Rifletuner

Late last year I made my first chefs knife & gave it to my step mother for Christmas. This year I decided to make chefs knives for my two brothers and sisters in law. I asked each of them for their favourite colours, so ended up with blue and pink for one couple, and orange and green for the other couple. I like making these knives, but phuk is there some grinding to get them done. I start by getting the the profiled blade in 4mm AEB-L heat treated. To get a nice lively & functional blade, I start off grinding a full flat bevel which also gives the blade a distal taper, then grind in a hollow for the "S" grind which lightens up the blade some more and helps with food release, then taper the tang to balance out the blade. I probably grind away 50% of the steel, though I keep forgetting to weigh one before and after grinding. Then with their colour preferences I had to work out the best way to incorporate the colours into the handles. I had a piece of stabilised maple with blue and pink die through it that I used for one, though unfortunately a lot of the pink in the wood ended up getting ground out of it during the shaping of the handle. I added pink liners, and really wanted to use pink pins as well, but no one in Australia sells them. I could have got them overseas, but left my run too late form them to arrive in time. For the other handle, I made a segmented handle by cutting & joining orange and green G10 on a fine black liner, then glued them up with contrasting orange & green G10 pins. The whole process took me a lot longer than I expected and I was a bit worried I wouldnt get them done in time. But I finished them yesterday, and will give them out at a family dinner tonight.

Just to give some idea of grinding knife bevels, this is a time lapse of me grinding another knife on the weekend.

No I havent. I will try to put it on a scale & see what it weighs

Steel is 5.5 mm, so that is the thickest part on the spine. Overall length is 10.5". Handle is 4.75". Blade is 5.75" long and 1.5" deep at the bevel. The edge is ground to 0.3mm which is where I try to take most user knives to as its a good balance between keeping the edge fairly strong and keeping the edge slicy. If its a bushcrafter knife that might be doing chopping work, I will grind to around 0.4mm or even .5mm, and for a kitchen knife I go for close to a "zero grind" on the edge, so around 0.1mm.

Thanks mate.

No, I mostly dont use jigs. This one is all freehand. Grinding well and consistently is the biggest learning curve. It has taken me years to get to the point where I feel like I am turning out okay work. I am still a beginner though.

This is a bowie made from 5.5mm S35VN steel with a saber grind bevel and a harpoon grind on the swage. The handle is olive wood given to me by aushunt member Gryphon, with black G10 liners brass pins & lanyard tube, and with a hand rubbed Aussie Oil finish.

Thanks guys. Appreciate the feedback 👍

or maybe not. I made these two separately, but then decided to handle them as a pair. Steel on the hunting knife is 3.8mm Elmax, and the zipper blade is 3 mm SF100. The hunting knife has a tapered tang and a full flat grind. The zipper is a weird steep grind using a very small contact wheel. Both have blaze orange G10 handles, with fluro green G10 liners and pins. I forgot to etch my makers mark on the zipper blade, but I can still go back and do that. Sorry the photos are not great - the lighting was a bit inconsistent this morning.

Thanks mate. Yes, I should be able to do something with them. Definitely would have been a quick lights out for the stag. 👍

No worries. Will be interested to hear the feedback 👍

Good to see its still in use. That was a very early one I made. My ambition was well ahead of my very basic skills back then. That knife is a bit like me - ugly but functional.

Thanks guys 👍

Thanks mate 👍

I thought I would add in pictures of knife builds as I finish them since there was a lot of interest in the last one I posted. This one is a mini version of a larger Bowie design that I have made in the past. This version should be a good allrounder. Steel is 3mm NitroV with a full flat grind, with a distal taper to the point. Handle material is black Ritchlite with green G10 liners & pins.

Nice combo. The tooling on that sling looks top notch. Great looking pair 👍

Thanks mate. Appreciate the feedback. Its always good to hear peoples thoughts on my builds. It can be surprising sometimes what people like or dont like so much.

Hi mate. I started dabbling with knife making in 2016 in a very limited capacity. During the lockdowns of 2020, I started to really get into making knives, and have continued in most of my spare time since then. My early knives were functional, but very rough by comparison to what I can do today. Like any "craft", knife making needs time on the tools to develop skills. And the more you do it, the better feel you have for how to do things and what works best. So up until recently, all my knives have been given to friends and family. Frankly, I didnt feel like I was at a standard to take someones money for what I was producing, even though it was the best work I was capable at the time. And I have learned a lot about what equipment I need and have invested in a lot of the gear to help improve how I make a knife. Plus I now have a much better feel for the materials I prefer to work with. This year I feel like I have progressed to the point where I can actually offer a decent knife, and have sold a couple of knives when people have asked me to make them a specific pattern they have wanted made. Next year I will probably book a table at one or two of the state knife shows and actually exhibit knives for sale.

Last time I visited AH member Gryphon, he showed me a box of wood he had salvaged and had been meticulously drying the pieces out over the years. Gryphon kindly gave me several pieces of his stash to use for putting handles on my knives builds. When I got home, I decided to make Gryphon a knife and handle it with some of his wood. I picked out a piece of sheoak, and wanted the rest of the knife to match the quality of the handle material. Historically knife steels can have good edge retention, good strength or good abrasion resistance. But knife steel hasnt had all three of these criteria in one steel. So the knife maker has to decide which characteristic they are prepared to compromise on when they choose a steel to make a knife. Magnacut is a relatively new stainless "super steel" which was made specifically for knife making. It is formulated to balance out the three desirable characteristic of edge retention, strength and corrosion resistance, and has proven to be vary popular with knife makers since it was released a couple of years ago. When the first shipment of Magnacut arrived in Australia at the end of last year, I immediately bought some, and though it was a fitting steel to pair with the Sheoke handle material. The knife I made for Gryphon is the first knife I have ever made from Magnacut. The blade of this knife is a full flat grind in 3mm steel. The design pf the knife is my version of the Bark River Gunny Hunter. Once I shaped the handle, I found the grain in this block of wood is really stunning. I added red G10 liners, brass Corby bolts and a brass lanyard tube. I gave the handles a hand rubbed oil finish, and it really set to wood off I think. I wanted something special for the sheath too. I sent the knife a friend in Queensland as I am not set up for leather working yet. I got him to add a sambar motif to the sheath and really think the sheath sets off the knife well. I was able to drop off the finished knife to its new owner last weekend, so looking forward to hearing about it being put to use on the deer.

The 700 is fully compatible with the 750 and all other rino models for showing others on the screen. The 700 is not bad. I bought 2 back when they were $250 each. At that price it was too big of a step up to the 750 for me to be able to justify the 750. But as sambar stalker said, the maps on the 750 are a big step up from the 700. But the 750 is definitely a better model. Garmin have deliberately reduced the features in the 700. Its not just a black and white version of the 750. I also have the Astro 100 dog tracker and the maps on that are heaps better than the rino 700.

I went into a BCS around the new year to see if they had anything worthwhile on sale. I saw pretty stunned to see they had gutted the fishing section - they looked like the had ripped out 80% of the fishing stuff they used to have. They were putting in a heap of back packing and outdoor gear. Better margins I guess, but will be interested to see how that works out for them.

My son and I use this https://decathlon.com.au/products/adult-ski-neck-warmer-hug?variant=39856687775855

My only suggestion is that if you are "working from home" out bush, dont break down a deer while you are on a Zoom meeting. 🤣🤣🤣

Its a line of sight device. If it doesn't have a clear line of sight to the satellites, it will struggle. Inside a car , being in the bottom of a valley, etc can cause it problems locking onto a signal.