Knife Build #8

 

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.

I worked this knife with my step son-in-law, Max. He is going togive the knife to his mother for Christmas.

It will have handle scales from hard maple.

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 adhesive was then spread on to one side of the tang...then the knife tang and scales are clamped overnight.

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 I ran both shop air filter systems and wore a protective mask.

I washed off exposed skin after the sanding process.

Secondary grinding 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.

The bocote handle is the upper knife in the image.

 

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 each grit from 400x-600x-80x0 and then single saturations at 1000x and 1500x.

All of the sanding and finishing

The finish was extremely smooth.

 

 

 

 

 

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