Unfinished projects and whatnot.

[icanhaschzbrgr]

I mostly use IG to post finished projects and WIPs, but I have way more pictures/things to share than I could post to IG and I like ability to post large images. So here we go


Will start with a bunch of photos I took yesterday. The first one being a small storage bag that I repurposed for finished handles

Last August we had our first newborn baby and it took almost a year before I could get back to knives. Most of the handles above were made in 2020. This year I managed to finish only a couple of handles before cold weather arrived.

Next comes a short 180mm chefs knife in Niolox. Could be the thinnest knife I've made to date. Tin foil tip, just like on Kato's knives. I'll probably regret about it, when it will be returned for a tip repair
Handle isn't glued. And no maker's mark yet, otherwise it's good to go. Made this as a present for a nephew who's graduating cooks school soon.

And few pictures of chefs knives that were started 1.5 year ago. Still needs proper satin polish. And saya pins. And handles glued. Handles made of Tasmanian Blackwood.
Steel is a laminate of Rex121 core in 440c stainless.

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

I think it was somewhere around August when I posted an ad on local bulletin board about knife repair services. I offered a free of charge repair services for high end kitchen knives. I though it would give me some practice and provide ability to handle something special. What I was expecting? Bent Shigs. Broken tips yanagibas. A badly rusty Don Nguyen unicorn maybe. What I actually got? Well… a super boring german petty knives after dish washer Owner claimed that those were ~20 years old and present a huge sentimental value. That sentimental thing was the only reason why I accepted that job.

Haven't took photos, cause it looked unbearably boring to me. Some black pakka wood that was broken and split in several places. Owner just wrapped handles in duck tape and kept using them as is. Needles to say those were as dull as my sense of humour. I offered to regrind/sharpen them, but owner said he would pass them to professional sharpener afterwards. Ooook.

I was given full freedom of materials and design decision on new handles. I decided to keep them simple stupid. Opted for Ironwood in the hopes that it could withstand abuse a tiny bit longer. And it would darken over time making them closer to their original boring look.

After clearing up all that rust things started to look a bit less grim. Just rough cut everything and glued together

Western handles aren't my thing and makes me struggle every damn time I try to make one. This time wasn't an exception. There are few minor issues that can be detected upon careful inspection, but most non knife nuts wouldn't even bother.

It took me few months to finish them. Mostly cause I could devote just few hours a week on that task. Original owner was pretty excited and I received the practice I wanted.

After that I removed my original ad about repair services. No unicorns were harmed. This time.

 

[tostadas]

That's CLEAN

 

[ian]

Those look great. Nice job. All your stuff looks great, really. I hope you sharpened them for the client anyway, just out of spite.

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

Those look great. Nice job. All your stuff looks great, really. I hope you sharpened them for the client anyway, just out of spite.

Thanks Ian
Friends of the owner of those knives reached me and asked if I could do something a bit of repair on their rifle bayonet. And then presented me with a huge piece of rust. I told them it would probably take another half a year but they accepted. So more weird projects ahead.

 

[ian]

You gonna glue the rust together into steel? Solid.

 

[chefcomesback]

Good to see you working on knives and handles again Anton !!

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

A piece of knife for dealing with cheese

This handle was made few years ago and sat in the rejected box since then. Can't even remember why, cause it there wasn't anything wrong with it (except for questinable design).

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

Experiments with ferric chloride.
Blade made from PGK (which is D2 variant from Lohmann) hardened to 63-65 HRC.

Andrey Markin sent me a piece of R18 steel a year ago. I made a short but tall chef knife from it. Somehow I liked that profile and decided to make another one. So here's 55mm tall knife that's just 170mm on the edge.

One day I'll probably make a handle for it. Hopefully in 2022

 

[Barmoley]

The profile looks good even though the dimensions are unusual. PGK is an interesting steel, closer to cruwear made with traditional (ingot) process.

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

First time worked with Damascus steel. Etched in sulfuric acid. So far I like what I'm seeing. And it turns out Damascus isn't that demanding in terms of polish quality as minor scratches are hidden by pattern

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

View attachment _AKA0591.jpg

View attachment _AKA0603.jpg

View attachment _AKA0594.jpg

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

Steel is 14c28n gifted by @Isasmedjan about a year ago or so.

Octagonal Ringed Gidgee handle was made years ago, but wasn't a good fit for any of my knives. I shortened it and rounded bottom part. After that it became a rather nice shape to hold.

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

The same blade that I posted earlier in post #9 now a dry fit handle.
Tried to capture distal taper. I learned basics of distal taper grinding from Robin Dalman, but then Andrey Markin taught me an even simpler and effective way of making even and consistent taper (check Andrey's IG to see some really crazy distal tapers made with stock removal method)

Normally I use a micro 43 camera on tripod, but these photos were shot on phone. It's impressive how big of a progress phone cameras have made in last decade.

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

Last knife of 2022 packed and ready to be gifted. I'm so glad this year is over.

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

Few more blades that are in different steps of completeness
210mm in D2

175mm santoku in s390

210mm stainless raindrop damascus

~135mm in n690

180mm D3 in stainless cladding

Now if only I knew how to make handles!

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

Dry handle fit. Not sure if it needs a more slim handle.

