That handle and bolster made the knife .grate work as usual walter im 2 years ish into knife making and i still am baffeled by your skill .hopefully 1 day i can make as beautiful peices as you do
I love working with S30V. It’s the best type of steel for a folding knife or fixed blade “hunting” type knife in my opinion. Well done on the finished product. Work of a true professional.
One way that has helped me with hand flattening surfaces is to use billets to provide the pressure needed. Using my arms to simply guide the material. That way it is a consistent, even pressure orthogonal to the surface and you dont have to worry about micro movements of your limbs from pressing down. It also saves your joints the wear and tear and allows me to go longer without getting tired as easily.
I think Walter mentioned it in passing. Kitchen knives are the most difficult and time consuming knives to grind. He'd have to get a significant amount of money per knife to cover his time and he probably doesn't see a large enough market given the number of great mass produced chef's knives on the market already.
Enjoyed this video. Nice of you to acknowledge a teacher. We need more of that. Regarding a tight fit of the brads bolster with the stainless. I learned years ago about stainless corroding in anaerobic situations like found in fittings of sailboats. I wonder if this is a risk on a chef’s knife?
Wow, this is the exact project I've been working on for the last week! I just heat treated the blade and was about to try my hand at attaching the bolsters- this video helps to clarify a lot of things. Thanks for your excellent videos, accessible to beginners and the advanced!
Love your work Walter! your videos are always so easy to follow, packed with useful information and pretty much crack me up every time. Nice surface grinder by the way ;)
Some thing i learnt/learned .. from sanding bike fairings with wet dry is if you use soapy water they dont clog and instead of sanding a patch 10 x 10 cm before the sandpaper clogs you will be sanding entire fairing sections and square feet/yards and not 1 speck on the sand paper. The grit wears out, falls out and paper shreds but not one bit of dust on the paper.
hi Walter. Bolsters. For some reason, I have this obsession that makes me thing I have to include these. A remnant from before so many knives were just simple handle scales on a flat tang (not that it is really easy to get the front of those to align). Anyway, Alan Longmire got me into using 0000 steel wool as the last step with brass. I sometimes combine that with loose a.o. or si C. abrasive powder in the steel wool. Just making conversation. Not at all trying to tell you what to do. Thanks for showing your process.
people with surface grinder experience probably know this but I think its a cool factoid anyway. The surface grinder's magnetic chuck will bend pieces that aren't already fairly flat or that have some warp when it is engaged. This isn't super obvious until the chuck is disengaged and the part springs back to normal and you now have a surface ground part with a bend in it. NYC CNC has a really cool video on slowly disengaging the mag chuck on a surface grinder when grinding a large parallel to avoid this problem
Hi Walter, when it come to thin stock (3mm and below) I always heat treat before grinding bevels. I find that it reduces warps in the quench. Like you, I use Combat Abrasive belts, they eat up hardened steel like it’s butter.
That was driving me nuts the whole time. Anyone who spends alot of time chopping/dicing knows how annoying it is to have the heel of the blade not be able to slice fully through the carrot/onion/potato etc
Interesting Matthew M, I was not aware that you could purchase industrially stabilised hardwood in the US, didn't know such a thing existed. I'm in the UK and never come across it here. I have invested in a vacuum chamber and resin to do my own, I guess I'll be one of those "backyard type operations", though it will be for purely my own use, not for sale.
Love the look of the handle and I had never heard of this kind of wood before. Can I ask why you didn’t round off the front of the bolster? It looks like it might be uncomfortable when using a pinch grip.
My first knife was a kitchen knife and with a bolster like this, although mine was done using only a pillar mill and a set of files. It's actually not that difficult to do overall by hand - just drill the holes in the blade, then flip and drill /repeat like you would with handle scales. You can then use locating pins and do the shaping and polishing in a vice. The only annoyance I really found is that you really are making TWO handles and then a bit more, in terms of time and dedication. However, I think it really makes for a nicer looking knife, and I think it protects the front of the wood a bit better as well.
