Knife Making 101- Shaping and Finishing Knife Scales

good morning afternoon good evening how you guys doing I'm Chad your gracious host here on seeking a pen tool yes I am tired been up a long time with the bed a little late got up around 4:00 a.m. for some odd reason I woke up does that ever happen you guys you just wake up one day and just wake up in a millon ight or something like that and just can't fall back to sleep again you know you're tired you feel you're tired but your mind is just going or something's just keeping you awake that was today so I've been up since 4:00 a.m. and at the filming of this it's almost noon so I already had lunch drinking on my sweet tea here and I'm working on knives and what I wanted to do is touch base a little bit about where we left off let me set you guys down [Music] okay so when we left off last Oh bard me I'm not sure if it I think it was this knife here that we ended up doing the gluing up on the scales and basically what I did to go through the process use this or a kitchen knife I can't remember and I didn't bother going back so cuz again I haven't had a lot of sleep so um what I thought I would do is I would take you into the next steps on what I do when I'm shaping it this is pretty much all glued up this is I normally want to when I go through the process you've seen her earlier in a previous video and I can link it above over here I let the epoxy set up for at least a day so you know if I glue them up and towards the evening on Monday I won't shape the knives until Wednesday I just like to set it up now within I think five or six hours I could technically shape the knife and everything because the epoxy has set at that point but I like it to be cured and completely ready to rock and roll so for shaping and everything so I wait 24 hour period of time or more so what I did is I went ahead and wait a tiny so now I'm going to prep the knife out and I'm gonna go ahead and start processing go take you through the process of how I do the scales and simply as you see the pins are are longer I always do that I always cut you know three-quarters of an inch or an inch to pin usually it's about an inch and I just cut a bunch of them I get them in a big stick I cut them all one inch lengths I put them in a container so when I need them I grab them whether it's for a Jasper or Montana or rogue they're all the right length so but you know I do have some cut off there which is probably not a great thing to do because you know it's a waste but its efficiency just to be able to grab and go I'm gonna take this to the bandsaw I'm going to cut those two little pieces off and then I'm gonna go ahead well first I'll actually tape the blade off and I use blue painters tape that works the best it comes off easy but it stays on well as I'm clean as I'm shaping and cleaning the knife it will protect the flats so I'll take these off I'm going to cut these pins and then we're going to take it over to Frank inside and I'm gonna start cleaning it all up and shaping them so let's get going [Music] [Music] okay there we have it we have it all shaped roughly off the grinder and I'll show you what this looks like so you can see this is all 120 everything on this is 120 now and it's got a really nice shape it's really starting to take take to its final shape here the Jaspers they keep a flatter profile because they're meant to be a really thin lightweight knife but still gives you something to grab onto you rather than being skeletonized know the scales will be about a quarter inch dice usually start with micarta the boat this bolster material here this gemstone was about quarter inch or yeah thing was just around quarter inch or 5/16 thick and I did the same thing I matched the cocobolo with that so now that I have both the top shaped across the spine in a tank and I have the belly done I usually will go ahead and I'll hit the knife I'll put the knife in the bench vise and I'll hit it with 120 and 220 strip sand sanding paper and that's the sanding paper I'm talking about right here you can get its 1 inch wide and 50 feet long and this is 120 this is 220 I've had this for the better part of a year I rarely use the 220 this way I usually use 120 and then I'll do the hand sanding with sheets like this using this type of sandpaper now this is wood sandpaper this is just wood sand papers is just a dry type sandpaper I think this is 220 or 120 these sand papers over here are all my wet dry that I used for hand sanding the all the metal all the blades but I will use this to shape my scales because I will go across the metal tank as well as the belly of the tank when using it it's only afterwards I might use just the wood sandpaper that's wood only I might use that but most of the time I always finish my scales off with this because I have wood and metal mix and the metal let me get you on here the metal sandpaper the wet/dry sandpaper can be used on wood as well as but because it holds up better and it seems like it cuts better into the metal when you're hand sanding if I use wood only or the dry sandpaper it seems like I remove material the scales but then the pins end up routing more so I try to keep an even balance and that's really key is making sure you're not sanding too much of your your wood or your micarta your g10 and not enough of your metal you don't want to have that that's stepping up you don't want the metal to protrude above the the Tang hopefully you understand that part I'm explaining that properly but I'm gonna go ahead this is 120 so I'm gonna go ahead and start this again with 120 just to clean this up a little bit but I'm not going to use the strip because this is pretty much broke down to what I want now it's just a matter