Knife Grinding Basics | Plunges & Bevels | Knife Making

hey guys welcome back to the shop today we're gonna be talking about freehand grinding and how I became a competent freehand grinder in under a year now before anyone loses it you know who you are I'm not saying or implying it that freehand grinding is better or worse than jig grinding there's a place for both of them however if you want to learn how to freehand grind I hope that the tips in this video can help you do so to make this tutorial easy to follow we will section off the following topics first we'll talk about our setup second we will talk about our stance and our grip third we will talk about our approach to the belt and the motion of the grinding fourth we will talk about our goals in freehand grinding and what we are targeting fifth we'll talk about belt progression and lastly we'll talk about some tips and tricks for getting better at freehand grinding blighting is often overlooked in the shop and when it comes to freehand grinding it is a must you want to have a very lit so that you can see what you are doing while you're grinding I'm utilizing these cheap light fixtures all with LED bulbs having a 5000 Kelvin rating so now I get the brightest light possible I bought most of these off of Amazon the desk light and then the lighting fixture there with a dual ball adapter in it I also purchased these LED strip lights and they do a pretty darn good job of keeping my shop nice and bright when it comes to PPE my opinion is you only get one body so don't be an idiot wear your PPE some of the section will be personal preference however I feel it's a good rule of thumb to have your arms parallel to the floor and have the grinder at a height so that your workpiece will contact the platen comfortably I noticed in this picture my grinder is actually a little tall for me however it seems to be working just fine if you're setting up your grinder for the first time I would target to contact the middle of the platen your stance should be square and close to the grinder so that you can look down directly over your work in this case my slot bucket has actually pushed out a little farther and I would like to make a bracket so that I just tucked in this is the grip that I like to use however this is not set in stone you can utilize any grip that you feel comfortable with I use the blade side index finger to support the bottom of the blade and that thumb to push in I'd like to note that during this section a lot of these motions will be exaggerated in order to illustrate the point the basic motion is a pivot you would rather pivot your body and then move your hands mainly because it is more stable to do so you want to lock your arms to your body at one contact point and then pivot your body going through the motion I do this by locking my forearms to the middle of my torso next we will demonstrate how to approach the belt in an exaggerated manner you will approach the belt edge first and then ease in to your bevel flat at that point you can start your horizontal motion while it seems exaggerated in this example this is actually a very subtle operation after you have feathered onto your existing bevel you will then apply some pressure with your right hand and then some rotational motion with your left this will allow you to work the bevel up towards a spine as you work towards the tip you will pivot in your left hand will come closer to your body as the bevel increases in with this motion gets way more subtle the first goal in grinding bevels on a knife is to have a centered edge I make sure to scribe a centerline so that I have a target to grind my edge to when you're first starting out on your edge you will approach the belt at a very steep angle somewhere around 40 to 45 degrees this way you can knock down that corner and you can get down to your center scribed line I utilize a very worn belt to do this so as to preserve my good abrasives once you get both sides knocked down to your centerline you can start working that bevel back towards the spine you can do this by adding some rotation to your tang side hand and by knocking down that peak as you work towards a spine each time though I make sure to have the bevel nice and clean all the way to the edge at that angle then knock down the peak and repeat all the way until I get close to the spine as you get comfortable with this method you can grind at higher speeds and apply more pressure with your support hand depending on your personal preference you can utilize a push stick in your support hand and this may save your knuckles from time to time our next goal will be to have the peaks of the plunge lines line up if you rotate the blade along the face of the belt you will not have a plunge lines that line up towards the spine of the knife it is very important that you approach the belt at the same angle every time this symmetry is what I'm talking about here you want the peaks of these plunge lines to be around the same spot on the back of the spine the next goal will be targeting where the bevel lines terminate you want the bevel lines to terminate around the same spot on the spine of the knife otherwise when looking down at your knife your tip will not be symmetrical the next goal will be even plunge lines