Knife Build #7

 

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.

After I gave the fourth knife to my daughter Aimee, she said that she and her children wanted to give a similar knife to the children's other grandfather. So I ordered up the kit and she and the kids and I made him a knife.

It has handle scales from the same piece of bocote than I used for knife #4.

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

 

 

First cut on the blank on the band saw.
Splitting the blank in half.
Top view of blank.
The blade was covered in tape for protection. The blade comes incredibly sharp.

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 Grands, Asa and Silas, gear up for the epoxy session with their protective gloves.
Asa epoxies the tang...
Silas finishes the application...then the unit was clamped together.
The knife blank after the removal of the clamps ...ready for grinding...

Sanding

 

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

 

 

The bocote dust is fairly caustic so we ran both shop air filter systems and wore protective masks.

Secondary grinding the pins was done on a 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.

Here Silas is at the MFT3 table working theRotex 90 orbital sander with 120x.

 

 

Asa then worked up to 320 x.
Here is an image of the bocote after the grinding and sanding.

A view of the bottom of the tang and scales.

The unit is now ready for the application of the finish.

Finishing

The finishing cycle consisted of multiple coats of teak oil and then Waterlox wiping varnish.

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

Single saturations and rub-ins were done at each grit at 800x, 1000x and 1500x.

Here Silas is applying the teak oil to the bocote handle.

 

He totally saturated the wood.
And then he sanded it dry with 1000x.
Asa then saturated the bocote a second time...
And then she finished the sanding with 1500x.
The teak oil-soaked handle will now dry for a couple of days and then several coats of Waterlox wiping varnish will be applied to toughen it up.
After the Waterlox...a top view of some nice grain pattern...
All the grain smoothed out nicely...
Nice look and feel...

 

 

 

 

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