I Just Got Schooled! (Learning How to Make a Knife...Again)

hey Walter sorrell's back with another pops project of the month today making this tapered Tang knife with amazing vintage Micarta [Music] today I'll show you how to make this knife there's a story behind it so here's the story last week I went out to Pop's knife Supply sponsor of today's video of course and I said to Joey Berry one of the co-owners hey teach me how to make a knife your way and this knife is the result now the basic idea here was that I wanted to kind of get outside my comfort zone the normal way that I make knives and you know see somebody doing it in a completely different way now there's an amazing amount of cool information in this video so I want to get cranked up as quickly as I can but the main point that I'd like to make here is that there's always something new out there to learn you know I've been making knives for well over 20 years and you know I like to think I've learned a little bit about making knives by now but I picked up a ton of stuff here now this video was shot in my shop but everything I'm doing here is based on my best efforts attempt to do things the way that Joey showed me up at the pop shop now I have no doubt that Joey's gonna watch this and he's going to be like I didn't do it that way you dummy but hopefully most of what you see will be pretty faithful to his approach so Joey if I forgot a few things or had to adapt my own gear along the way my apologies thanks uh big thanks to Joey for carving out a very long day to lead me through this project all right let's jump in Joey starts every knife with a pattern which he produces from Micarta or plastic and hangs on the wall since he's a production guy he wants the option to make 10 20 or if need be a million identical designs I produce this pattern using the knife that I made it pops as a pattern for my pattern so it's roughly based on Joey's pattern but not exactly today's knife is made from 1084 steel we'll start by slathering on some layout fluid after it's dried I'll score around the pattern with a carbide scribe Joey stressed that he really presses down leaving a deep Gully with the Scribe so that even if the layout fluid Burns off which is pretty common there's still a nice clean line to follow then it's over to the grinder to rough in the profile Joey does this on a large contact wheel using a reasonably worn heavy grit belt in this case it's a 36 grit ceramic belt the reason you want to use a worn belt is that if you really blast into a sharp edge you just scrape off about half your abrasive in seconds that's no good at pops they have like eight Grinders lined up allowing them to keep permanent setups so that you don't constantly have to change attachments now we can't all do that obviously but it's something to think about if you want to produce multiple copies of a particular design I'll change to 120 grit belt and take the grind right up to the line until the line disappears next Joey drills the handle holes he likes a really light knife so in addition to the holes for the pins and thong tube he'll drill holes to lighten the Tang he starts by measuring the thin part of the knife then scribing a line halfway between them obviously the middle of the Tang is wider so that line is not going to be at the halfway point for that Center hole he just eyeballs it a hair lower to make the pins look right when you do this mathematically it sometimes actually looks kind of funny over to the drill where first he drills eighth inch starter holes then he goes to full size using a quarter inch drill pops has three drills in a row in their shop same ideas with the Grinders one running at a fast speed for skinny drill bits one slower for larger diameter bits and then one slower still that generally has a chamfer tool in it Now using a height gauge I'll scribe grind lines for both the bevels and the tapered Tang we're aiming for forty thousandths of an inch these will give us indicators of how far to grind so that everything ends up symmetrical then on the grinder I'll grind very short bevels down to those scribed lines on both the bevels and the end of the Tang today's video is of course sponsored by Pop's knife Supply virtually everything that I used in today's build including steel braces handle pins thong tubes epoxy handle materials all of it can be found at pops now speaking of handle materials they really have an unparalleled collection of handle scales and handle materials wood bone antler G10 Mike Carta including Vintage Stock like the spectacular cross-cut Micarta that I'm using for this knife kind of a pop specialty so if you want to follow along with this particular project hit up Pops for all your supplies as I've mentioned many times in the past all four of the partners at pops obviously including Joey Berry who inspired today's knife are knife makers so they can guide you if you have questions about any of the materials that you need from them popsknife dot Supply days next I'll turn to beveling the knife Joey starts with a heavy grit ceramic in the 60 range I go a little bit heavier but that's just me Joey also clamps a filing guide onto the blade at the ricasso to assure that the plunge lines are symmetrical this is an excellent Aid to grinding and I totally forgot to do it we'll be climbing the bevel all the way up to the spine Joey stresses that his background is a hunter and Outdoorsman biases him toward really sharp thin edged knives the higher the grind and the thinner The Edge the better the