and while I do have tips later on this video about getting even plunge lines this is going to be the hardest part to master and will take a significant amount of practice on your part to get right if you're really having problems you can start off with a round file to get your plunge line filed in and then grind away the rest of the bevels and this could be a good entry-level technique to try out nowadays when starting off with a low grit ceramic belt I will generally try to just keep my plunge lines close and then I will further refine them with AJ flex belt hung over the side of the platen this allows me to get a nice smooth radius in my plunge lines like many aspects of grinding belt progression is also fairly individualized everyone has their preferences I went through historical postings and blade forms and compiled a long list of belt progressions and I will put the link to that thread below for your viewing pleasure the progression that I'll show here is a decent machine finish and I utilize this progression for knives that I plan to Stone wash I will start off with a low grit worn ceramic belt to knock down the edge then move on to a newer low grit ceramic belt this is an example of a 60 grit ceramic belt finish this is also an example of a 60 grit ceramic belt finish once I get that bevel line close to the spine I'll move on to a 120 grit j-flex belt and then I'll start messing around my plunges a little bit here to get them closer I'll do my final refining of the plunge lines with a next belt progression and is that the 120 grit belt that I will move the belt off the side of the platen and start trying to get a radius in my plunge lines here is an example of a 120 grit finish after 120 grit I will move on to a 220 grit j-flex belt I currently do not have a preference on belt vendors the economy J flex belts seem to do a good job it is at this step that I will try to get the blade as symmetrical as possible on all of the targets that we mentioned earlier after I get it to a 220 grit finish sometimes I'll move up to a 400 grit finish but a lot of times I'll go straight to a surface conditioning medium belt from scotch-brite these belts are great and they last a long time I then hit the belts with wd-40 and I got that tip from Dave at horse right clothing don't really know why but it just feels right I then go ahead and start grinding my bevels just like I normally would this is an example with a scotch-brite on one side and then 220-grit on the other side you can see that the scotch-brite side is buttery smooth and now this is an example with both sides being scotch-brite in other steps may include going up to a higher grit j-flex belt and also throwing in some cork belts if you need a more mirror finish but I like these results for a satin finish now for some additional tips and tricks I have heard of one method of turning the belt around so that these same abrasives on one side of the belt grinds the plunge lines on both sides of your knife I have had mixed results with this method but sometimes it feels like this method really fits the bill especially when I'm using gaiter belts it is also worth noting here that when using new j-flex belts use a piece of scrap steel to roll over the edge of that belt and prevent gouging on your punch lines another method that you can utilize to line up your plunge we mentioned earlier which is filing in your plunge lines and then grinding away the excess I had great success with this method early on in my knife making and I found it to be a good way to practice grinding it allowed me to get behind a grinder and not worry about the plunge lines and this gave me a good base starting spot to work on my skills I would then take it from the grinder back to the filing jig and clean everything up but by doing this enough times it put me through the motions to get the grinding skills down another tip I'll mention is having a VFD now I know this isn't always financially possible but having a VFD and slowing down the grinder has gone a long way in increasing my grinding skills whenever I feel like I need to do a fine detail job especially around the plunge lines I can turn down the speed of my grinder and really dial in the symmetry of my plunge lines alright guys so that wraps us up and I hope that y'all liked this video and it helps you on your grind if you did enjoy this video go ahead and hit that like button down below and consider subscribing to the channel because it really helped us out also I'll put up some videos in the end screen here so that you have more things to watch on your day and with that I'll catch y'all on the flipside [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Red Beard Ops

Views: 68,204

Keywords: red beard ops, knifemaker, knifemaking, knife bevels, plunge line jig, plunge lines, knife plunge lines, knife bevel jig, knife maker, knife making, how to grind a knife, how to free hand grind, free hand grinding, grinding knife bevels, how to make a knife, knife grinding tips, knife grinding jig, free hand grinding knives, plunge line on knives, plunge line grinding jig, diy knife making, grind like a pro, grind better bevels, knife grinding basics, simple little life

Id: UHOn7X3z9lA

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 15 2020