on the rest of the handle when the blade is almost done but not quite and the reason being as I'm working on the rest of the garden handle I don't want to have to be extra careful to not scratch the blade or ding it up or anything back in the coffee I mean the [Music] acid just got done etching the blade I'm going to neutralize it before we put it in the coffee to make sure the Ferro chloride doesn't eat away at it anymore we've got water with a whole bunch of baking soda mixed in this pipe just took the blade out of the neutralizer after it was in there for a couple of minutes rinsing that off we're going to put it in the coffee solution for 4 to 8 hours and see how it looks after that to Coffee darken the blade I'm using a high concentration of NES Cafe instant bold coffee this is going to help the oxides that are already on the blade become even more dark than they are and it's going to make the oxides much much more durable into the coffee we go I let the blade soak in the coffee for about 6 hours and then I took it out and started rubbing all the yellow oxides off with a sunshine cloth there was an area all through here though that looked pretty bad I don't know if there was some kind of oil residue or something in there but it just didn't accept the coffee darken fin finish how I wanted so I put it back in the coffee for another 6 or 8 hours and then let it set now I'm going to rub the entire blade down once again with Sunshine cloth and if it looks really good we'll move on from there and do a wax finish on it these Sunshine cloths are my secret weapon to get rid of this yellow oxide on here if the coffee finish is really good the sunshine cloth won't rub it out on the dark areas where we want it but it'll get rid of that yellow tint on the 15 and 20 I think I'm done rubbing on the coffee finish with the sunshine cloth next thing I want to do is apply a caruba wax finish to the blade this should make the coffee finish even more durable and also make it pop a little bit more as well I'm going to heat the blade up with a heat gun we're only going to get it like 150° or so so we don't have to worry about overt tempering the blade or anything like that and then I'm going to rub this caruba wax around on the blade wipe off the excess and see how it looks the caruba wax adds to the durability of the Finish greatly and it helps protect the carbon steel the blades made out of on top of all that it makes the dark 1084 look even [Music] better got a nice heavy layer of the wax applied everywhere I'm going to wipe off some of the excess with a paper towel [Applause] [Music] [Applause] now the blade is cooled down and the wax has hardened so now I'm going to go over it again with the sunshine cloth just to kind of uh buff up and polish the wax and get it looking real [Music] shiny I just finished polishing and Shining up that wax finish and it looks amazing I'm very impressed with how hard that finish is the blade is so shiny now too the carda wax is definitely my new favorite I just I just love how this blade looks now it's absolutely fan fantastic we've got the bluing salts heating up right now and the chemical cleaners heating up in the Ultrasonic Cleaner let's take the guard over the buffer and buff the Finish from 3000 grit hand rubbed to mirr polish like the rest of the pieces Believe It or Not buffing for me isn't as simple as it sounds I've tried dozens and dozens of different wheels and compounds to try to find the perfect ones that work for me part of the issue for me when I'm buffing pieces a lot of times like with these pieces I'll have gold inlays and I'll have steel well the gold Buffs differently than the steel so one buffing wheel in compound that works great on steel might totally leave the gold all pitted up and look horrible or vice versa so I have to find the perfect balance between getting the gold to look good and the steel all around it to also look good now that the fittings have a beautiful mirror finish it's time to get them very clean for the gun bluing process if there's any oil residue or compounds left on the fittings the gun blowing process will be all splotchy and blotchy and it will not look good while the parts are in the cleaner I heat up the costic gun blowing salts to 290° F I have to be very careful with these salts even at room temperature if you get these salts on your skin they'll start to burn and itch your skin a little bit but if you get these salts on your skin when they're 290° the action is Amplified and they burn into your skin much much quicker the gun bling salts break down organic materials like leather and skin very quickly okay that could scratch it I think it banged into the edge of that pop yeah it [Music] did I mean without closely inspecting it the diamond looks nice and shiny and everything's still that's a good [Music] sign that looks amazing this piece looks like it came out really well it looks like the diamond was unaffected as well it's super shiny and pointy still I think the diamond was okay it's all really black now W look at that gold pop oh man look at that gold take a look at that that looks [Music] beautiful rinse all that off man that gold really Pops I think it looks good there