Connecting the UK & Ireland’s knife makers to the rest of the world! The UK Bladeshow is a channel created and designed to help new, amateur and hobbyist knife makers (or just to release that inner knife maker in you) level up their game by creating inspiring knife-making videos, pro tips and tricks on knife making, a day in the life of other knife makers (Makers Gonna Make), and many other helpful and educational videos.
Some of the videos we showcase are users of chef knives, culinary knives, utility knives, bushcraft knives, axe throwers, and everything in between!
I enjoy hand sanding, I use Rhynowet redline sandpaper. After 400 grit I handsand towards myself. I use a brass flat bar with a 45⁰ angle and a few different degrees with wood and a leather backing on it. Good video 😊
So... maybe not forum to ask this. But metallurgist and damascus. Ive done 2 blades in damascus. 1 52 layers. The other 128 layers. Both have had issues with a blotchy pattern at etch. What i have found through articles and forums is they didnt fully harden. First one probably. Second one i checked with hrc test files. 60hrc all the way across. Now, if i anneal at about 1700F (heat and bury in sand and allow to cool), then requench, the pattern is visible fully in the etch. Im thinking that maybe my normalization isnt allowing the grain to relax fully and therefore crystallize properly in the quench bringing the bold pattern out, but im new to this whole thing. Only about 7 months into forging, so its more guesses than education. Any thoughts? 1095/15n20. Parks 50 oil. Ferric chloride etch. 4:1 ratio 10 mins soaks.
Geometry is more important than heat treatment without question. With that being said I just had a custom made of CPM-Cruwear at 65-66hrc with 12thou tip tapered to 22thou at the heal of the blade. The edge retention crazy.
If I'm using my belt sander up to 400 grit, when I start hand sanding should I start at a 400 grit or should I start at a lower grit, maybe the 240 grit and then work back up again? Does lowering the hand sanding grit and working up make it easier, or would it just add an extra step?
I would have stated the distinction between low-carbon stainless steel and high-carbon stainless steel, so we will not have people who buy their low carbon stainless knives, 5 for 20€ from supermarket, thinking their knife is better than a carbon steel knife. Because stainless steel starts being better than carbon steel at the same carbon content, and 90% of the stainless steel knives you find in people's home and in most shops don't even come lose to 0.5% carbon.
I learn more from the UK Blade-show videos than any other. Great detail, clearly explained and practical every time. Thank you so much for making them!
Do you think there’s any advantage to wet sanding, like less wear on the abrasive or build up of debris over the grit? Most of those silicon carbide papers are known as wet& dry paper.
If the abrasive + paper combination permits it then yes. Most silicon carbide are usable for wet use, as you’ve mentioned, why it’s called “wet and dry”. The advantage is it will prevent heating the surface and will also prolong the life of the abrasive at the same time.
Thanks vor sharing your method and confirming mine. I make knives for 16 years now and after a lot of trials and errors I do more or less the same. I use hard wood sticks but no cork backing (yet). I will add that. I am using more grids. For kitchen knives I like to use niobium alloyed steels. Those a quite tricky to finish and I think adding more grids speeds up my overall time. When I want an K800 satin finish, I sand to K800 then buff the blade and then back to K800. What I find really important is keeping my work surface clean. It happened too often that a leftover corn from a course grid ruined the surface of a finer grid. Did I say that I actually kind of like hand sanding. Yes it’s a repetitive / „stupid“ workut somehow it clears my mind and I get some of my best ideas while hand sanding.
yeah that part about coarser grains still on is a thing I have had a few times too, making knives for 4 years or so and I always wet sand, with a window/windex spray bottle, then wipe off everything very well after 1 grit, then wipe the little clamp system I have for it too, so it won't scratch the bottom when you do the second side. That way in union with about the same steps as in this video, most to 600 grit for simple finish and 1200 for satin with finish off single strokes of 1000. I do use a small wooden block, but I think I will use this stick method and see how that goes, it seems to be more economically in paper use and time. Mirror polish is 2k grit then buff, I don't like to make knives that have such a super high finish that people won't use it. I make them to be beaten up in the bush on vacations, trails etc or in the kitchen, at home or at work. Show knives for now are not my thing. No to say I can't enjoy a super high end finish on a blade, but just not my thing.
