Knife Build #14

 

I ordered this Hock Paring Knife Kit from Hock Tools.

The 3.5 inch paring knife kit consists of a wonderful Hock blade and the necessary pins. The kit is Model #KP350.

This knife is for my Uncle Bob and Aunt Jerry Ann,

It will have handle scales from cocobolo.

For the most part, all of the steps in this process are identical to the first knife.

The entire knife 1 build process can be seen here.

 

Info about knife kits is available at Hock site

 

 

 

Wood Selection and Scale Prep

The #KP350 blade is made from high-carbon tool steel.

It was forged in France and sharpened by Ron in California.

PDF Hock Knife Kit Instructions

 

 

Wood selection: Cocobolo

Dalbergia retusa

Central America

More info about cocobolo here.

The cocobolo blank for the scales.

This knife is part of a group of six that are all concurrent builds.

The scales will be from cocobolo, purpleheart and redheart.

The blade was covered in tape for protection. The blade comes incredibly sharp.
Blades wrapped for safety and the scales are assisgned.
After the holes were drilled into the blank, the front ends were rounded with a scoll saw in the fret jig...
...then the round-over was cleaned-up with a rasp.

The blank was ripped into two scales at the bandsaw.

A dry fit of the blade, the scales, and the pins...ready for epoxy.

Epoxy Setup

 

The inside surfaces of the scales and the tang of the blade were sanded to 150x to provide a better adhesion surface.

Then the mating surfaces and the pins were cleaned with acetone.

I chose a strong, water-resitant epoxy adhesive, Devcon 2 Ton® Epoxy...comes in two 4.5 oz. bottles.
To mix...equal dollops of the resin and the hardener were squeezed out.
then mixed...
The adhesive was then spread on to one side of the tang...then the knife tang and scales are clamped overnight.
Tang, pins, and scales epoxied...clamped up with Bessys...
After glue-up...ready for grinding and sanding.

Sanding

 

After glue up, the next phase was the grinding of the wood and the metal which was done on a belt sander with 80x paper.

I try to avoid any dust so I ran both shop air filter systems and wore a protective mask.

In the case of cocobolo, it is fairly caustic and I must be extra cautious.

 

Here is the knife after the grind down.

Secondary grinding of the pins was done on the 1 x 30 belt sander with 80x paper.

Further removal of metal and wood was done with the Rotex 90 sander with 40x paper.

 

After all the metal and wood was taken down to proper size, the grits were progressed on the Rotex 90 from 40x-80x-120x-220x-320x-400x.

Finishing

The finishing cycle consisted of multiple coats of Waterlox wiping varnish.

Each coat was saturated and then dried using wet/dry sandpaper.

Two saturations and rub-ins were done at 400x and 600xand then single saturations at 800x, 1000x and 1500x.

 

All of the sanding and finishing is complete in this image.

 

The finish was extremely smooth.

 

 

 

 

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