Not sharpened yet. And needs saya

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

So my coworker read somewhere that S390 is hands down the best steel ever made. I tried to reason him, pointed him to Larrin's articles and few other resources, but nothing could overcome the power of marketing delusion on S390. And of course he wanted a Santoku. Who in their minds would ever want something else when Santoku combines good parts from all other shapes and has exactly zero downsides.

I've spent quite some time looking for wide blank of hardened S390. And I found one in 4.5mm thickness which was 1.5x thicker than I'd want to deal with. Previously I thought PGK is an absolute ***** to grind. Well, compared to S390 PGK was a breeze. Dunno how many ceramic belts has been destroyed in honor of making this stupid santoku. A lot.

And then there was a quest of drilling holes in tang. At 68 HRC it was laughting in the face of my drilling bits. I used a pretty powerfull torch to heat it up to ~800 C° to make it soft again. A minute of red heating resulted in 0.2-0.4mm deep softening. So I had to heat it pretty long in order to make it soft deep enough to drill. Though the good side of high speed steels is that they don't care that much about overheating edge when grinding. Anyways. After drilling holes I decided that I'll make a hidden pins and I skeletonized tang with angle grinder.

During hours of hand sanding I hit an edge with stone and chipped about 1.5mm. A bummer. Had to regrind it once again and start sanding from scratch.
But in the end here it is, posing with a shiny handle. I used some offcut piece of wood and can't even tell whether it's Koa or Tasmanian Blackwood.
Overall it was an interesting experience for me. Western handles isn't something I'm comfortable making and there were quite a few challenges in aligning everything.

---

Will I ever work with S390? Hell no. I don't even care how long it can hold an edge.
Will probably post few work-in-progress pictures from my phone about this knife.

 

[ian]

Looks great tho

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

About 2 years ago or so I was approached by one man who asked whether I could restore an old blade for him. I said I can try. When he brought said blade to me I was a bit shocked cause it wasn't anything kitchen related. Not even a hunting or utility knife. Instead it was a rusty piece of steel that used to be bayonet knife more than hundred years ago. The bayonet itself was damaged by rust beyond repair. There were no wooden scales and I said I don't have any qualification to do such kind of restoration. But the owner insisted and said there's no rush and if I fail, then there wouldn't be much harm as that blade doesn't possessed any value in its current state.
As the bayonet was gone I tried to just remove all the rust I could get and then weld new metal. Those were the times when I started learning welding and the work I did on bayonet was really ugly. Slug from electrodes was getting into all those holes and my skill hasn't allowed me to really fix that. So I decided to solder those holes.

That's when I learned I wasn't just a bad welder but also a pretty lousy solderer. And it took me several months just to get to this state cause every time I looked at the ugly blade I just wanted to go elsewhere. Anywhere. Somewhere around 1 year mark I forced myself into putting some more efforts and put a pair of oak scales. I was thinking of burning oak and making it looking old to match the rest of blade.

The handle itself wasn't straight nor had any flat surfaces so ended up with epoxy blobs pouring from every direction. At that time I hated that project. It just wasn't coming along. When I burned scales they developed deep cracks which indeed made them look old. And made the whole thing look even more unbearable. That's when I took another pause. Nearly year after I returned to that project. Removed old scales, tried to straighten tang, clean all the surfaces, removed all the soldering with a dremel and welded bayonet yet again.

And here it poses along with another big project that could take me years to finish.

I decided to go with Bog Oak second time and skip the burning part. Lightly cleaned the blade itself and returned it to original owner.
When we were talking with the owner originally he asked me about price. I said I wasn't interested in cash as this was a just for fun project and we negotiated that I would get a big chocolate once the job is done.

I guess its fair to say that blade looks better than it used to be. But it's no longer a proper bayonet knife, so it wasn't a proper restoration. And I hadn't much fun it the process to be honest. But I was super relieved when I finally returned blade to its owner. Gonna learn from my mistakes

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

View attachment IMG_20230914_170101_510.jpg
I wanted to make a small magnetic knife stand for photos to make knife look like its hovering above the surface. First prototype ended up being too bulky and big. Thought could still be usable for larger knives. But I'll make smaller one and see if I could get anywhere close to Bryan Raquin photos

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

Two knives here needs handles glueing. One western handled knife has too many facets and begging for handle easing. Non of these has sayas completed. And I think only 3 of these were sharpened.

And few more photos, because why not?!

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

So a while ago I posted some experiments with welded bolsters in Do you even weld?! thread.

One blade from that experiment got its handle today. Bolster area and blade itself will need some more sanding/polishing. And I'll make a proper pointed tip on stones later. And put a makers mark on blade. And sharpen.

Not sure if handle should be 10% smaller or it's OK as is. N690 on the blade at around 61.5 HRC with stainless bolster. So this should be fine. However there was another knife that I finished somewhere in June and intended to put it through some tests in the kitchen. But I gifted it to my wife's relatives and now have no idea how it performs.

That one is made from D2 so I'm curious of how it will look when patina settles.

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

Experiments with partial etching. In the end I want to get something similar to what Michael Lipinski is doing here
https://www.instagram.com/p/CyEECDrsfns/?igshid=MWZjMTM2ODFkZg==

 

[icanhaschzbrgr]

More experiments with etching. Tried to emulate cladding with a layer of nickel