@@pr0faker I never mirror finish my blades. Mainly for two reasons: 1. I’m too „lazy“ to go through the effort. 2. For the same reason you have. I think a mirror finish makes a blade unusable. The first use (other than cutting butter) will scratch the surface and will ruin the look and voids all the effort that went into creating it. I want my knives to be used too.
I bloody hate hand sanding, I even bought a buffer but found that I ended up damaging my knives more using it so that got sold real quick. I'll be honest I don't make knives very often now and if I'm honest hate making them and slowly selling off all my gear but still like to see Graham share his knowledge despite no interest in it....he is a legend in his own right.
Most people who hate hand sanding usually stop at 120grit on the machine and given most people who do a lot of knife making have variable speed grinders its a waste of time to stop there. Drop the speed down and use finishing belts. Finishing belts are almost universally compounds of oxides and the trick with those is that don't get them wet, so if you dip to cool off, wipe the metal with a cloth to remove the water, it doesn't have to be bone dry, just not soaked. You can also tune them up a bit with a cheap, rough diamond stone to clear away glazing and reveal fresh abrasives. A30 is 'ok' but I tend to stop at A45 which is around the 350-400grit mark The belts are expensive but they do tend to last quite a while, most are low-med pressure, medium speed so as long as you're not expecting them to cut like your lower grit ceramics it'll knock a lot of hand sanding off your time. Just some final 'tips' I leave a fairly broad, blunt area of 'little bit extra' where the tip will be throughout the machine-grinding process, its only when I'm done on the finishing belts will I go back in and cut the tip in to how I want it. That way it doesn't matter if that area gets rounded over, toasted or a bit chewed on during the edge geometry forming and it will be needle sharp. Also if you're going to finer grits and have the knife on a backing plate when its clamped down, cover it over in a layer of masking tape so if it wiggles around on the plate with a bit of grit underneath it, its not going to chew up your nicely sanded side.
Learning how to finish a clean A45 if a whole skill to learn itself haha. Switching to Duragold for everything 800 and under was the biggest game changer for me. I was using 3m before that, and the difference is remarkable. I don't hate hand sanding anymore.
Very interesting . . . I have one more question. - How & to what depth are base metal atomic structures are altered with abrasives ? Any thoughts or insight into this will be greatly appreciated.
Later he was saying that during grinding/sanding you get work hardening at the surface. I believe that’s what he was referring to in the early part of the video.
@@joshcarter-com Work hardening is just distortion of the molecular structure of the material due to mechanical distortion, just the same as a hammer mark but on a microscopic scale. The finer the abrasive the shallower the distortion. For a true mirror finish all the distortion needs to be removed.
@@joshcarter-com My limited understanding of work hardening is that atomic structures of metallic elements rearranged, cracked or broken. Micrographs reveal carbon elements are often cracked which would imply lower strength . . . but we know from testing metallic strength increases by some measurements. This would indicate some other metallic elements are strengthened. This may also have something to do with the boarder regions of the atomic structures of metallic elements. - Any thoughts or further insight into this will be greatly appreciated.
@@clarkeknives4159 Any insights as to how work hardening increases the strength of metallic structures at a molecular level ? Applying this knowledge to sharpening methods & techniques may yield stronger & /or more durable cutting edges. - Any thoughts or further insight into this will be greatly appreciated.
I sometime jump to higher grid just to check the surface geometry. And that joke is spot on. The realization that you have to go back several grids and do it all again.
Today I am a Knife Maker Egg...tomorrow a Chicken. This level of learning helps me reach maturity more rapidly; after all, we - as a group - all want to be Chickens as soon as possible. Ergo, if I had forty hats I would take them all off to you...thank you. (south Florida).
You're welcome. I was given so much help on my journey to becoming a reasonable knife maker that I want to pass on as much as I can whilst I'm still able 😊😊😊😊
Fascinating to listen to em. But positively useless. I came to figure out which metal to use for my next knife and ended up feeling like I just read an encyclopaedia.
