I'm Back! First Knife Build in TEMP Shop | #knifemaking

alrighty all this is our temporary workshop and today i'm going to be making my first knife in this space it's a three-car garage with one bay acting as our gym and as of now the plan is to build a dedicated workshop behind this garage i'm thinking we'll be able to get away with a 30 by 40 footprint but that's for another video over the last few weeks i was able to move in all of my equipment into this three-car garage and get it set up to a point that it's usable to my wife's dismay the only item that didn't fit in the garage was my hydraulic press it's about two inches too tall to get through the door and is currently oiled up wrapped and sitting on our porch with the knife we're making in this video the plan is to go back to the basics with a 1084 mono steel full tang blade that has a little bit of a tactical flare the bar stock i'm using is an eighth of an inch thick and one and a half inches wide the first step is to cut out the rough profile i like doing this with my bower porter band from harbor freight however many makers like cutting out their blanks with a cut-off wheel on the angle grinder either way the goal is to remove bulk material and reduce the amount of necessary grinding i start off the profiling on the grinder with a semi-worn 60 grit ceramic belt to conserve the abrasives on my new belts after i get it pretty close to my scribe lines i switch over to a 220 grit belt i like getting the whole spine squared up to the flats of the knife on my work rest and up to a 220 grit finish before moving on to the next steps using a checkering file i carefully file in some jimping on the spine of my blade around the location the user's thumb will land i'll also be using a 3 16 of an inch chainsaw file to file in my sharpening coil both of these operations need to be done before the heat treating of the blade since the files will not be able to cut into the steel post heat treatment next up we'll be drilling some holes in our tank to accommodate our tried and true corby fasteners it's been a while since i've used these guys however i still feel that the corby fasteners and or the levelleus bolts are the best strength options for full tang handle construction i drilled two number 13 holes for the quarter inch corby fasteners one large quarter inch hole for a lanyard a multitude of glue travel slash weight reduction holes scattered around and finally a number 30 hole in the center for a 1 8 of an inch pin this 1 8 pin is more of a decorative touch than anything but will provide additional strength in the handle the next step with this knife is going to be to heat treat it now normally i would use my diy heat treating oven down there that we built recently however i do not have a 220 outlet in this garage yet my breaker box behind me is pretty full so i may actually need to get an electrician out to get that 220 outlet but in this case we're going to be using the ford just like we used to back before we had that heat treating oven so let's get to it while the control provided by a heat treating oven is obviously superior to the forage our ancestors have been making high quality usable blades for thousands of years without electricity so i think we'll be okay on this one our chances of success increase greatly by using a forgiving steel like 1084 a magnet to judge temperature and an industrial heat treating oil like parks 50. once i have the blade quenched for around five to eight seconds i throw it into my diy straightening clamp this clamp's sole purpose is to hold the blade straight as it cools note you want the blade going into this clamp while it's still above 400 degrees fahrenheit so this may take some trial and error with different size stock the next operation is to temper the blade what you see me doing here is reconnecting the thermocouple wires to my pid control box that runs the tempering oven this box rations the power to the toaster oven elements in order to hold a constant fairly precise temperature based off the readings of the thermocouple which is positioned inside of the oven after the blade has cooled in the clamp i take it out and file test it this file test is basically a quality control step confirming the blade has achieved a hardness equal to or greater than the file if the file cuts into the steel something went wrong in this case we have a hard blade so we clamp it in between two pieces of angle iron to hold it straight and put it into our tempering oven for this knife i'll be running two two hour tempering cycles at 410 degrees fahrenheit while we're tempering the blade we can get started on the handle i'll be gluing some fancy liners onto my g10 handle scales just in an effort to class this knife up a little before applying the epoxy i like to make sure the pieces are flat and have been cleaned off with rubbing alcohol i then clamped them to a board wrapped in parchment paper to let them dry and cure the small cheap plastic clamp sets from harbor freight are a good option here since you really don't need a large amount of clamping pressure i think it's worth an editor's note here to mention that in between tempering cycles i cool the blade to room temperature quickly by dunking it in water this doesn't affect the blade in a positive or negative way and is only something i do to speed up the process of tempering once we're done tempering we'll get on to grinding the blade however i wanted to give y'all a preview of what will likely be the topic of my next tool review video this 3m versaflow respirator went on sale on amazon over the holidays and i decided to pull the trigger as you all can tell i do a lot of grinding and i eventually plan on having a dedicated enclosed grinding room which makes having a high quality respirator even more important at the end of the day i want to be around long enough to have a grey beard since i think that will make my channel name slightly ironic while it's pretty darn