Next knife

I just thought I would put up my virtual prototype and try to get some feed back on my design. The slot is made to hold a 1/4" firesteel. When I saw the sparky knife it kind of bummed me out since I thought I had this great idea but you can't always be first. Anyway I didn't think the sparky has a clean enough design for me so I am going to give this a shot. I am also not sure if I could use the sparky when my hands were so cold that the fire was literally a lifesaver.




I am thinking the handles can be orange G10 material or maybe some dense wood. I know I don't want to mix natural and man-made and I have doubts about wood holding up on the teardrop shapes. Bone, antler? My other option is to use 3/16 material for the blade and mill a groove on the scales so I could still use a 1/4 diameter rod. If you look at the sharp end of the tear drop you can see the hole where I plan to pin it for strength. The more I look at it the more I want it to be one piece instead of two slabs, edit, think, edit, think, it never ends.





Like I said I want feedback so please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,
kwog

Bushcraft knife

Here is the second knife I made. It's made from the same 1080 series steel from the paper cutter blade. Same process, trace over jpg image in Autocad and laser cut. I did not take any in-process pictures this time, sorry. The heat-treat on this was attempted with a propane torch first, didn't work. The heat-treat that worked was done in a bbq grill with a 7" tornado fan blowing up from the bottom. These are all cell-phone pictures as I'm sure you can tell. I'm in a run of bad camera-luck lately.






I ground the blade a little deeper than I wanted but I had to remove a lot of material to get the bevel flat. The bevel on this blade runs all the way up to the blade. It's like a really high grind scandi, which did not seem durable at this angle so I was forced to go with a secondary bevel. The high grind was done by hand on a stone, that took forever. I cut myself multiple times and my hands ached, I literally spent 10 hrs easily on this alone. This knife was not hot enough on my first quench so I had to remove the scales and do it again, I am sure that's something I will not let happen again. I was in such a hurry to get the handle done that proper testing for hardness was overlooked.




The handle is oak, held on with epoxy and pinned with poplar. I hope it holds up since that poplar seems pretty weak. I darkened the wood lightly with a torch then wiped on a light coat of wax. I have some kydex on the way but I plan to attempt a leather sheath after that. After I quenched this blade I decided that I like the scale so I left a hint on the blade.



This blade is about 3" in length if you measure the cutting edge 7" overall. I left the blade thick and dull past the handle so I could put my finger there and to help it "lock" into a future sheath. Yes this is a small handle, I ran into some trouble with cracking and had to grind it down. Luckily for me I have woman's hands so the handle is big enough.

Making of the Kwog kukri

Well I had been looking on ebay for some time now and reading on what makes a good kukri. It seems to be hit and miss on quality from ebay and the shipping is what the knife is worth. I also was not ready to spend the money on well known manufacturer's product and I would have not had the enjoyment of making one myself.

After spending time reading reviews of various kinds I found that the Cold Steel Kukri was well liked for the price. I went to their website and saved a photo of their knifes profile. This was then inserted into Autocad and I drew over the top of it. I got a pretty close match.


It was time to find some steel. I had planned to just use some of whatever scrap I could find around the shop, but these had such low carbon content that they would not even harden. About two years ago they were throwing out this huge paper cutter and I took the blade out of the trash, I printed the knife full size and it barely fit! Blade is 0.150" thick and pretty heavy. Not sure what kind of steel this is but it should be some sort of tool steel. A cheap Cold Steel kukri is 0.108" thick.
OK, lets cut it out. Grinding and grinding. This thing looks a little too pirate for me so I think I will remove a little of the guards. I decided to go with a convex grind on the thick part of the blade where I will be chopping. The part near the handle will have a Scandi grind.

I need a handle, this twisted piece of oak I stomped off a pallet should do right? Oak's good stuff isn't it?Now were getting somewhere! It's looking pretty raw now.

More grinding and its time to make some smoke. Cherry the cutting edge + 3/4 in with a torch and dunk in oil, Stinky. Shouldn't have used a pan that held rotten smelling coolant from the mill. Refine the handles shape some more then its time for some brass pins. The pirate effect has been fixed.







This is where everything went wrong. I had everything in place and cracked the handle installing the last pin. Back to the drawing board on wood. Wood is not my thing so I just decided to laser cut the profile out of 1/4" aluminum plates.









After lots of wire wheel and sanding I am now to this stage. Time to elbow grease this thing. I got this blade so friggin hard. It takes forever to sharpen. The Convex just doesn't feel that sharp with your finger, but seems to make a good notch in a tree. The handle is actually very comfortable. It is contoured to fit my hand, notice the groove where my thumb comes over the top and the depression where my fingers sit on the opposite side at the bottom. As long as I don't lick it in the winter this handle should be just fine. I'm pretty happy for my first knife build. I have access to machines that made it go a lot faster than most people could do it but I think anybody could do this with some power tools. Still undecided on clearcoat or gun blue for a finish, let me know what you think, leaning toward blue.

HOMEMADE CAMP STOVE TEST

GEODE STATE PARK CAMPING TRIP- STOVE TEST

Well here is the trial run of my version of the honey stove and the infamous Wal-mart grease pot. I have been browsing the lightweight backpacking websites and it started with the alcohol stove bug. I have always been a borderline firebug and these little stoves are fun to make and play with. So I made a few from pop cans, here is one of my first ones.

After seeing that these little pop can style

stoves aren't practical for group cooking. I decided that the honey stove was something I could easily copy and possibly improve upon. My first build was rather sloppy fitting and seemed to want to rattle around and fall apart. I had made the interlocking slots too wide and the inner panels too small. Putting a pot on this thing would have been a disaster. Here are some of the first panels I made.

I altered the slots and made the inner panels bigger. This made assembly a little tougher but the stove would now work. Here it is in use, frying fish.

This version is all 20g stainless, which is heavier than the original honey stove but I'm car camping with the family so weight does not matter to me. If you notice that is the current version of the Wal-mart grease pot which now has a riveted handle. It is made by IMUSA which is not made in the USA but nice try China. My buddy was in charge of bringing the cast iron skillet, he did bring it to my house but we left it in my kitchen. Looks like we are cooking fish in the grease pot! I used a can opener to cut the rolled lip of the strainer plate and it was attached to the loop to lift out the fish. Fish cooked in about 1 minute, this thing is very hot!

This little stove performed perfectly and was used to cook eggs in the morning also. I was very surprised at how easy it was to remove the eggs from this. I had used the alcohol stove before and did not use it this time. I filled the top dish twice with a little pool of alcohol but it did not prime since all the heat was going straight up, these things don't prime unless you get fire around the bottom. There was plenty of fuel in the form of sticks all around me so I just used wood this time.

When I test fit the alcohol ring, the one with the big round hole in it I realized this does nothing other than center the alcohol stove. It is just extra weight that does nothing. In the future I plan to test a stove with some aluminum panels and some 26g panels to see if the 20g is even necessary. Maybe some high-temp paint and mild steel will survive. I have priced some titanium sheet and boy is it expensive, I see no reason for me to mess with that unless people start beating down my door for them. One other thing I feel needs addressed is that the ashes build up under the stove slowing decreasing air flow and lowering heat output. I plan to address this by raising the clearance to the ground, I may raise the rack height 1/4" or so also.

If someone knows the easy way to take the black soot of your pots let me know since I have only been able to blacken my hands and not change the look of the pots much. I have heard that putting dish soap on before works, but I am past that point right now.

We camped at Geode State park in Iowa which is a short drive from home. Campsite security was handled by Diesel, he is very intimidating as you can see from this photo.