Best "how to" video I've ever seen. I've been making automatics for 40 years. What makes your video good is your honesty and understanding of geometric relationships in this seemingly simple little "machine". I've seen people make mistakes and not catch them or preform complex procedures for simple solutions. You're on the right track and your knives will be winners!
Dear Mike, just a few thoughts on the stop pin track: When I built my first Flipper folder two years ago, under the insruction and help from the talented Czech knivemaker Milos Kislinger, we discussed the topic a while. Obviously, only two positions for the stop pin really matter, the closed stop and (more important) the location in the open / locked position. A tight fit in radius for those two positions helps to minimize wear on the stop pin or track (through more contact area you get minimized surface pressure). For the travel between those two relevant positions, a tight fit is not necessary at all, and as you already learned on the hard way, it likely causes trouble if the fit is too tight. So the easy way would be to drill/ream the two relevant positions with a tight tolerance for your stop pin and then mill out the track in between those two positions, with a noticeably oversized endmill. When you make sure to mill away only half of the boreholes (basically keeping a 49% half-moon untouched on each side of the track), the opened and closed position will be spot-on while the track in between is wide enough to avoid any unnecessary friction... Hope you get what I mean (it's hard to explain for me) and maybe this might even help you out to speed up production. Of course this is only one possible approach to compensate problematic tolerances in your machining equipment and it's possible that there are dozends of more elegant ways to solve the problem. Since you are a much more experienced and skilled knivemaker than I am, I'm sure you'll come up with a decent solution, soon. Best regards, Timo
Seems like my comment above is mostly obsolete, I've just seen your #2 video from this series. As far as I understood, you're already doing it by the method that I'd suggest, apart from that it seems you dive into the previously drilled holes with the end-mill instead of leaving the ends of the boreholes untouched... So maybe just forget my comment... =)
Perfect for me too! We can learn together then as I am recording these as I go and figure it out. My goal is not only to have a knife I'm happy with at the end of this, but to have a bunch of makers out there making the leap into folders as well!
We have the same issue with the tracks not being perfectly concentric with the pivot. One solution my father came up with was to use a jig that we can mount the knife handle to via the pivot pin. The handle will be free floating and pivot on the pivot pin but since the pin fit is tight it shouldn't rock back and forth. Now or maybe before you secure the handle down, put the blade on and locate the start of your arc path. Now you can manually swing the handle back and forth to make your arc in the handle. Set up some stop pins so that you can't over extend the arc on either side. So you don't need a rotary table or some fancy fixture. Just attach your handle to the fixture via pivot pin and limit the rotation somehow, this will be very repeatable. I hope I explained that well. I don't think you explained how you were cutting them now to make them repeatable so I figured I would offer this up. good luck, everything looks great.
Thank you very much Steve. I am currently using a rotary table but I did not have a digital readout on the mill. I went out and bought a cheap model which works pretty well and I was able to get much better results, Part 2 of this series is all about how I'm milling out the track for the stop pin. Hopefully that will give you a better idea about what I'm trying to explain here. The method you recommend is very similar to the method I used. Thank you for the help!
Looks like you have a lot of talent. Hopefully you can get it figured out. I know expensive machinery would make life a lot easier. Personally, I'm nowhere near the point of even beginning to contemplate a CNC machine or something like that though lol... Take care and thanks for the vids
Nice talk man, I'm making some knives myself with basically a home made forge, an anglegrinder, files and sandpaper. I just started making my first folder. I'm learning as I go and it's a lot of fun and a great challenge to overcome to make it work properly.
Hey Mike, I don't know a thing about making knives but I have made 1000s of parts that had to be within .002 thousands and what we had to do was establish repeatabilyty. I don't know exactly what type of mill you have but if you set up your blades in your vice jaws have a stop set up on table making sure all your parts are exact. I mean to the .0001, precise. Instead of waiting for u to get money for a CNC maybe a lower cost Digital readout for your Mill would do the job. Course you're the boss that determines if u can mount a digital readout on your Mill. Hope you understand what I'm trying to explain. Like I said i never made a knife that's your Dept. Not judging at all, good luck. I enjoy your videos much...
I have a cheap grizzly mill with an equally cheap digital readout that works surprisingly well and was the best upgrade I ever got! Mix that with the fact that I'm no machinist and its no wonder the results I got were not what I was hoping for. I know it can be done, but with my current skill level on a manual mill, it has proven to be far more difficult and time consuming than I expected. I am however, eager to learn and I've noticed a significant increase in progress since I first bought the mill. Repeatability is by far the most challenging thing for me at the moment. Thanks for the help and for watching Joe!
