Variable quality of blade blanks

[GaryF52]

I've made six fixed blade knives from blades purchased at various well known knife kit vendors. Of the six blades, four came from the vendor with obvious and conspicuous flaws such as bad grind lines on the blade, thickend blade tip, not flat face on the tang of a full tang blade, and spine not perpedicular to the tang on a full tang blade.

The flawed blades were not the lowest price ones by any means.

I managed to make decent knives from all of them but now that my handle crafting and finishing skills are developing, I'd like to build more knives with blades that free of obvious defects.

I'm interested in the comments and experiences of other knife kit makers and vendors on this. What is your expectation when you buy a blade? If you are a vendor, do you inspect blades before shipping? What are your standards for quality? Any tips for choosing the best blades?

[BMiller]

Hi GaryF52,

First of all, welcome to the forums!

As far as your concerns, I know how you feel. I use to buy my blanks at the gun shows when a knife dealer showed up with blades. I found that there was indeed a variety of issues like you said but I took the time and hand picked the ones I wanted. Then I bought some from TKS and Knifekits.com as well as started doing folders solely from knifekits.cim. If I hold up two of the same blanks next to each other, yeah there may be some differences. But by itself, it has been OK.

Let's look at one thing. The blanks you buy from a catalog for instance will more than likely be massed produced. The same amount of raw material will usually cost only a few dollars less than the finished blank, ie., a 12 inch blade of ATS34 will run around $18. It cost around $12-14 depending on how thick it is. So you're only paying $4 to profile it and grind it, heat treat it, and then put a semi mirror polish on it. When you start grinding your own, you will appreciate what I'm saying but that $4 is well worth it when your trading 10 hours of your time to do the same thing. And then you look and you've done the same darn thing that you were complaining about. After a while you get better and better and less and less time is required but that's the challenge. Getting everything like you like it.

Show us some pictures of your six finished knives. We all like to see how you did the scales and techniques you used more than how a purchased blade looks. We want to see YOUR work. If you just need the blade on your kit to be perfect, then learn how to make it perfect so when you start doing everything you'll be far far ahead. I know you can do it!

Good to have you here.

Bill

[KNAdmin]

Good question ... good reply ... both!

Here's a question for everyone ...
"Do you know what the difference in a good blade grind and a perfect blade grind is?"


Seriously, I have a lot more to add to this thread, but it's about time for a new kit debate to flare up, and I'd like to control how the stage is set this time ...

Alex

[EdStreet]

ahh yes. You really cant expect any blade to be flawless besides it's a kit and one of the benefits are you get to do the final touchup work to them. including additional grinding, polishing, alignment etc... Now if the kit was listed as the blade 100% complete and everything done to it then that's a different story.

I find more so with damascus that many flaws creep into the mix and that's what sets off the true masters from the masses. Besides flaws in blades and learning how to work around them and other such problems develops better skills.

Ed

[GaryF52]

Thanks for the welcome and for your sharing your insights with me.

Here are some pics.

My first kit knife.

The grind line disappears.

I've used the heck out of this knife and it's a great blade. If I knew anything about grinding blades I'd try to fix it.


My first hidden tang.

This is a Soligen Bowie blade. My craftsmanship is far from great but I'm going to do more of these hidden tang blades. Pommel is Corian. This one came with a thickend tip.


Now my work is getting a little better.

These blades arrived in beautiful shape.

Handles on all of them are ash, of which I have a plentiful supply. I mainly use a dremel, drill mounted drum sanders, and hand sanding to shape the handles after rough cutting them on my bandsaw.

I don't have pics of the others but the issues on those were on the tang and are hidden by the handles.

I greatly enjoy building and using these knives. The joy for me is in shaping the handle to fit my hand and have good feel and balance. Part of the fun is to correct imperfections and even make improvement to a blade to the extent that I am able. If the looks aren't perfect, I can live with that but it's the knives that look great that I'm the most proud of. I hope to learn to grind my own blades some day. I will continue to build kits in the mean time.


Gary.

