I tried this once and will NEVER freehand grind again!

today I would like to talk a little bit about different grinding techniques and my favorite grinding technique a little bit more in detail I've been grinding like this for a while now and it's my absolute favorite version my name is Tobias hangler I am an Austrian knife maker and trained intelligist and I'm part of the development team of Apex Ultra this is a knife that we entirely forged using induction heating it's a go my blade it's going to be a bunker with the compound grind with a c grind on the one side so it's an asymmetric grind but first of all we need to grind in the bevels the two primary bevels and I want those to be as even as possible and there's a couple of ways of doing this [Music] first technique would be freehand grinding I used to do freehand grinding for everything for years it is a very versatile style of grinding that requires a lot of practice to get the exact results that you want for example if I want to have the transition line between the forged finish and the primary bevel at a certain point is going to be very hard to get it even along the whole length and on both sides also if I prefer to have like a strict angle of a certain I don't know 3.5 degrees freehand grinding will not make that very easy the main reason why I personally stopped using freehand grinding is because it's very bad for your body I'll show you really quick how I stand when I do freehand grinding and you will immediately see why that's not very sustainable if you're doing this as a full-time job because I will be standing like this so when you're freehand grinding it's very important that you eliminate as much vibrations and wiggle room and get as much as sturdy of a grip as you can so you will want to have your elbows and your hands as close to your body as you can and you will work very close to the grinder that means that I have a very unnatural position that I will basically have to crunch my neck all the way down so see what I'm doing and then I can guide the knife also I have to support the knife against the moving belt the belt is moving downwards and I constantly have to keep it off so actually I have my fingers very close to the spine of the knife because basically I want to apply a pressure here but keep it at the same time from moving up and you can get really nice results and you're very flexible with the grind you can just switch sides you can make your convex and all that or grind vertically but I've ground off my fingertips over and over again and I got back problems finger problems especially as I'm always doing wet grinding so in the winter time it's four degrees in the workshop I'm standing here like this it's not fun foreign next up would be what's generally usually referred to as the push stick technique so now we are using a work rest we're gonna have the knife on the work rest it is completely free to move so we can work with the tips and of our fingers or with a push stick so I can have a piece of wood that I actually use to control the pressure and to control the angle slightly so typically you will want to start a little bit steeper grind above approximately to the middle and then you will start moving your bevels up and up and up shallower and shallower until you are where you want to be now you can already see I stand much more comfortably I stand further away from the grinder I have the work rest which takes away the force that goes down and I can actually apply a fair amount of pressure this technique still needs a lot of practice because you have no guidance of the angles it will still be very difficult for you to get the same angles every time it will still be difficult to get even Fine Lines especially like if you have a forged finish that you never want to grind into and you're gonna grind through five different belts it's going to be tricky you know you cannot slip once but still this is a huge upgrade still very reversible you can you know start making convex grinds on this if you're good you can also use different backings so you don't have to use a hard backing every time you can use radiant platens or personally I also like to use a sheet of leather in between the belt grinder and the steel if I move to higher grids that way I get a nice convex grind very easily so that's one of the these pieces of leather it's just five millimeter cow height I'll just remove the table slide this in here and I'm good to go I don't usually do this on the rough grinding I usually start at around 120 grits to put in the Leather So I get slight convexity and I get a very nice even surface finish I only recommend this if you do wet or Mist grinding otherwise it's gonna heat up the leather very fast and it's probably gonna burn I never tried but I assume it will [Music] the next technique that I would like to mention is some form of a guided angle so you could clamp your knife on this grinder for example just at a 90 degree angle to some angle iron I have a small support in the back so it's just a piece of sheet metal welded to the bottom I could clamp my knife here and now that is in exactly 90 degrees to the work rest on this grinder I have the freedom to actually adjust the angle on the grinder if you don't have that possibility you can get one of the grinding jigs that do this for you so there's more advanced grinding jigs like I think TR maker one makes one or you can make one with yourself with a larger angle iron where you basically have a screw that comes down here that adjusts the angle Fork you can always just get an angle measurement device and put it on there and see what your angle you're at that way you can get very even angles you can actually go for a specific angle that fits the performance that you're looking for this will be much easier for beginners it's one of the techniques that I teach in in the bladesmithing classes because even if you're grinding your first knife you will usually get a pretty good result with this system it does take a little bit away from the whole like if you used to feel what you're doing this is a little bit more clumsy and might feel awkward to you what it's perfect for are shorter knives thicker knives anything that has a ricasso area where you have a steep transition so I especially like this for hunting knives steak knives anything that is a little bit smaller and that hasn't a pointed tip next up is the knife grinding system that I personally prefer especially for knives that have a wider bevel and are somewhat parallel between the spine of the knife and The Cutting Edge doesn't have to be perfect even a Kyoto if you have some like angle in the front still going to board a bunker is perfect because it's almost parallel I'll show you why on this system we're not relying on a on a specific angle but rather we're relying on the distance between the spine and the front of the knife and the height of the bevel basically will give us the third length that will determine the angle if you put the workrest further away you will get steeper angles if you put it closer you will get shallower angles you can always still measure that on the knife but this chick helps you to keep the the grind lines consistent throughout the length of the knife and to keep the angles exactly the same on both sides so you will end up right in the middle of the knife the beauty about this is now my reference