Here's a question -- could you remove the bulk of the bevels, roughing on the belt sander, and finish on the surface grinder? Also, I noticed you pulled the parallels out from under the drill bit -- hahaha, took me a few times of running the drill right into the hardened parallel before I remember to do that. :)
Walter you cross feed is way too aggressive. Feed ~.030” across for each pass and you will not load up you wheel leaving burn lines. When that occurs you leave micro fractures in the steal. You depth of material plunge before cross freedom. Should be up to .030” for roughing and .002 or .003 for finishing. Also look into a coolant system and you will be swinging like a pro
Walter, I do not understand how a surface grinder holds such a tight tolerance since on every pass the wheel wears just a slight amount. Does it automatically compensate for that by ever so slightly get turned lower?
I always like your videos....I get a lot out of them...However, being as a machinist, I would NEVER clamp two pieces of material in a vise like that for any operations...other than that...GREAT work as usual
I love the videos... but always come away with tool envy and feeling inadequate! I just want to make a few knives here and there and as with anything I do, put them out in a quality fashion. Like me buying a $4000 surface grinder? It ain't going to happen! ...well unless I win the LOTTO so I can outfit a $250K multi shop!
Hey Graph.. check out Trollsky's early work. He started out with pretty much nothing but an angle grinder and files and created some masterpieces. You can get close to if not the same results without all the tools, it just takes longer. Walter's demonstration of sandpaper on on a plate of glass or granite is how I currently flatten things, including metal. Not as quick and easy as a surface grinder but I do get the same results, and a slightly better surface finish.
I noticed in one scene you're wearing a respirator with grey filters. Then later you're wearing a respirator with pink filters. What's the difference, and why make the change??
Some knifemakers (ex. Ekim Knives) prefer to grind the bevels on chef knives after heat treat because it reduces the chance of warps and twists. "'It's a feature, not a bug"
Why not drill a small countersink on the brass face where the rod will be peened giving it more surface area to spread and less worry when grinding the peened heads down.
Great work Walter though the ugly German plunge line design is inherently useless on a kitchen knife you did a great job. How well does it cut carrots potatoes etc? As an apple isn't a good test. Keep up the great work.
The almost invisible transition between the pins in the bolster and the bolster itself is breathtaking. Beautiful knife!
Wyhh2
That handle and bolster made the knife .grate work as usual walter im 2 years ish into knife making and i still am baffeled by your skill .hopefully 1 day i can make as beautiful peices as you do
You just have to love the humor makes the graying of the air more bearable at least it did for me . Happy Trails Walter great job as always .
Walter, you never cease to amaze me! Gorgeous as always!!
You’re a great man Walter!
Great knife, wonderful tips, and a great sense of humor! Nice personal touch at the end.
I love working with S30V. It’s the best type of steel for a folding knife or fixed blade “hunting” type knife in my opinion. Well done on the finished product. Work of a true professional.
One way that has helped me with hand flattening surfaces is to use billets to provide the pressure needed. Using my arms to simply guide the material. That way it is a consistent, even pressure orthogonal to the surface and you dont have to worry about micro movements of your limbs from pressing down. It also saves your joints the wear and tear and allows me to go longer without getting tired as easily.
Walter, I really can't understand why you're not selling kitchen knifes. Your are making them just amazing.
I think Walter mentioned it in passing. Kitchen knives are the most difficult and time consuming knives to grind. He'd have to get a significant amount of money per knife to cover his time and he probably doesn't see a large enough market given the number of great mass produced chef's knives on the market already.
Wow another piece of functional art, what a beautiful piece of work, thank you for the video.
Enjoyed this video. Nice of you to acknowledge a teacher. We need more of that. Regarding a tight fit of the brads bolster with the stainless. I learned years ago about stainless corroding in anaerobic situations like found in fittings of sailboats. I wonder if this is a risk on a chef’s knife?
Wow, this is the exact project I've been working on for the last week! I just heat treated the blade and was about to try my hand at attaching the bolsters- this video helps to clarify a lot of things. Thanks for your excellent videos, accessible to beginners and the advanced!
