Make A WAR Knife | My First Hollow Grind | Knife Making

alrighty guys welcome back to the shop recently on instagram i've told you all to find out which of these three designs you like the best the clear winner was design letter c i'm going to be calling this my war knife since it does have a very tactical look with the clip and the hologram also note that we are going to be using 180 thousandths of an inch stock opposed to the 125 000 stock that we normally use this is because this knife needs to be nice and beefy and we will be putting a hollow grind into the blade for me this knife project will be extremely satisfying since i'll be doing many techniques that i don't normally do i'll be putting a clip into the top of this blade with a false edge and i will also be hollow grinding the bevels which are two things that i have not done in a long time and with the hollow grind i don't think i've ever done it with success so i'm looking forward to this build from the start up to this point we have glued the design onto the bar stock we have cut it out with bandsaw and now we are on it to the 2x72 belt grinder from northridge to clean up the profile of a knife one of the things i'm really liking about this new belt grinder is the ability to go horizontal i find that i'm using it greatly when dialing in my profile so that a all my scratches are going in the same direction and b the spine of the knife is at a 90 degree angle to the flats of the knife being able to grind the profile at a 90 degree angle is especially useful when using the small wheel attachment as you can see right here now that we have our profile ground into a 220 grit finish we will be hand filing in our sharpening choil with a 3 16 of an inch chainsaw file i've used many different methods to put in the sharpening coil which include drilling a hole before cutting out the profile milling in with an end mill and then using the hand file all three of these methods work and it's just what you prefer to do in your shop i will also be filing in the jimping on the spine the knife with my checkering file both of these filing operations along with drilling your holes need to be completed before hardening the knife since after a knife is hard you will not be able to file into it or drill your holes i will be drilling two number 28 holes for loveless fasteners on this knife along with a handful of weight reduction holes and a lanyard hole at the back end of the knife this setup in my mini mill is kind of a common setup i use for drilling holes i'll put my one two three block into my mill vise which my mill head has been trimmed to and then i'll put a stud in that one two three block to act as a stop on the blade so that the drill bit does not catch the blade and helicopter it into my hand you can see here that i'm putting large quarter inch holes in the center of the blade just for weight reduction and to allow the epoxy some room to move around when we put our handle scales on the knife later on once i have my lanyard hole drilled i like to use a counter bore by hand to deburr that hole so that i don't get any chatter when trying to deburr that hole and kind of mess up the look of my lanyard hole at this point i briefly tried using my eight inch wheel to put a hollow in the handle and i wasn't terribly successful in that endeavor and i found myself going over the lines of the spine so i decided to put the hollows in my handle after the heat treating process with a smaller wheel to heat treat the knife i'll be using my small two brick forge getting a knife up to its critical temperature then quenching it in parks 50. after my quench i put it between my two straightening plates to make sure the blade stays straight while it is cooling in this case the blade stayed extremely straight i then take a file and hardness test blade to make sure that we have a nice hard blade after the quench in order to ensure that the blade stays straight during the tempering process i clamp it between two pieces of angle iron and then temper the blade for two two hour cycles at around 410 degrees fahrenheit after the heat treating process we need to clean up this blade before we start grinding in our bevels to do so i will use a 220 grit belt on the belt sander along with my horizontal tables to clean up the spine and profile of the knife i will also make sure to grind off a significant amount from the edge portion of the blade so that we don't have any decarburization along our edge which would cause us to have a soft edge using the two inch wheel i hollow out both sides of my handle so that i have a little bit of weight reduction in the handle scale area after removing a significant amount of material from the tang of this knife the next step is to get out the surface grinding attachment and flatten both sides of the blade not only does this clean up the flats to a uniform grit it also makes sure that both sides of the knife are extremely flat and ready to accept handle scales i'm using a 280 grit trisack belt to clean up the flats of this knife i know a lot of you guys out there have built your own surface grinding attachment and are finding that they can be difficult to store since they can be cumbersome and heavy this is how i store mine i use a piece of paracord and a bungee cord in order to hold the assembly together and hang it on my wall so at this point on the knife build we have both sides brought up to a 280 grit finish along with the spine of the knife brought up to a 220 grit finish i also like to get into the sharpening choil area here with some sandpaper to make sure that the entire knife has a nice finish all the way around in this case i'm using some 320 grit paper wrapped around the chainsaw file before we start grinding our clip or our bevels we need to put some marking fluid on our edges and mark out our grinding targets i like to put these targets around the center of the blade around ten thousandths of an inch apart from each other you can see those are my targets on the blade and that's my target for the false edge to grind the clip of this knife i have my rad arm attachment set up at around a 56 degree angle and i'm using an 8 inch contact wheel with a 60 grit valve i found that this setup was actually pretty easy to use and i was able to get both sides of the clip ground in and symmetrical to each other fairly painlessly after the 60 grit belt i moved up to a 220 grit belt to clean up the scratches left behind by the 60. next we will be moving on to the primary blade bevels i have recently watched some videos from