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[chaos_customs]

i was wondering how u make the little groves on the side of the blade to pull it out
thanks
vic

[Ray Rogers]

It's called a 'nail nick'. The most professional way to make a nail nick is by using a fly cutter in your mill. If you don't have a mill, you might be able to use your drill press and a keyway cutter, if your drill press is sturdy enough. Otherwise, some peole manage pretty well just using a dremel with a cutoff wheel. Profile the wheel by grinding down one edge so that it more closely resembles the 'cresent moon' look of most nail nicks.....

[Chris_Crawford]

Hello Vic.

When I started making slipjoints I was cutting my nail nicks with a dremel tool with a thin cut-off wheel. (See page 6 of my slipjoint tutorial.) This allowed me to make a nick, but it was only as good as my hand was steady. Here is a knife with the nail nick cut by hand.

I then bought a cross-slide vice and started putting the cut-off wheel in my drill press and the blade in the vice. This allowed me to use the vice to move the blade into the cut-off wheel and cut my nick nice and straight. This picture shows a knife with the nick cut with a dremel wheel held in a drill press and using a cross slide vice.

I've now moved to using a 1-3/8 dovetail cutter in a mini-mill to cut my nail nicks. See this post, A question for Trapper Makers, for more information on how I do this. The nick on this knife was cut using the dovetail cutter.

Hope this helps. -chris