Love your work Walter! your videos are always so easy to follow, packed with useful information and pretty much crack me up every time.
Nice surface grinder by the way ;)
That is a fantastic looking knife. A really great job.
Some thing i learnt/learned .. from sanding bike fairings with wet dry is if you use soapy water they dont clog and instead of sanding a patch 10 x 10 cm before the sandpaper clogs you will be sanding entire fairing sections and square feet/yards and not 1 speck on the sand paper. The grit wears out, falls out and paper shreds but not one bit of dust on the paper.
Outstanding job!
hi Walter. Bolsters. For some reason, I have this obsession that makes me thing I have to include these. A remnant from before so many knives were just simple handle scales on a flat tang (not that it is really easy to get the front of those to align). Anyway, Alan Longmire got me into using 0000 steel wool as the last step with brass. I sometimes combine that with loose a.o. or si C. abrasive powder in the steel wool. Just making conversation. Not at all trying to tell you what to do. Thanks for showing your process.
Thanks, Kevin, I appreciate it.
long-time restaurant cook here. that looks like a really fast nimble knife there. i'll take a dozen plz.
Great work sir! Again thank you for all that you do!
Beautiful. Thanks for sharing!
people with surface grinder experience probably know this but I think its a cool factoid anyway. The surface grinder's magnetic chuck will bend pieces that aren't already fairly flat or that have some warp when it is engaged. This isn't super obvious until the chuck is disengaged and the part springs back to normal and you now have a surface ground part with a bend in it. NYC CNC has a really cool video on slowly disengaging the mag chuck on a surface grinder when grinding a large parallel to avoid this problem
Beautiful knife
Hi Walter, when it come to thin stock (3mm and below) I always heat treat before grinding bevels. I find that it reduces warps in the quench.
Like you, I use Combat Abrasive belts, they eat up hardened steel like it’s butter.
Great work 😍. I am using sun flower oil for my surfacegrinder which really brings out a nice grinding surface
Youre an awesome knife maker sir
Ahhh. We missed your black humor. Keep it coming. It's why I subbed to you years ago!
Beautiful knife love the handles
Thanks for sharing you talent. I appreciate it. Thanks
I would like to see how he makes a folding knife and what that would look like
Walter, Cooking Knives don't need ricassos at all; The heel is a very usefull part.
That was driving me nuts the whole time. Anyone who spends alot of time chopping/dicing knows how annoying it is to have the heel of the blade not be able to slice fully through the carrot/onion/potato etc
great work as ever Walter. Do you ever vacuum stabilise kitchen knife scales?
Interesting Matthew M, I was not aware that you could purchase industrially stabilised hardwood in the US, didn't know such a thing existed. I'm in the UK and never come across it here. I have invested in a vacuum chamber and resin to do my own, I guess I'll be one of those "backyard type operations", though it will be for purely my own use, not for sale.
What is the Stanley tool Walter uses to fold the stainless foil before hardening?
385 Brass is a leaded free machining brass, curious as to why you are using it for bolsters.
+1, but if You have mirror finish kitchen knife it's easier to keep it clean, especially from eggs, how much costs this machine?
Love the look of the handle and I had never heard of this kind of wood before. Can I ask why you didn’t round off the front of the bolster? It looks like it might be uncomfortable when using a pinch grip.
My first knife was a kitchen knife and with a bolster like this, although mine was done using only a pillar mill and a set of files. It's actually not that difficult to do overall by hand - just drill the holes in the blade, then flip and drill /repeat like you would with handle scales. You can then use locating pins and do the shaping and polishing in a vice. The only annoyance I really found is that you really are making TWO handles and then a bit more, in terms of time and dedication. However, I think it really makes for a nicer looking knife, and I think it protects the front of the wood a bit better as well.
When you used the surface grinder to grind off the carbides, do you have to true up your wheel again?
Ever make a knife that has a round handle? I thought about making a round handle then using brass nuts for the bolsters.
Could you countersink the holes on the bolster and then pein the pins into the countersink
Have you ever used olive oil tree wood for the handles of your knifes it's a very nice wood
Here's a question -- could you remove the bulk of the bevels, roughing on the belt sander, and finish on the surface grinder?