expensive this respirator seems to be an ideal solution for those of us with beards who do a large amount of grinding and are looking for a comfortable option some more to come on that in the future after i've had some time to use it the first thing i like to do after heat treating is to get the profile of the knife back up to a 220 grit finish using my grinder in the horizontal position with a work rest this also ensures that the profile of the blade blank is square to the flats using the classic needle in file drill wrap with sandpaper technique i cleaned up the sharpening coil to a 320 grit finish no matter how many fancy tools you acquire over your knife making journey some cost efficient methods like this one just continue to work now that the profile is up to a 220 grit finish the next step is to get the flats cleaned up to do this i'm going to use my diy surface grinding attachment outfitted with a magnet i got from northridge tool this operation will not only clean up the flats to a nice finish but it will also ensure the flats are uniform and parallel to each other i'm using a trisack belt on this machine that is the equivalent to around a 320 grit finish once i get one side finished up i put some masking tape on that side to prevent it from getting scratched flip the blade around and put it on the magnet the combination of the straightening clamp i used during heat treatment and this surface grinding attachment has really eliminated a ton of headaches associated with full tang knife construction fighting warps and flatness issues are now a thing of the past now that we are cleaned up in parallel i like to initiate my grinding process by marking the center line and grinding down to it at an aggressive angle this provides a nice base for us to start with grinding the main bevels there are a multitude of ways to mark the center line however i really like the pro option of using my surface plate with a height gauge i attempt to mark two center lines around 10 000 of an inch apart from each other i decided to mock up a work rest attachment out of wood to aid in this process it seemed to work pretty well and i think i'll make one of these out of either steel or micarta in the future the same process can be completed freehand however at this point i feel like i get a higher level of precision hitting that center line with the work rest i also like this method for grinding in the clip on the blade which i got up to a 220 grit finish on this knife before moving on to the next step so now we have the initial rough bevel started at a very aggressive angle down to the center line of the knife i'm going to start walking these bevels back towards the spine now it's been a while since i did any griming a couple months now actually with the move and all so we'll see how this turns out also i put a little clip on the back of this knife a little false edge on the back so we'll see how that holds up to a close to full flat grind i may not go all the way just so that i don't erase some of the depth of this clip on the spine but i'm going to give this grinding a go and let's hope i didn't lose too many of my skills grinding knives is definitely a skill that needs to be practiced frequently or else you'll get a little rusty and i was definitely rusty on this knife but with some patience and a few deep breaths i was able to get a good looking grind i started with a 60 grit ceramic belt to cut in my main bevels and then eventually worked up to a 220 and 320 j flex belt one question i get a lot is why i like to grind post heat treat so i'll try to answer that here first of all the decision to grind either pre or post heat treatment is totally up to you both work well and both have their own trade-offs i personally like heat treating the blade while it has a uniform thickness and i feel like i get a more even heat in the forge and my clamping jig can mate to the flats easily to keep the blade straight now it's worth mentioning that the even heat benefit is eliminated with the use of a heat treating oven and a clamping jig will still clamp your blade mostly straight even with the bevels cut into it another positive i generally sight for grinding post heat treatment is only having to get suited up and mentally in the zone to grind at once on a blade opposed to having to come back and grind on the blade a second time this is purely a personal preference grinding post heat treatment will be slower you'll run through more belts and you'll be more exposed to the risk of overheating the blade with all that being said this video shows the method i've currently landed on with full tank knives however that's not to say i won't change it in the future i can see some pre heat treat ground blades in my future for sure if anything just to re-test my process once i had my bevels on this knife ground up to a 320 grit finish i decided to try out my waterfall platen in an attempt to true up my plunge cuts i got this platen design from watching the legendary collar royer with this thin 1 8 of an inch stock it definitely took a little tinkering width to get right but my plunge lines did turn out even i think in the future i'll see if i can get a flexibly backed trisack belt to use for this operation since the belt bump on the aluminum oxide belts wasn't bear to contend with one nice thing about using your waterfall platen is that it brings your plunge lines up to a high grit finish and the scratches are all moving in the right direction after i had the plunges lined up i moved on to the hand sanding bench and sanded this blade up to a 320 grit finish i must say i don't particularly enjoy hand sanding but a clean satin blade is always nice to look at for most of the sanding i use a hard backer but towards the end i use a soft rubber backer with some wd-40 for my finishing process i took special care when hand sanding the clip and displayed so as not to wash out the lines this is achieved by only using hard backers with your