was some little specks on there once again but I think they're just little particles of mineral from the boiling water I buffed the finish off of our little takedown tool and reblued it three times now and it just is not coming out we're going to strip this bluing off and then I'm going to hand this over to dad and he's going to gold plate it we've got a gold plating setup inside and he's used it the most so he knows how to run it really well we're going to put a nice heavy layer of 24 karat gold plating on there and see how it looks with that it's so great having Dad here working with him every day not just because he knows how to run the gold plating machine but also because I get to spend time with him he's on his own knife making Journey he just became a journeyman through the American bladesmith society and is already making incredible work dad has made so many quality of life improvements to the shop that I can't even begin to list them all it is fantastic I really hope dad can successfully gold plate this takedown tool I don't know why it wouldn't accept the gun bluing hopefully whatever was keeping it from gun blowing properly won't be an issue when it comes to the gold plating a lot of you guys have been asking me for the links to materials and tools I use I finally got around to making the ultimate list I call it the master smith toolkit it's a free pdf that has links to almost all the tools and materials I use in the master smith toolkit PDF you'll find things like where I get my handle materials where I buy metal for my knives the exact kind of sandpaper I use for hand sanding and a lot lot more like I said before the master Smith's toolkit is free when you sign up I'll email you the PDF sign up with the link in the description to get the PDF for free and here's our finished 24 Karat goldplated takedown tool I think Dad did a great job it looks absolutely fantastic I couldn't be more pleased with it instead of that blued finish the gold plating looks amazing there's one more thing we got to do before we can finally put this knife together and that's get it sharp at this point I can barely contain myself this knife is almost done I just have to make it through this sharpening without scuffing up the blade assemble the knife and it will be finally finished I've been working on this knife for 3 months and I am moments away from finally seeing how all the different components look finished and together cuz so far we've seen some of the finished components but we have not seen how they all look together and interact with each other I finally got it sharpened up sometimes they fight you and sometimes they don't this one definitely fought me in the process of sharpening it I think I shaved all the hair off of both of my legs so it's nice and hair popping sharp now looks really good it's ready for final assembly first piece to go on is the guard pop that on there then we've got our composite carbon fiber 24 karat gold 2K finished handle next piece up is the Pummel with our our lineup pins in it and then our final piece of the knife is our pommel nut with the black diamond on the end I'm going to screw that in most of the way by hand and then to tighten it down we can use our 24 Karat goldplated hardened steel takedown tool which is this little bad boy right here I think snug is right there wow there it is it's done the sheath done the takeown tool the little takeown tool sheath the knife sharpened bluing finishes gold it is done I have not seen the handle and the fittings together yet with the black fittings and the black carbon fiber handle they really really look cool together like super cool let's talk about some of the new things on this knife cuz it had many things that I've never done before I've never done this kind of a composite twist pattern Damascus where you have Twisted bars that have interrupted twists where it's twisted straight Twisted the other direction I've also never used the ingrained of the carbon fiber on the sides of the handle so that's a brand new look I've never done before a big one for me was doing the 24 karat gold in the handle that was something completely new I had to do a lot of practice for that in order to get it to work out I'm very very happy with it it came out really cool looking the 2K finish on the carbon fiber handle was another big new thing for me the black diamond in the pommel nut I've never done anything like that I haven't set a stone in anything except a little practice piece I did a couple years ago I just stuck a little tiny fake diamond into a Penny I love this excow fighter I will see you in the next video May the forge be with you [Applause] [Music] bye-bye

Channel: Kyle Royer

Views: 578,432

Keywords: knife making, how to make a knife, how to heat treat a knife, how to make a bowie knife, how to make a bowie, knives, kyle royer, kyle royer knives, making a knife, sharp, how to make knives, bladesmith, master smith, blades, damascus, knifemaker, diy knife, anvil, forging, custom, knife, great content, steel, bowie build, bowie knife, 10 inche bowie knife, blade, knifemaking, knife maker

Id: ie0b4EqExwA

Length: 51min 39sec (3099 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2023