Also, I noticed you pulled the parallels out from under the drill bit -- hahaha, took me a few times of running the drill right into the hardened parallel before I remember to do that. :)
Walter you cross feed is way too aggressive. Feed ~.030” across for each pass and you will not load up you wheel leaving burn lines. When that occurs you leave micro fractures in the steal. You depth of material plunge before cross freedom. Should be up to .030” for roughing and .002 or .003 for finishing. Also look into a coolant system and you will be swinging like a pro
Walter, I do not understand how a surface grinder holds such a tight tolerance since on every pass the wheel wears just a slight amount. Does it automatically compensate for that by ever so slightly get turned lower?
They don't wear all that fast and if you only grind with small section of the wheel it lasts longer
Some stainless steels are (relatively) non- magnetic. Does that “magnetic chuck” work with them?
5:30 omg dude I love that!
Wow!
Bolster is a lot of work but really does look good
Make a butterfly knife please!!!
I always like your videos....I get a lot out of them...However, being as a machinist, I would NEVER clamp two pieces of material in a vise like that for any operations...other than that...GREAT work as usual
Worth watching just to hear you say "sometimes it be that way"
Sometimes it be that way
I had no idea that was called a bolster. Every other time I've heard that phrase it referred to the thick section at the heel of the knife
i wonder if its a good idea to use the surface grinder on Brass, won't it gum up the grinder?
Wd40 keeps the wheel from loading up
I love the videos... but always come away with tool envy and feeling inadequate!
I just want to make a few knives here and there and as with anything I do, put them out in a quality fashion.
Like me buying a $4000 surface grinder? It ain't going to happen! ...well unless I win the LOTTO so I can outfit a $250K multi shop!
Hey Graph.. check out Trollsky's early work. He started out with pretty much nothing but an angle grinder and files and created some masterpieces. You can get close to if not the same results without all the tools, it just takes longer. Walter's demonstration of sandpaper on on a plate of glass or granite is how I currently flatten things, including metal. Not as quick and easy as a surface grinder but I do get the same results, and a slightly better surface finish.
Appreciate the reference and voice of experience!
I noticed in one scene you're wearing a respirator with grey filters. Then later you're wearing a respirator with pink filters. What's the difference, and why make the change??
Why take a thick heal all the way to the cutting board? I’ve seen this on your most of your kitchen knives.
Savage feed on the surface grinder 😂😂😂
Some knifemakers (ex. Ekim Knives) prefer to grind the bevels on chef knives after heat treat because it reduces the chance of warps and twists.
"'It's a feature, not a bug"
what wood was this? how do you spell?
I'm very jealous of the surface grinder. I sometimes feel I spend more time making my metal stock flat than I spend grinding bevels.
How do you make it flat?
what does he wrap the blade in before heat treating
Heat treating foil, made of stainless steel. Very thin.
Why not drill a small countersink on the brass face where the rod will be peened giving it more surface area to spread and less worry when grinding the peened heads down.
ahhhh the folderol.......
I don't get why you don't make the edge go all the way to the end of the heel.. Beautiful work nonetheless!
niiiiice
And that's how it be
I literally always heat treat every blade before I grind my bevels.
makes sense that you wouldn't need to solder bolsters on stainless steel
you can. just another way to do it.
Great work Walter though the ugly German plunge line design is inherently useless on a kitchen knife you did a great job. How well does it cut carrots potatoes etc? As an apple isn't a good test. Keep up the great work.
"Very difficult to grind bezels while kicking yourself" I lol'd.
I’m glad you don’t advocate blowing one’s own head off. I know your slogan is “It’s not just a knife ...”, but man, it’s just a knife.
Sometimes it be dat way 😂😂
zaddy 😍
In this video I learned not to grind off your peen.
THIRD
i dont know why you dont get ahuge number of view may be because people wants you to make a katana sword from a plastic bag
Your son lol
Why do you make kitchen knifes when you can buy a whole pack for like 50 at walmart
somewhat pretentious...