knife cuts once he's pretty close to the spine he'll jump to a higher grip belt quitting when he's just kissing the spine with his grind next Joey tapers the Tang he'll Begin by using pretty much the same Bob Loveless type technique that I demonstrated in my pops video a few months back but with a few refinements Link in the cards if you want to see that he'll prepare the way by using a small wheel to create a sort of Gully down the Tang you want to sneak up reasonably close to where you intend the handle to end but not too close if you overshoot obviously then you pretty much have to scrap the knife then turning to a large contact wheel I'll enlarge that Gully working down to described line Joey stressed that you want to leave only the smallest margin around the Tang face and you want it to be very symmetrical if it's not it'll make it easy to grind asymmetrically in the next phase and your Tang will end up cockeyed for the final push he uses a pretty cool tool that he designed derived from a similar tool used by Andy Roy I made this one myself and if things work out I may be manufacturing more of them for pops to sell but that's not a done thing anyway the basic idea is that if you have magnets in the body of The Jig along with a small nub or boss that will protrude through the furthest back quarter inch hole that acts as sort of a keeper so that the knife won't slip it's a little hard to describe everything that Joey showed me about tapering the Tang but basically the tool allows you to apply pressure wherever you need it to taper the Tang you can push a little harder on the top you can kind of rock it you can go back and forth and that way wherever you're pushing hardest is where you're going to grind the most I'm using a flat platen here grinding at a moderate Speed Joey uses a ceramic belt in the 80 grit range you basically just want a symmetrical grind up roughly to the point where the handle ends once you've gotten close you'll work your way up using higher grits something more than the 220 grit range to complete the taper at this point Joey rocks the blade tip toward the belt here taking off any scale that may be on the blade and creating a nice clean surface finish for the ricasso now it's on to heat treating Joey likes 1084 because it's a high quality steel that's also relatively forgiving to heat treat before heat treatment Joey likes to Clay up the blade with new clear any scale two layers having experimented with the stuff myself I confirmed his admonitions that that second layer is really important it makes a good bit of difference if you use two layers rather than one the idea here is to reduce the exposure of the steel to oxygen reducing scale and decarburization I'll take the blade to 1500 degrees then quench for a few seconds in a fast quenching oil then very quickly transfer to a plate quench vise a little compressed air brings the heat down quickly for maximum hardness while the plates keep the blade from warping once the blade goes into the tempering oven it's a great time to get started on handle scales in this case we're using a very old vintage Micarta see Micarta oxidizes over time and that oxidized layer sort of creeps slowly inward over the decades leaving a bark of Darker Micarta that gives visual interest to the material in this case the scales were cross-cut from a huge piece of my car to leaving this interesting dark brown part at the end I'll also use two layers of vulcanized fiber spacer material as with anything that's going to be glued Surface Prep is key first the materials are scuffed with sandpaper on a very flat machinist block then all surfaces are cleaned with acetone once this is done you want to avoid any contact with fingers or potentially greasy surfaces using a gel cyanoacrylate glue the scales are layered up and then clamped to a very flat surface you definitely want to use rubber gloves when working with super glue I'm using Gorilla brand but pops carries a CA glue called insecure that I like a lot better I bought some last time I was at pops but somehow it didn't make it into the bag I took home so I was stuck with this stuff from Home Depot a little Spritz of activator assures you that the Globs of squeeze out around the outside cure quickly okay so there was so much interesting detail and so much cool stuff that I learned from Joey in this build that this video is really running on pretty long so I'm going to break it into the first will come out obviously today and then I'll put the next one out tomorrow anyway I hope you've learned a lot so far and there is more to come all right hang in there and we'll see you in the next video thanks for watching guys if you like what we're doing here please subscribe and make sure that you click on that Bell so you get notified of all the latest videos want to buy a knife from me check out my modern blades at tacticsarmory.com digging the channel you can support our video making efforts on patreon you know I've been banging away on these videos for like 10 years so I hope you'll show some love for all that hard work Link in the cards and descriptions finally if you're interested in making Japanese swords check out my full line of Japanese sword videos where I show how to forge Japanese swords as well as how to polish them and how to make fittings handles and scabbards Walter sorrelsblades.com [Music]

Channel: Walter Sorrells

Views: 37,659

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Id: HbOEm-05aEE

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 04 2023