Wabocho: Knife making adventures... part 1

Hello there.

I was waiting for this moment for a very long time. Some time ago, exactly in November 2013, I finished making my first knives. At that time I made small neck knife and something what has to be sujihiki, but then I broke it and it became a petty knife. I was very happy with them, because they were my first knives and also they weren't that bad.
Now I have much more experience, knowledge and understanding of kitchen knives. This is why I have decided to make new batch of knives. I bought some O1 carbon steel and have started collecting other materials as well, for example 3 pieces of unstabilized Amboyna burl.

Before I start making knives I must modify my belt grinder to avoid situations and constructions like this:

Later on I didn't need to make construction like this, because I wasn't making a knives. I used 50mm wide piece of wood to lift the belt, when for example I was thinning some blades.

My piece of wood was 11mm thick.

And it cause more problems, for example I couldn't use it with the table.

But I am using my belt grinder mostly to make Japanese style handles and other so gluing piece of wood every time when I wanted to make a handle was pointless. This is why my goal was to make removable platen, which will be very easy to attach. Also this will allow me to use 4'' belts as well as 2''. So I bought 6mm thick piece of O1 steel...

I want to make it flush with the table.

So my first step was to cut a piece of steel. After cutting 5cm of steel I knew that I don't want to do it anymore. Not without proper tools.

6mm is not enough to lift the belt so I used my 3mm piece of O1 steel to rise it even more.

I have used double sided tape to glue them together...

...and have marked platten position on my belt grinder.

I will use this kind of screws to screw it to the belt grinder.

Drilling 9mm steel was a nightmare. I am pretty sure that with good drills it shouldn't be a problem. It took me 2.5h to drill four holes. In that time I burned 2 drills and other two had to be sharpened every 20 second of drilling.

After drilling.

I am happy that some time ago I went with my girlfriend to ''Lidl'' for usual every week shopping and I found this drill sharpening machine.

And after sharpening:

Here you can see four holes drilled. Do you remember 2.5 h for drilling those holes? Yes, it was a nighmare. Now I had to drill another 4 to hide screw heads. I left it till the next day.