[EdStreet]

OK here's what I would suggest Pick you up a binsui-do, kaisei-do and komanagura-do. Polish the edge and you WILL see a very distinct line in no time. After that hit it with a bead blaster.

Ed

[BMiller]

All of those look very nice!

Bill

[KNAdmin]

I think you did a great job on all of those, Gary!

I see the flaw in the tip of the skinner, but I think you should have sent that one back before you did it. Someone in packing let that one get through without noticing the grind mistake. Although, most would admit that it's a good mistake that leads to learning.

No knife supply company that I know of would refuse you a replacement for that one. They generally ask that you don't complete them, however. I know that we would fix the grind and try to make a good blank out of it before trashing it, but it's a pride thing, mostly.

Alex

[derek parker]

Pick you up a binsui-do, kaisei-do and komanagura-do.






im lost...can someone tell me what these are so i can give it a shot too.............

[EdStreet]

Originally Posted by derek parker

Pick you up a binsui-do, kaisei-do and komanagura-do.






im lost...can someone tell me what these are so i can give it a shot too.............

These are traditional japanese polishing stones, they do alot more than just polish the metal and sharpen.



This is a chef's knife that I recently bought and I didn't like the line, same as the original poster here. Notice how flat the blade is.


durring the stone use.


long story short at the end of the first togi the line looks like this.




The process is not hard at all and with the right stone it's super simple and easy. Someone correct me if im wrong but doing that with sandpaper is almost impossible.

Ed

[fitzo]

Nice start, Gary! Welcome to KNET.

Nice knife, too, Ed! The problem with stones in this case is that you could mess with the flat on the side with the line washed out but it wouldn't work on the other side where the hollow needs some metal removed. The blade got slightly twisted just as the tip went through the double-wheel grinder, since it's the opposite problem side to side. Might be wrong. Not worth fixing since it's a finished user. Don't accept one with those bad a flaws again, is all.

To answer your question, Ed: with the right holders, yes, one can pretty much do that with flexible abrasives, too. Both have very definite advantages, though. For a far cheaper alternative than those beautiful stones, commercial EDM and die polishers work pretty well in some applications. Have to hold the stones, though, and they're much smaller.

[EdStreet]

The real problem with the stone route is over polishing and remove to much metal. In the grinding goof example you simply just polish more on that side and make the two sides match.

For a far cheaper alternative than those beautiful stones, commercial EDM and die polishers work pretty well in some applications. Have to hold the stones, though, and they're much smaller.

Yea I failed to mention that part These came directly from japan on a special order I made. Well worth it to. I bet I could probably use some of the regular sharpening stones for something like this. Im not to sure how they would fair in relation to my stones.

Ed

[fitzo]

I've read that some of the new synthetic "Japanese" jobbies give a fair imitation, but for that type of polish the "originals" remain the benchmark.

[EdStreet]

that is correct. In my 'set' all the K's are synthetic. They work just as good and if your use to synthetic stones they are better in many regards. The advantage is there's no hot spots and you know they will be reproduced for a while since the mines are almost depleted in several areas and good high quality stuff is being cherry picked by the masters who pays insane gobs of money for them,but then they also buy enough to last for several lifetimes.

That's why I mentioned binsui-do, kaisei-do and komanagura-do,all 3 can be bought synthetic and several places in the US stock them.

Tho I gotta ask, the EDM and the die polishing thing you mentioned, care to elaborate on those methods for honing the gind botch?

Ed

[fitzo]

They are just small stones, Ed, 1/4" square and 6" long for or 3/16" x 1/2 X 6. Use 'em like a drawfile. Only up to about 1200 grit IIRC. Places like MSC sell them under "Abrasives". I suppose one could contour them to the hollow, but that's what I'd call a royal PITA and not worth it. For a hollow, nothing beats a couple pieces of heavy sheath leather glued together and shoproll abrasives curled over the ends and held with yer fingers. At least for how I work. There are a bunch of ways to approach it. I have these really cool 1" strip holders I got from Rio Grande that can contour to a hollow halfway decent. Keep the paper tight on their own, too.