of just softening it all up and I'm gonna do 120 then I'm gonna go to 220 and then 400 and I'll be sanding this all down to 400 also the other thing I'll do is I'll I'm gonna touch on it I could probably do it now and I'll show you when you have two pins like this you don't want to leave them flat I learned that you want to neck those down so I actually bought this from I think I got that from Tacoma screw when I did a video by all back with it and it's a reamer and I just put it inside my cordless Dewalt here it was meant for a I think a drill press but I put it on here and then I'll just show you what a new here I just take this and I just run it in here for a few seconds and I read that out to taper it seeing how that softens that up now so you can see on this side see how its flatteners epoxy in right now but you see how it's flat like that see how that's flat and really produced and now you get that chamfered edge there which gives it a nice little look you little shine on it and this will all sand down then so I'm gonna do this to all three home [Music] so I've got those all cleaned up right there I got them all good I'm just gonna get a file or what I normally do is I get a drill bit and I put it in my drill press over here the I'll put it in my context drill press here and I get I think it's at eleven sixty forts that fits within the quarter inch pin and I will just go ahead and read this out it's 1164 it's yep that's the one so I'll use in 1164 it's bit I'll put it inside the blend drill press here just clean out these and then I use sanding paper and I'll get the wet dry sanding paper usually 220 and I'll take the 220 sandpaper I'll wrap it on a file with a little wd-40 and then I'll spin the knife on that but I'll show you guys that in a second real quick that use a little piece of leather I just cut a piece of scrap leather it's pretty soft now and that's what my I cut my sheets to so this way it gives my gives me something to put in my hand as I'm applying and even pressure just like this now one of the things you want to be concerned about is I'm dealing with several different materials here and it gets to be very problematic if you're not used to dealing with the knives first we have our hardened steel across your you know we have the tang of our knife then I'm using a wood that is very hard cocobolo being a very dense of having a hijacker rating this is hard so I have my Steel that's harder than I would but my wood is actually harder than my gemstone my bolster material bolster material is quite soft in relation to everything else that's here so you have to make sure you're applying even pressure across the entire thing but you don't want to spend too much time in one spot on your gemstone because you'll actually sand down your gemstone and it'll be uneven and then you'll be able to feel that you'll feel those ripples going across your tank so that's the other reason why it's important to use this otherwise what I will do is later I'll fold this sandpaper in half and then I'll sand it this way but won't use a lot of heavy pressure but you just want to make sure that you keep a light even pressure across this and make sure you're applying evenly all the way around and then once I get into here you want to make sure because you can dig in pretty harshly by doing something like this and digging into the wood so that's where I'll start using this or as much as I won't even touch that with 120 in here I'll use 220 only well right now I'm just gonna try to soften up the part right here and the part right here and it'll come off pretty easy and it'll soften up pretty quickly and then I'm gonna move on to my 220 really quick I'm going to go ahead and I get this all down to 20 I sort of hit in Istanbul but now I got to do the spine as well as the belly and the back of the knife at the taint and the detangler but before I did that I wanted to show you you're familiar with what I'm using these small contact wheels and they they're made out of stainless steel and they hold up pretty good and this is what one of them looks like so I was gonna do 220 but then I got to thinking I want to show you this first so this is the regular contact wheel this is the holder for it and this is a finger wheel or a contact wheel now as you can see it's it's a solid metal and it's got a shaft going through it's all machine it's got these bearings but the kicker is is when you start going to 220 and 400 grit sand higher the belts are so thin and it's such a fine grit that the seam from the the belts this part right here okay it sometimes has a tendency of causing a little bit of a clicking sound like a tick tick tick tick tick every time that seam hits the metal it makes a bump that bump transfers to the tang of the knife so if I was to use this wheel in a finer paper like 220 and 400 it could have a tendency of getting little bumps across this little hiccups across there so I grit one of these instead it's the same kind but it actually is coated in rubber and this will fit perfectly within the finger part of the groove right here this little where your finger comes down in the rubber will fit near I'll I don't have but a couple of these and two different sizes so I can only use it for certain knives the rest of the time I have to be really diligent and soft and apply just the amount of pressure to work this the belly through the belt and the grit and then anything after that I have to do by hand so I'm going to clean this up with 220 and I'll get back to you okay now for a little trick of the trade I've got some sandpaper here and I just caught a really thin strip it's you know I mean it's maybe a half inch strip something like that and then I'd get wd-40 on it that's