sandpaper and patience i'd be lying if i said there wasn't a devil on my shoulder during this hand sanding process whispering in my ear redbeard you should just stonewash this blade come to the dark side but for the sake of variety i resisted and continued on with the satin finish one thing i did differently with this blade was rounding the corners some on the spine i really like how this turned out in my recent kitchen knife build and wanted to incorporate that method here to accomplish this rounding i put some electrical tape on the back of my sandpaper and used a shoe shining technique at the hand sanding bench if you're going to do this make sure not to encroach upon the area where your handle scales will meet up with the tank since this would result in some gaps these are my finishing passes with a soft rubber backer to my sandpaper and some wd-40 on the blade these passes are intended to get all my scratches heading in a parallel direction towards the tip and to remove any j-hook scratches after the blade has all been sanded up to a 320 grit finish it's time to etch on my maker's mark i get my etching stencils from t-u-s industries and i etched them on with a diy electrochemical etching machine to get a deep etch i use my etcher on dc power and then to darken the etch i use ac power one of the hardest parts here is getting your stencil lined up so make sure to take your time because it's not fun to have a crooked and distracting maker's mark on your knife once i'm done etching i'll spray down the stencil with windex and store it in soapy water to maximize its life i'll then clean up the etch by standing over it with some sandpaper at this point the blade is essentially complete and we can move on to the handle it's important to protect the blade from here on so i normally cover it with wd-40 and wrap it with a paper towel and some tape the handle scales need to be flat where they made out with a tang in order to maximize strength and to be visually appealing without gaps to get them super flat i use a surface plate and a sheet of 120 grit sandpaper next we'll be drilling our holes in the handle scales to make sure these holes line up with the holes in our tang we clamp the knife to the handle scales to act as a drill guide a low profile one-inch cant clamp really comes in handy here the number 13 holes are the first i drilled to accommodate the corbin fasteners after each hole is drilled i put a drill bit shank into the hole before going on to the next one this guarantees everything stays lined up during the drilling process the last holes will be a number 30 in the middle and a quarter inch hole where the lanyard cutout will be having this hole in the micarta where the cutout will be helps with the shaping process later on in the bill after the holes are drilled i'll scribe the outline of the tang into the g10 and move over to the bandsaw to get it rough profile it's at this point i'll cut into the quarter inch hole tangentially where the lanyard cutout will land as a safety note i'd recommend using a push stick when cutting with a bandsaw it doesn't take much of a slip to cut your finger we'll then crank up the belt grinder to refine our profile with a 60 grit belt and get everything squared nicely on our work rest it's at this point before epoxying the scales to the blade that will clean up the front of our handle scales as well as the bevel on the back of the scales where our lanyard hole will be using my work rest at an angle i can grind the basic geometry of these sections fairly quickly with a 60 grit belt and then use a 320 grit valve to get the 60 grit scratches out before hand sanding i decided to go with a more angular design on the front of these handle scales and i really like the way it turned out on the hand sanding bench i work both the front portion of the scales and the back bevels by the lanyard hole up to a 1000 grit finish which turned out to be a really nice finish for this g10 since we're using quarter inch corby fasteners on this knife we're going to need to counter bore out our number 13 holes to accommodate them i want my counter boards to stop around 70 000 of an inch away from the inside of the scales which would set the corbies nice and deep to set up my little machine shot mill to the correct boring height i use a washer that's around 70 000 of an inch thick and the z-axis travel stop on my mill once it's set up drilling all four counter boards really goes quickly and i know i have the same depth on all of them obviously with this being a mill i could have used the dial on the z-axis however i've found that it's not necessary for this simple operation i guess sometimes you have to know when to back off the precision in order to make the best use of your time and this is one of the situations where backing off the precision will not hurt you with a 125 thousandths of an inch tang and two scales that have 70 thousandths of an inch ledges in their counterbores the inside head-to-head distance i need to target on my corby fasteners will be slightly less than 265 thousandths of an inch in this case i modified the corbies down to around 250 thousandths of an inch from my belt grinder by getting these corbies set nice and deep into my handle scales i'll be able to do some aggressive shaping later in the build so now we're on to the handle glue up and in reality the glue up is pretty straightforward at least in comparison to the rest of the knife making process for my handles i like to use g flex epoxy from west systems since it has such a strong track record in the knife making community i make sure to get a little bit of epoxy into each of the counter boards before inserting the corby fasteners and then apply a layer of epoxy to the inside of the scales i also like to coat the tang itself with epoxy but make sure when you're doing this to not get too close to the lanyard hole since it will be exposed in this design when getting the korby started i like to use a