Knife Making 2020202020

Now that we have most of the important tools needed for making custom knives, I was just curious:

  • Is anyone an experienced knifemaker, that would be interested in teaching?

  • Is anyone interested in getting organized? Perhaps as a Blacksmithing SIG?

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@EthanWestern has so far made like 4 knifes using our tools, roping him into this conversation :slight_smile:

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interested in a class for sure…

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If @TLAR friend Dave Mcdearmont is willing to continue. He wanted us to have a knife grinder before he came back IIRC.

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Interested as well. I watch all the Forged in Fire so I’m basically an master right?

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He has asked occasionally if the Space ever bought one…

Dave’s knives and his style of craftsmanship aren’t for everyone - is a retired mechanical engineer and meticulous as hell in the details. The link below is for a few of his knives from decades ago.

https://www.arizonacustomknives.com/index.php/knives-by-maker/mcdearmont-dave.html

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Those are some beautiful knives, I’d love to learn to make something similar.

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Tim,

You’re not far from my store…and Dave McDearmont is about 10 minutes west of me - if you want to take a look at his knife making set up in his workshop - let know and I’ll get you two together - if that will help you get his kind of knife making a reality in the Space

I have never actually made my own blade but I’ve made several pretty nice knives by fabricating and attaching wood handles to blades I purchased. Here are some examples.

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I attended the first presentation by @TLARs friend. I would most definitely love to attend one of his classes.

I would definitely also be interested in this if possible, in order to improve our set up for knife making

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I’m not quite to the level where I feel I can teach it but working on getting there, certainly would be willing to help anyone wanting to make a knife

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Will we have a tempering furnace?

I made a couple of basic camp knives at home last year via stock removal. I would definately be interested in some further training and colaboration. Looking forward to my first forge class in a couple of weeks!

Jeremy

@EthanWestern can you keep a list of everyone that wants a knife class. The Training Development SIG will help “anyone” that wants to develop a class.

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Are we talking high carbon steel or stainless or what? 1095 / O1 is its’s own sub-specialty, right?

I indent in making mine out of 154CM. That was Dave’s recommendation. I will give it a shot at least a few times.

I was looking that way too, but have moved to CPM-154, due to the easier grinding, and generally better stats for knives. I’m considering plasma cutting the blanks, but am currently looking to see what considerations there are when using a PM to cut the blank. Has a bit of vanadium in it, so might not be suitable for a PM cut (think CM-154 is same). Both 154’s are simpler to heat treat than the other tool steels.

Plasma cutting the knife blanks, has a lot of benefits, but does add steps and problems of its own.

And, um, chromium. Guess PM is non-starter. Hello cut-off wheel!

Bandsaw will do it. It’s not in a hardened state.

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