what then this can if you guys are following you know that's where I get my wd-40 from one of hand sanding but I put a little wd-40 on the sandpaper and I got a little eighth inch file here and I just roll this on the eighth inch file to get it nice and tight just like this and then that's big enough to fit in the tube the nickel silver tube that we have here and I just slowly twist and work it in there I haven't found a file that fits it plus a lot of the files are pretty aggressive and you don't want it to be that aggressive so once it start it I just kind of chill do this oh yeah you just kind of spin it around and the wd-40 helps lubricate it and as you can see it's starting to get the rest of the epoxy out and clean that up a little bit more so it's pretty cool and then I just keep doing this until I work it through and it'll get smoother and smoother and if anything I'll just swap out another piece of sanding paper and just keep doing that and then before you know it you get a there's a little bit of gunk in there still but you get the idea you get a pretty clean letting your tube so now everything's down to 400 grit and I am just getting some acetone here and I'm cleaning off the scales one of the things about cocobolo not this cocobolo but some of the higher grade cocoa bowls they're very very oily and they don't mix well with other materials meaning as you're sanding the cocobolo the cocobolo oils bleed over into something else I had someone asked they wanted to do white liners on a knife with cocobolo they can't do that that oil in the cocobolo will get into that white liner and just start staining it and as I hand sand as I'm doing this even just the 400 grit hand sanding and finishing it up you'll still get that white that bleed in from the cocobolo oil so get into that white and it just it's not worth the risk in the headache for me self so I steer them away from that but his knifes turned out good so now what it is cleaned it out with acetone and after that it's another little secret and then we're gonna finish up this video and that is true royal now because of the fact I have cocobolo which is a pretty hard wood doesn't need to be stabilized or anything I actually will use cocobolo as in Texas Ironwood and King wood Mexican King woods and stuff like that I actually will take the coils like true royal and sometimes they get crystallizes Tyrell is what they use it for gun stocks they'll put those on the top of you know wood gun stocks and everything like that I'll use the true oil that's made by birchwood casey link in the description down below and i will just use a little toothpick because i got to break it up sometimes it crystallizes and I'll apply it like that and then I just use my finger it's dull right here and then here it gets all that and it gets a nice shiny look to it so I'll do this actually I'm gonna take the I'm done sanding everything and I like to remove the tape near the Rakata of the knife because if you don't and you apply oils and such they have a tendency of hiding at the tape line and then you have these marks and everything so I'm just gonna take that off as well as this piece here there we go so that gives me some halachah right there but yeah the knife isn't and any need of being damaged but our concern about being damaged but right now I'm just gonna apply this KC birchwood casey to roil all over the tank get on top of the shoulders get it up in the belly here apply it on the back of the spine you can see how pretty that makes it look that gets gives it just a really nice look to it then I'll use the clean part of the towel just wipe off the excess you want to get into the toil here on the shoulders just clean off the excess oil you don't need a lot to apply because you're just gonna wipe it down but you wanted to get in there good and then just make sure you're cleaning it off if you get a little staining like you might see on this some something that goes on it that can be cleaned off later there's always a little bit of residue or something that gets on the blade but there we go that is cleaned up and that's looking good I mean that is looking nice look at that guys that is pretty huh black liners really nice turquoise looking bolsters cocobolo cleans up good that's a pretty knife that's gonna look good as a set sweet I'll put it over your I put it up in my my kind of Xpress here just like that I just leave it over here like this and it'll dry for a day you leave let leave it sit for 24 hours and then come back tomorrow wipe it down apply a second coat take off the excess put it back again do that I do that three times and then it's all ready to rock and roll but I will not be doing a second or third coat because I am going to do the sheath next and I normally do this treatment after I've made the Kydex sheath and have finished everything there but I wanted to wrap up this video to show you what you can do for the scales so again sorry guys thank you for your patience I hope the video isn't gonna be too long but I want to share this with you all cuz I've had some people ask questions in the past and send me messages so um again do you appreciate all sport like sure subscribe all the good stuff you know what to do to keep me from the bottom of the YouTube bucket I'm gonna take my tea go up to the house and try to take a nap we'll catch you guys later bye [Music]

Channel: CK Knife and Tool

Views: 4,229

Rating: 4.9148936 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie, knife making, knives, handmade, custom, edc, ck nife and tool, hunting knives, camping, backpacking, how to make a knife, everday carry, bushcraft, outdoors

Id: zCxbquf-IEw

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 25 2018