cordless drill with a torque setting pretty low this will ensure i don't over tighten the corbies my final tightening on the corbies is done by hand once everything is put together i throw a clamp on the middle of the handle as a kickstand so that i can clean up the epoxy from the front of the handle scales and the back bevel by the lanyard now it's time to get geared up for grinding since i'm using this fancy respirator now my old ear muffs will no longer fit so i picked up a set of osha approved bluetooth earpods i've been pretty impressed with these so far and will put an affiliate product link in the description of this video below if you all are interested in checking them out those affiliate links do keep this channel going so thank you greatly for using them i start off the handle grinding by leveling the corbies with the flats and scales after that i can use my grinder in the horizontal position to grind the handle material down to the profile of the tank i like doing this on a work press in a horizontal position since it allows me to keep everything square and also i like having the scratches all going in the correct direction i start off with a 60 grit belt to take down most of the material and then finish with a 220 i plan to grind this handle with a coke bottle shape in order to accomplish this step one is to taper each entire scale towards the tip of the knife in my case that's around a 1 8 of an inch taper along the length of the scale once the scales are tapered i set up my 8 inch contact wheel and start grinding a hollow towards the back of the handle i did mark a few scribe lines on the handle in order to keep everything nice and symmetrical i was originally pretty intimidated to start coke bottle shaving handles but after doing it a few times i'm really happy i took the plunge overall the look and feel is well worth the effort with the hollows ground in i can start tilting the knife and rounding some corners this takes some practice and a little finesse for sure but it's not as hard as you think it would be after i'm done with the 8 inch contact wheel i round the whole handle on the flat platen this gives the handle an almost oval shape when looking at it directly from the tip lastly i used a scalloped g-flex belt to round everything over the nice thing about this grinding process is that if you take your time you can get the majority of the work done on the grinder and when you come to enhancing the bench you'll have a minimum amount of work to do the lowest grit scratch left on my handle after grinding is 220 grit on the hand sanding bench i start with a 320 grit sandpaper and work my way up to a thousand grit if you're feeling fancy you can always take these handles up to a higher grit and maybe even hit the handle with a light buff but for today i'm happy with a thousand grit i'd like to make a note here that when you're hand sanding over metal pins on your handle it's good practice to use a hard backer otherwise you'll remove more of the surrounding material and create a dome-like effect on your pins after i'm done with the handle i like to lightly hit the spine of the knife with a scotch bright belt to make all my scratches uniform on the metal surfaces this normally only takes two passes to achieve i've been using the same scotch brite belt for years now and i think it's classified as a medium grit to sharpen this knife today i'm going to use my win water cooled sharpening system i don't currently have my air compressor set up so getting the mister going wasn't going to be easy which is why i went with the wind over my housework sharpening kit for the belt grinder like always this wind sharpening system is a solid consistent performer and puts a great working edge on my knives you won't have a mirror polished edge but you'll have a good cutter on your hands for sure as you can see here with the superficial 10-40 section d cutting test pioneered by the sharpness master alex outdoors 55 this knife is pretty darn sharp while you all are taking in this finished piece i figured this could be a good time to give it a little channel update i think i may start doing these more often so let me know what you think in the comments as you all saw in this video i'm currently working out of the temp shop and the plan is to throw up a building behind it and get everything moved over and set up this for sure will be a lengthy process but i'll try to condense the highlights here in redbird ops in its own playlist and of course i'll have more knife builds coming out of the temp shop in the meantime i've also been finding that i like to work on some projects that don't really fall under the genre of redbeard ops which is really set up for knife making metal fabrication and tool reviews for this reason i'm going to set up a little side channel named redbeard engineered with a larger range of project types so if you're interested in that i'll put a link to the new channel below the first project on that channel will be building and configuring a bitcoin node however i don't see it as being a solely tech channel so don't let that scare you away so that's it for the updates if y'all liked this video please hit that button for the algorithm and consider subscribing to the channel if you're not already sub until the next time i'll catch y'all on the flip side [Music] you

Channel: Red Beard Ops

Views: 51,503

Keywords: red beard ops, knife maker, knife making, first knife, home shop, knife making shop, knife making home shop, garage shop, full tang knife, how to make a knife, how to make your first knife, tactical knife, EDC knife, how to make an edc knife, making a full tang knife, making a knife, 1084 knife, best knife making tips, knife making tips, knife making tools, tools for the knife maker, 3m versaflo, making a hunting knife, edc knife making, tips and tricks for knifemaking

Id: PhaTADlMcuY

Length: 20min 57sec (1257 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 05 2022