Mirror Finish 101

It has been a pretty disappointing week… why is that. Well I had all the plans to finish up the 20 LE Rangers and get started on the next go round.  I decided knife making is like trying to make the impossible full court shot! One day you can go out there and sink it on the very first try, and the next day you can shoot until your arm falls off and never make it. 🙂 Knife making is no different. Sure the more you practice the easier it is but sometimes even with all the practice in the world you just can’t seem to get dialed in.

Just a little speck

See those scratches in the middle of the blade? There were not there a second ago :/ Once you get to so fine a grit it doesn’t take much to leave a scratch, with every pass you make you take a chance of putting more scratches in the blade. The famous “I will make one more pass” is all it takes and then you have another 5-10 minutes of grinding ahead of you. Which can add up to extra HOURS of work! When you are working on 20 knives and finishing both sides you can see how that can really add up. 😀

I use a piece of leather to protect my hand, but even with it after grinding for hours on end your hand starts feeling real good 😀 I actually have a callous there from grinding.

Looks good right? Well you may be surprised, this blade still has several small scratches. They can be buffed out but you really want to do as little buffing as possible to keep your knife from looking washed out. There are several negative things about over buffing, not to mention it is one of the most dangerous things to do in knife making.

3/4 Horsepowers Jujutsu

As I stated above the buffer is one of the most dangerous tools in the shop. It is a Jujutsu master! One wrong move on your part and it sends a powerful attack right back at you. As you can see below I made a wrong move, destroying this nice felt wheel (that puts a set back in everything fortunately I had an extra one) All joking aside, buffers will kill you, several people have died using buffers when it throws whatever sharp or dull object right back at you. The buffer I use runs at 3600 RPM’s I wouldn’t recommend getting one that fast, most makers use 1800 RPM’s. Fortunately I haven’t had any serious injuries yet. Bill told me of a knife maker he knew that cut his femor artery and was actually able to stop the bleeding (by pinching off the artery) and call for help. Fortunately the neighbor heard his cry for help and they saved his life.

So despite working through the night on two separate occasions this week and long hours all week, things just didn’t come together like I had hoped. On the bright side I am rather confident that I should have all these knives out Monday, Tuesday at the latest….. (knock on wood or actually pray everything goes smoothly) Now I just need to etch and sharpen which should take about 7-8 hours of work.

Got the rest of the Genesis II in this week. There is never a shortage of things to do around here. I also had hoped to release a new program this week but looks like that will have to wait till next week. I hope you all have a good weekend.

What is the most dangerous tool you have every used, have you ever used a buffer? Leave your comments below!

~Patrick