Here's an idea. For the majority of the handle, use whatever material you're using. But for the locking section if the handle, cut away a portion if its thickness for a liner of the same thickness as the mill cuts are deep. That way, not only are bearing surfaces conceivably replaceable, but the entirety of lock mechanism paths could be cut for you by the "water jet guy." And if you're into the whole one-peice, eliminate unnecesary screws thing, the liner could slide into the rest of the handle and be prevented from sliding out by the one center axis pin. If the water jet cuts accurately enough, that's hours of hand cutting and human error eliminated, while maybe improving your wearing surfaces immensely. then you'd be able to spend your time doing fancy filework and checkering and stuff.
The first thing that I noticed was...you are out of paper towels, sorry but I just couldn't help myself 😂...ok back to your video. I can't wait to watch this process and see how it is dome correctly.
Awesome stuff. Been away for a while and just catching up on some youtube video's I need to watch and seen this series. Super excited to watch the next installment. Love these types of videos. Great work Mike.
Mike great series idea---I'll definitely be following along. One off topic question, on your little tabletop bandsaw, what width blade do you run. I've got a similar sized Rikon bandsaw, and have a little difficulty following curves in a cut--someone told me it was easier to follow curves with a narrower blade--just trying to figure out what folks say who have one.Thanks--Don
Congratulations your products are great. I would like to know what material the grips are made of if it is stainless or another metal. Thank you very much in advance, best regards, Luis Constantino
Building your own small CNC machine actually isn't difficult anymore. Idk if there's any exceptionally easy avenue to learn the stuff, but the parts required to be able to basically be able to plug right into your laptop are now readily available and not very expensive either.
I just came across these videos and I have the itch to make one now. I know you were talking about geometry being a big part of whether the knife will work or not. Can you point me in the right direction to research this? My friend has a cnc I can use so I was planning on prototyping in aluminum first, but I'd like to spend most of my time prototyping in CAD instead of making something that doesn't work. Thanks!
Hi Mike. My first view of any of your videos. The question that immediately hit me, while admiring your great looking knife design, was, why not do away with all of the needless, and not to mention weaker, pivot and locking mechanism and go to a lock back design?
maybe you tried this but at roughly 6:00 you brought up the issue of the corners sticking in the lock up, why not round that corner where the stop bar doesn't need to engage? i may have misunderstood the issue as well.
Could you maybe try dying a piece of 1/8th inch round file and temporarily screwing in? It might be an easy way to bore out the track in a few minutes and save you from worrying about tolerances from the water jet.
The problem is the whole cutting setup I use is misaligned. I could get it to work, but at my skill level it just takes way too much time to get mediocre results with the machine I have.
when you were talking about the stopping pins at 4 minute in i noticed you had them on both sides, why not just have it on one side, then it would be easier :)
I just saw your video first time. I guess I am really late to the party and you have probably already got the nicer equipment, but there is a simple solution for people that don't yet have all the tools? get a piece of wood. mark a spot to drill for your pivot pin. then carefully measure and mark the distance to the center of your channel. drill a whole on your pivot pin mark. carefully clamp the wood on top of your drill press so that your drill bit is lined up with the mark for your channel. then put your knife blank on top of the wood and put the pivot pin through your blade into the pivot pin hole in the wood. now you are ready to start cutting the channel. only take off a small amount at a time or the chatter will push the drill bit out of position
As long as you have 2 points that wont move or your vice jaw that sets away from u ok, and make a stop that clamps to the table where u can slip ina blank exactly the same way every time. Lock everything down and use a edge finder to measure over exactly from the edge your measuring from to the edge of hold minus half the hole size to be exact. Use a exact reading set of calipers to measure U can get pretty exact if alls the same. Indicate the solid jaw make sure that is zeroed out. Solid jaw -= the jaw that does not move. Your doing great actually. Your pickey so u will do great.
Hey there! What i see from my position looks great! hope u keep going on and maybe a knife will make it's way to me to Germany! P.s.sry for my bad english Greetings Kai
Knew u were from NY!!! doesn't it suck knowing the knives u make can't even be carried in our state!!! I wanna get into knife making not really for business more for a hobby, why did u start with flippers and folders instead of fixed? Wouldn't fixed be easier? I'm new to your channel and maybe I missed the fixed blades anyway keep up the good work man happy to see fellow NYer making blades even if we can't "carry" em
Hi Mike, I have a few points or more precisely questions I need to ask you. I'm a woodworker and more. You see how wordy I can get. Do you have an email where I can ask my questions ?
U absolutely need that readout, without it u couldn't do the close work U need. Do u have a school or community college u can take a short machinist class? Or find a machinist u can ask questions to close by, has to be some guy can show u stuff. I would if i was close. Just to teach u what I know
I wish there was a local class to learn this but unfortunately there are none near by. I almost took a job at a machine shop to learn the trade but I would be taking a massive pay cut that I just could not afford. I'm still keeping my eyes open to see if a class or better paying shop position pops up.
Hey sir! Im very inspired but i need your templates please sir i wanna make one myself i really need it sir if you can please mail me or take your time to reply on my comment
