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
|
|
The #KP350 blade is made from high-carbon tool steel. It was forged in France and sharpened by Ron in California. |
|
|
|
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. |
|
|
|
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... |
|
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. |
|
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... |