Knife making adventures... part 8 - Grinding session and grind modification.

Hello there. I didn't write anything since some time, but to be honest I have many draft post which are waiting for posting. Also I was quite busy, recently, but now I am back.

So my knives came back bit bent from heat treating.

Before straightening I prepared old handle which will help me hold my Wa handled knife while grinding.

The tang hole was big and I had to use piece of wood to block tang in the handle.

Here I have marked place where bend starts.

To straighten it, I have used vice with three pieces of wood with blade between them. I was delicately screwing it tight to straighten the blade.

And here is my Eastern blade after some grinding on the belt grinder.

And quick test.

Then it was time to work on the stones to fix the geometry in controlled way. I have rounded corners of my 300 grit and 800  grit stones.

 And then worked on them in the same way as sword polishers sharpen and polish katana swords.

Here you can see height of the bevels. Top part rusted a little bit, but this actually helped me to see what I am doing.

And here you can see edge of this knife.

On the video above you could see that it's still splitting carrots instead of slicing through them. This is happening because of two things. First of all, this knife is too thick behind the edge, and second of all finish affects cutting.

Unfortunately, I didn't like it and changed everything when I was on JNS gathering in Denmark. I had opportunity to work on Japanese water wheels.

Dan wanted to test my knife, so here it goes:D

And then have grounded western knife as well.

I have burned tip a little bit on the Eastern knife, so had to change profile and then the belly was too obtuse, so I change it a little bit as well. All on the stones.

TBC...

Important announcement

Due to the high volume of orders, I must announce that I can’t take any new orders until July. I still have couple of things to finish and I am also going for my holiday in May and straight after that I will be going to Denmark to the Japanesenaturalstones.com annual gathering. Will still be able to offer my sharpening service, but any other services, like handles, sayas, thinning and repair will be on hold until July. 

Second announcement is even more important to me. I have created Wabocho, because I love knives and I really enjoy sharpening, repairing and polishing them. It is my big passion and hobby. However, lately it became something else. I didn’t expect the high volume of orders from around the globe. Now, instead of giving me a pleasure it is stressing me a lot. I don’t even have time for myself. I do not have workshop and I am doing everything at home, what means that I have to set up my workstation in my kitchen and then clean the entire house before I go to work. This is very stressful and my passion is fading away. Working in stress and rushing out the orders are neither good for me nor the customers. That is why I will slow down and take a pleasure of working with knives again. To do that I will have to take one order at a time without any specific timeframe. That means I won’t be able to tell you upfront when the job will be done. I might be able to finish it within a week or it may even take 4 weeks. I think it is better for the quality of my products and better for my wellbeing as well. I am very sorry for any inconvenience but I hope you will understand me.

Knife making adventures... part 7 - Drilling tang holes.

This post will be short.

I had to drill few holes in my gyuto tang. I have marked holes with center punch.

I remembered that previosly, drilling holes was a nighmare for me. Now I decided to use some kind of lubricant. There are special drilling fluids out there, but instead of buying something, I have used camelia oil.

I was really surprised to see that it's working.

And it's working well:D

TBC...

Knife making adventures... part 6 - Initial grinding

Hello there:D

Unfortunately I must abandon my neck knives project and focus only on kitchen knives. As I have mentioned before, I am running out of time, because I must finish my kitchen knives till May. Reason for that is, that one of them knives will be a gift for my friend and second one is that I am going to Denmark to my fourth JapaneseNaturalStones.com annual gathering.

Before heat treating I wanted to grind my blanks a little bit. I started free hand and at the beginning it goes well.

I had funny (for me ) situation. My girlfriend was waiting for parcel from Hermes. They said that they have tried to deliver our parcel twice and now it was last chance to get it. Just watch video above starting from 7:00. I thought that I have seen something in front of my window. I've turned of my grinder and noticed that somebody is calling me. So I quickly jump out from my flat to open the door. There was older lady with my parcel. What did she think when she saw me like that?

It was even more odd, because camera was attached to my chest and I had big knife half painted in red:D hahaha. I am pretty sure that they will never deliver my parcel again.

Grinding full tang knife was easy. The other one, big gyuto, was hard to grind because of the tang. I couldn't hold it so I have attached it to the piece of wood.

And grinder it this way.

I have burned tip a little bit.

Then my blank felt on the ground and I bent the tip:

I straightened it with hammer. I do not care about, because I will grind it away after HT.

Now to clean blades I used my C powder 80 grit mixed with J-nat Red Aoto mud.

TBC...

Knife making adventures... part 5 - Distal taper

Hello there.

I spent whole morning on making distal taper on my kitchen knives. I was very happy that I got new belts from John Mol, because it made my life easier, though, it wasn't that easy.

So I started from measuring thickness of my blanks.

Then I've gone to about half of the thickness.

And have used calipers to mark center of the edge.

Also I've marked point where I wanted to check thickness of the blade. It's on the hell, middle of the blade and about 1cm from the tip.

I tried different angles of aproach. I tried to grind distal taper sideways.

...lenghtwise...

And with belt grinder pointed vertically.

So here are my blanks after making distal taper.

Thickness near tip:

To be continued...

New website

I would like to proudly introduce you my new website. It's still under construction, but there is not much left to do. I am very happy with my new gallery. Previously uploading pictures was a nightmare and I had to spend half day to upload few pictures. Now I can upload pictures and video in just a few seconds. Also I would like to introduce you my online store. It's empty at the moment, but in few days, when my website will be finished, I will add few products. Please share my address: www.wabocho.com. Thank you for support and let the sharp knives be with you:D

www.wabocho.com