How to make Stunning Folding Pocket Knife - with a Master Smith

I've recently been on the road and away from my workshop and in this video I was heading down to Melbourne I was extremely honored to be invited by master smith Shawn McIntyre to his workshop for a folding knife course it's an awesome workshop and what a place to spend the next week along with other makers learning new skills I'll introduce Shawn here by showing him at work with a couple of action shots showing a little of what he does and here's an example of one of his stunning pieces of work which is just about perfection and shows how lucky I am to be here and to be gaining some of his knowledge I feel a little intimidated by all the talent that's here this week as also invited us Jackson Rumble whose knives are incredible pieces of art including this Bowie knife that he just won best of show for in this year's Sydney Knife Show and to finish the group we have Corin who many of you already know and he makes beautiful Barrel knives anyway let's get started on making our folding knife Shawn is already roughly cut our pieces to get us going we'll start with our blades and first we'll drill the pivot hole and then we'll use the template to scribe the actual blade shape onto it and then carefully grind down close to the lines I haven't filmed the whole process of me making my knife but I have filmed each step of at least one of our knives to document the full build we also used the bandsaw to cut in a notch which is for the sharpening choil the blade will get heat treated and hardened and that's why we're working on those now as we can work on the next stage while they're tempering in the oven the spring that will hold the blade in position also needs Heat Treating so we're working on those as well they're pretty straightforward and I should mention that the steel for the blade and the spring is 52 100. just knocking the burr off I have no idea what this is about but I'm just glad that it's clearly labeled the last thing to do before heat treating is to cut a nail nick into the blade we'll do that on the milling machine using a custom-made fly cutter and we'll feed that in very slowly that's all of our parts ready for hardening and even though you probably can't see we've lightly marked them with a center punch to work out who's his who's Sean also made a couple of spares just in case we're using a PID controlled vertical Forge for the Heat Treating and this keeps the forge at a desired temperature I love the setup and thinking about doing the same with my Forge we gave them a quick clean then put them in the oven to temper and then we heat treated the springs in the same way while the blades and springs got several tempering cycles we started working on our liners we each had two liners and they'll sandwich the blade in the spring they're made from 410 stainless steel also Shawn has glued the pairs of liners together so whatever we do to one we do to the other that's drilled and roughly shaped out staying a little away from the lines now we're back on the blades and the springs the first thing we do is take out any slight bend we do that with a carbide hammer and even though the blade is hardened a series of light hits will stretch the steel on one side and take out any bend I was amazed at how well this worked even though any bend in any of the knives was very very tiny now we've got them straight we can put them on the magnetic Chuck of the surface grinder and grind them down super flat this is a machine that I've never used before but I've wanted one for some time it took a fair while to grind both sides but I enjoyed it and it does an awesome job I did mine and Corin's together at the same time and then Jackson did his afterwards I'm just trying to get the Rhythm yeah and at this point Shawn put his knife aside to concentrate more on helping us with ours next we drilled out the pivot hole in the blade to its final size using a solid carbide drill bit Shawn has already made the bronze bushing for the pivot and even after drilling out the pivot hole it was still a little too tight so we enlarged it with this tool that I haven't used before which is a barrel lap and you got to run it all the way through because it's Barrel shaped yeah so if you don't go in far enough you're making a tapered hole that's just about perfect and next we demagnetized all the pieces and we did that ready for timing which is adjusting the pieces so that the knife will open and close accurately so this is a Ruple jig and what we're doing here is we're using it to indicate the timing on the thing so we do need to know where we're at in all three positions right so we're at the half stop position now it's at zero I'll go to the open position and I'm 0.05 over which is a very small amount this is just a crude pattern but that would indicate that we need to take 0.5 of a mil off of this corner right here to drop that down to zero back in the closed position we're 0.01 essentially we're almost at zero so we're right in all three positions except open is just slightly over this is my starting point and even though I didn't show it all I went between the grinder and the Ruple jig taking small amounts off and checking it until I was just about there when we did get them close we ground the back of the knife blending the spring, the liners and the back of the blade together I believe that the timing isn't essential the blade will open fine without it but what the timing does is ensure that the spring is flush with the back of the liners in the opening, the half stop and close positions and this will elevate the quality of the knife to another level these are the type of things that I'm learning this week and hopefully I can apply them to my own projects and get them to an even higher level after grinding the back on the discs sander we finished on a horizontal belt to put any abrasive lines along the knife which will make things easier when we come to finish we also finished the inside of the spring now also on a horizontal belt next we go back to the Ruple jig putting the spring under tension while we make any adjustments we check the mechanism works as intended and then we have a position to drill a hole through the liners using the center hole of the spring as a guide I didn't get much footage of this process which I was pretty disappointed about but I did get footage of Shawn's Dammit