zach buchanan on hollow grinding knives and they have been extremely helpful through the process of hollow running my first knife here so go ahead and check out his channel for sure the first step is to grind in at your check grinds and what they do is ensure that your edge is in the center of your knife after you have your check grinds established you can start working back towards the spine of the knife with your hollow grind ideally you will always want to keep your check grind visible so you know you are not encroaching onto your edge which was established in the center of the knife you can notice here that i'm sitting down which is also something that zach buchanan does and i figured i'd give it a shot for my first holograin i did find that i had a significant amount of control in this position and i was still able to clamp my elbows to my side and have a nice stable base to put in my grind so this is how it turned out on the right side of the blade i then move on to the other side of the blade to match my hollow grind with the 60 grit belt i am trying to keep my plunges pretty close to each other but i will use the 120 grit belt to really dial them in one thing that really stood out to me when hollow grinding this blade was the lower heat production of the contact wheel versus the platen i do all my grinding post heat treat and this can be a big deal when grinding with the platen overheating your blade and running your temper but i had no indication that this was even close to happening when grinding this blade my fingers never got hot but just to be sure i did keep dipping the blade after every pass once i have my blade bevels ground up to a 220 grit finish i'll go over to the hand sanding bench to bring up the flats to a 320 grit finish i recently put out a video on how to stonewash a knife it was actually the last video on my channel so if you're interested in that check it out i will be glossing over it in this knife build since i used much of the same footage in that previous video here i'm putting my maker's mark onto the knife etching it with dc power and about 15 hits for one second on my diy etching machine once i have the maker's mark etched in i'll take some sandpaper and lightly go over my mark just to make sure i don't have any over etching marks on the flats of my knife i will then clean the knife with soap and water put it into a mix of 5050 fair pherochloric acid and water and then start etching my knife in intervals i use two minute intervals and clean the knife with steel wool in between each one of these intervals once i have the knife up to the desired darkness that i like to use i will neutralize the acid with both glass cleaner that has ammonia and baking soda you can continue this process until you get the darkness that you desire for me i generally go for about 10 minutes of total etching time to get the darkness that you see here on a 1084 blade with acid that's around 2 years old i then coat the blade in wd-40 just because i am always paranoid of rust i put it into my diy tumbling attachment from my 2x72 belt grinder and run it for about 10 minutes i'm just using some normal rocks here that's a question that i get very regularly what type of rocks i use i got these rocks from a home and garden store and i've been using them for years with great success one question i got on the last video was how i maintained the stone washing on the spine of the knife now when this knife i did not maintain that stone wash finish on the spine i will actually be putting a satin finish on the spine of this knife so if you want to maintain that stone wash finish on the spine of your knife i would recommend using removable handle scales and shaping your handles before stone washing a knife for this knife i will be using two pieces of quarter inch g10 that are orange and black and alternating layers i will clamp both of these pieces onto the knife and use a knife as a drill guide for my holes we will be drilling number 28 holes for the bolts of our loveless fasteners once we have one hole drilled i will take a number 28 drill bit place it into that hole and then drill the other hole so that i ensure the handle scales are lined up with the knife once our holes are drilled i mark out the profile of the knife onto the scales with a scribe and then we can cut off the excess material and is at this point that i mark off how i want the front of the handle scales to look so that we can start shaping the front of the handle scales as well so i cut off the bulk of the material with the band saw and then we go to the 2 by 72 inch belt grinder in order to clean up the profile since we know that the holes in the handle scales and the knife are lined up very precisely i can actually grind pretty close down to my scribed lines and i generally get very close to these lines here so it saves me time after a knife has been glued up once again it's worth noting that having the horizontal ability of this belt grinder and having everything set up to a 90 degree angle really helps in cleaning up the profile of these scales i'm using the work rest here set at around a 45 degree angle in order to grind in the bevels on the front of the handle scales and also around the lanyard hole i will be using a exposed tang lanyard hole for this knife because i feel like that's a very strong design and i also feel like it's easier to construct than putting in a lanyard tube to make this knife have a little bit more of a tactical feel instead of using a rounded front handle scale design i decided to get a little angular here with a point in the front of the handle scales i feel like this gives a nice aggressive look to the knife i got these up to a 220 grit finish on the belt sander and then clean them up with 300 and then later 600 grit on the hand sanding bench i tried to make sure to use a backing block when cleaning up all of these angles so as not to wash out the nice crisp lines established on the belt grinder out of all the handle materials i use for some reason i really like using g10 i feel like it grinds really well and also finishes very nicely so some people hate this stuff i really like it one drawback is it's pretty heavy of a material for a handle but i feel like it's pretty bulletproof as well to set my depth on my counterbore i'm using a washer that's around a 16th of an inch thick i set the height on my mini mill and then put the stop in my mini mill so that i can just go in and drill these counter bores up to the stop quickly this ensures not only that i can do this operation