surface is actually the spine of the knife so I don't need any other clamping points I don't need anything to be super perfect or I don't need any other perfect reference surface but it's only the spine that I'm relying on if I push this here the angle is basically given as long as my pressure point is in the middle of the height of the blade and in the middle of the belt basically my knife is geometrically defined and this hand will only do the axial movement so we're only going back and forth you don't want to change the angle with this hand so I'm rather loose on this side all the pressure must come from this hand initially I was always grinding like with my fingers here but when you grind 10 20 knives you want things to move quick and you don't want your fingers to look like this so I eventually tried different method and this is the latest prototype that Oliver Tobin and I came up with the basic system was not invented by me Benjamin Cayman had a similar system and other makers had influence on the design of this jig I've been grinding like this for a while now and it's my absolute favorite version okay let's get some grinds done and see how it turns out you ready foreign anytime you're grinding there's going to be a whole lot of dust in the air so be sure to wear all your personal protective equipment especially also your dust mask I'm very careful with this I also have air filtration systems but you cannot eliminate all the fine dust so definitely wear a respirator for the sake of this video and as I have to explain a lot I will leave this aside for now but even when wet grinding there is actually considerable amount of fine dust in the air so be aware of that it's not good for you so this is as heat treated I already have some bevels on there we're gonna grind this now to approximately 0.2 millimeters Behind The Edge on the first belt I'm gonna use water I'm going to use a Mist cooler to keep the blade cool and I'm also going to regulate my speed of the belt so that I make sure I don't overheat the blade let's go foreign [Music] I always start a little bit sturdier a little bit steeper of an angle than I want to and then I make Tiny Steps in the just the distance between the belt and this step here to move closer and get my grinds to where I want it I've just been grinding around 30 seconds each side so around one minute total time and I came down from the heat treatment geometry of 0.7 to approximately 0.4 millimeters here and we'll just take it down a little bit further make sure I'm even make sure I have the nickel line coming out of both sides and then we move up the grid okay [Music] I'll quickly grind on a 120 grit belt the front of the knife and make sure that it rolls again nice because this surface is still scaled so I'm struggling to see if I got a consistent thickness or not also there might be 0.2 millimeters of decarburization at the edge so I want to make sure to grind that off as our progress in grinding I always start a little bit steadier a little bit steeper of an angle that I want to and then I just tiny make tiny steps and adjust the distance between the belt and this step here to move closer and get my grinds to where I want it approximately ground for one minute and I'm already almost at the thickness at the end of each grid try to go lower on the pressure and make even Strokes all along the blade so you don't have any my phone ringing [Music] at the end of each grid try to reduce the pressure make long even Strokes so your deepest scratches are just a little bit less steep now I get an even thickness All Around The Edge I'm right where I want to be and I'm going to switch to the next script [Music] once you're done with your geometry I would move up the grids if this was a flat bevel that I'm going for I would be basically finished with the geometry now and now it's on to removing scratches and surface finish for this knife I'm actually going for a sea grind so I will need a Hollow Grind on this side I'm going to show you how to do that Rusty screw there all right we're now going to use a similar technique for the Hollow Grind we're going to lean the grinder a little bit back so we have access to this round now our reference surface for the Hollow Grind is actually The Cutting Edge so now we're referencing off this Cutting Edge as we want the S grinds to run parallel to this line so now with the edge down here we have a little step again that's going to prevent this from going too far make sure that's clean and then we're just gonna Tilt The Knife towards the contact wheel it's important now that our pressure point is in the right position if we move up too far the mo the knife is not defined anymore geometrically so the pressure point must be very low you can also use a piece of wood in there and you need to make sure that your contacts of The Cutting Edge is right in the middle of the belt so I'm gonna do an uh a compound grind I leave this side untouched for now and I only want this part of the knife with a hollow let's go [Music] so that's what it looks like after the first couple of seconds I start to get a shallow Hollow Grind in here now I'm just gonna try to get that wider and deeper into the side [Music] thank you [Music] so you can imagine we'll go deeper and deeper and we'll finish up these Pebbles with finer and finer grits of the grinding belt but the technique is always the same I got nothing more to say do you understand the importance of having sharp blades for your craft but with so many different options for sharpening out there which one is the fastest the easiest and the more consistent way of sharpening your blades that's when the tormic th sharpening system comes in this Innovative tool is specifically designed for people who want their knife shot it is equipped with a water cooled slow speed grindstone that keeps your blades cool and safe during the sharpening process unlike other sharpening systems that can damage your knives the t8's water cooled system ensures that your knives retain their quality and Longevity additionally the T8 adjustable guide system makes it easy to achieve a consistent angle every time allowing you to create sharp precise edges with ease the T8 is also user friendly so you can spend more time creating beautiful knives and less time sharpening them it's the ultimate tool for anyone who takes their craft seriously and wants to take their work to the next level special thanks as well to Tobin machines to do the bs1 belt Grinders and make the universal jigs last but not the least is Clark knives who make ready to grind Damascus billets and offers professional heat treatment so services for knife makers thank you very much to all our sponsors please check the links in the description below that was pretty quick but I think we got like the basics and from here I think the leap to the final product is not too far what type of night grinding do you actually do at the moment and after watching this video what type of knife grinding did you want to learn next let us know in the comments section check out this other video over here with Tobias talks about knife geometry for knife makers like you

Channel: UK Bladeshow

Views: 105,210

Keywords: freehand grinding, best grinding jig, knife grinding jig, tobias hangler, knife making

Id: VEVmXViW34c

Length: 17min 23sec (1043 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 12 2023