Doll which I thought was appropriate right now there are so many processes to this project and I was rushing to film everything but if it's something you'd like to see I may make another and film it at my usual pace with more detail the two liners can now be separated by heating up the glue now that we have the timing and the final pin position drilled everything will go back together perfectly next we mark the position of the springs onto the liners ready for the following step and that's milling a relief into the liner around the pivot point and the marks will tell us where to start and stop the cut we're doing this using a rotary table but you could easily make a jig that pivots and does the same thing the relief is to give the blade clearance around the pivot and avoid it from getting scratched now we'll move on to the handle scales and me and Corin are both using this stabilised timber I've never heard of it before but apparently it gets its name from when it's freshly cut as it smells like raspberry jam and Jackson has decided for his scales he's going to use maroon micarta we're flattening one side of them now and then we left them overnight and checked that they hadn't bowed or moved in any way we then milled the opposite side to get them parallel I reckon the figure there is looking stunning we'll put the scales aside and start on the bolsters which were made from 416 stainless steel Jackson flattened one side of all of our bolsters and that's to get them ready to solder onto the outside of the liners but first we'll glue them together so we can grind one edge square and that's for the scales to butt up to as that will be difficult to do once it's been soldered I didn't get a shot of that but we also drilled a hole for the pivot pin we applied flux to the liner and the bolster and then placed flattened solder between them we're using slow temperature solder and we gently heated it until the solder flowed down at this side over here move your heat yeah there you go yeah oh and keep going we then trimmed off the waste and ground down the bolster close to the liner we put the liners with their bolsters aside and began grinding the bevels onto the blade and we did that using simple jigs that we made for the process we made them adjustable with a screw at the back to gradually change the angle of the bevel as we're grinding once the bevels were ground in we ground a swedge or a swage however you want to say it into the spine of the blade and now it was time for all of us to start hand sanding here's a test fit up of my knife held with dummy pins next we cleaned up the bolsters just flush with the liner and then we drilled one more pinhole in the liner which will be to help secure the scales on we're almost ready to glue the scales on but first we flatten the inside faces to be glued one last time and then we sanded the front edges that get fitted against the bolster I was surprised about this but I was assured that CA glue is a legitimate way of fixing the scales to the liners next we drill pin holes through the scales from the back and then trimmed off the excess here we're reducing the height of the bronze bushing using this cool little jig we just sand the bushing by putting light pressure on it and the jig keeps it square and we've already lost a half a thou so we've done 10% of the work we keep checking it and stop when it's one thou over the thickness of the blade now we've put the knife back together using dummy pins again and we'll start to shape the scales once all the edges were done to a high grit and I think that was 600 we started to taper the handle making it narrower at the bolster next we ground a small bevel onto the front of the bolster and then started rounding and final shaping the scales Shawn is showing me what to do here while I'm filming but then I did do it myself I reckon that looks fantastic next we prepare the pins for fixing the scales onto the liner and we did that by forming a head on one end of the pin and we did that with this carbide tool in the drill press things were happening very fast at this point and it was difficult to keep up with the camera anyway the pins going from the inside and they sit into a counter sink that we put onto the holes in the liner and now they're ready to peen and lock the scales on permanently all of the pieces are just about ready to assemble I just need to taper the pinhole in the bolster so when the pin gets peened it'll never come back apart the last pin which puts tension on the spring has a point on it and when that goes in the point will find the hole in the spring and it will push it into position as it goes through if it was just the regular pin it would be difficult to get the spring tension just right to line up the holes now I'm trimming down the pins and then I'll grind them to just the right length I've forgotten what this tool's called but I'm using it to put a chamfer on the end of the pins it needs lots of light taps to gradually peen the pin and fill the tapered hole so when it's ground back there will be no gaps and the pin will disappear into the bolster next I need to grind the pins flush but as I want to avoid getting dust and grit inside the knife I'm packing it out with tissue when the pins were flushed down it was just a case of any final touches a bit of hand sanding here and there and then hitting the handle scales on the buffing wheel and the very last thing to do is sharpen them and we did that using paper wheels and that's it they're all done and I reckon they look incredible I absolutely love Shawn's design and I'm super keen to make another I loved the craftsmanship that was involved but I also really enjoyed the mechanism with the timing and getting the spring to be flush in all three positions the video was a little fast-paced in places where I could have done with a bit more footage and I didn't mention the whole thing was shot on my phone but hopefully you still enjoyed it a big thanks to all the guys for a very special week especially Shawn for sharing his Workshop, his knowledge and time and for being a great host and thanks for letting me produce this wonderful knife and thank you guys for watching and I'll see you on the next one stop filming

Channel: Pask Makes

Views: 308,316

Keywords: paskmakes, pask, pask makes

Id: CkCDl9xayso

Length: 19min 16sec (1156 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 03 2022