quickly and precisely but also that each one of these holes have the exact same depth so using this adjustable counterbore from mcmaster i get all four of the counter bores drilled into my handle scales with around the sixteenth of an inch lip between the handle scale and the tangent knife we then clean up all of our components with alcohol before gluing everything together with our g-flex 24-hour setting epoxy we get the g-flex mixed up and start applying that g-flex epoxy to the inside the handle scales also we apply that g flex epoxy to the inside of the counter bores that our levels fasteners will be sitting in i am using some stainless steel loveless fasteners here both the bolt and nut in this case will be made out of stainless steel once we have all the crevices of this handle coated with g-flex epoxy i will be tightening down the loveless fasteners i like to use a drill to do the bulk of this tightening and i'm actually using the torque setting on my cordless drill here i think i'm using setting number seven and i found that this is just about as tight as i would want these to be i also check it with a hand screwdriver to make sure that they are tight enough but not too tight if you get them too tight you can squeeze out all the epoxy from your joint and you can end up having a weak joint so make sure not to get them too tight once i've allowed the epoxy 24 hours to secure i will cut off the bulk of the loveless fasteners with the band saw and then grind flat both sides of the knife on the 2 by 72 belt grinder once i have both sides the knife ground flat i will sure up the handle scales with the tang and the knife so that the handle scales and the metal on the tang are flush with each other once again here i am using the horizontal position of the belt grinder because i know that i have it set at a 90 degree angle and i like that i can clean up the spine of the knife with the scratches going long ways to a 220 grit belt on this knife i decided to try out a different type of handle than i normally make i'm going to be putting some scallops into this handle to give it just a little bit more grip i would imagine that a war knife would want a significant amount of grip and handle so to do that the first step here is after i get everything shirt up to the spine i will be sloping the handle scales towards the tip of the knife so they will be a little bit fatter towards the back of the knife and a little bit narrower towards the front this is the same thing i do whenever i normally put a hollow into the knife for a coke bottle handle but in this case i'm just going to be sloping them rounding over the sides and then putting in my scallops here you can see that i am rounding over the sides of the handle scales this makes the handle scales act more like an oval in hand i then use the slack belt to round over all of my edges at this point after you have all the edges rounded over the knife could really be brought to the hand sanding bench and finished and this is actually a handle design that i use frequently and it does feel very good in the hand with this smooth handle but like we said earlier with this build we want to try something new which is very appropriate for this build since i did try a lot of new techniques already with this knife we figured we'll try something new with the handle as well i'm using a quarter inch small wheel and my small wheel attachment and i'll be putting scallops all the way along the flat of the knife on both sides i will then be coming in between these scallops at around the 45 degree angle to put scallops along the top and the bottom of the tang in an effort to have these scallops line up with each other at least a little bit i used a pencil to draw on the opposite side of my first set of scallops and that worked out fairly well the scallops on the right and left side are fairly symmetrical with each other there is a element of randomness to these scallops that i was hoping to achieve with this design while i'm not disappointed with how this handle turned out if any of you guys have suggestions for how to improve my scalping and you all tend to do this a lot on your knives please drop those suggestions down in the comment section below once i have the scallops put into the blade i went over to the hand sanding bench and brought up the sides of the knife to around a 600 grit finish once we have the handle scales finished up the last step of the build is to put an edge in a knife and to do that i will be using my water cooled sharpening system from wind i will be putting around a 19 degree bevel secondary bevel onto each side of this blade for some reason these water cooled sharpening wheeled systems the cheap ones get a decent amount of hate in the community i like mine and it works perfectly fine i will say if you have a knife that does not have a sharpening choil that wheel can gum up your plunger line so if you're going to be using this type of sharpening system make sure you have a sharpening choil alrighty so this is how our war knife finished out i think it looks really good and the lines in this knife are stellar the clip is a really nice addition that i feel like i'll start putting on many of my other designs i've been scared of putting clips in the knife in the past and i've also been scared of hollow grinding just because it's something different but after taking the plunge into both of those new techniques i really like the way that they turned out i see myself doing much more clips and holograms in the future so guys that sums up this video if you all liked it please hit that like button down below and if you're not already consider subscribing to the channel i also have the plans for this knife on my patreon for my patreon so that they can download these plans print them out and try making this knife on their own until the next time i'll catch y'all on the flip side [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Red Beard Ops

Views: 219,755

Keywords: red beard ops, knifemaker, knifemaking, knife maker, knife making, hollow grind, knife hollow grind, knife hollow grinding, hollow grinding a knife, how to make a knife, scalloped knife handle, G10 handle, hand made knife, war knife, tactical knife, edc knife, tactical knives, military knife, military knives, best tactical knife, ka bar knife, cool knife, making a knife, making a tactical knife, making an edc knife, how to make a tactical knife, diy knife, knife tutorial

Id: LgT424a8_2M

Length: 19min 41sec (1181 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021