STEEL STIGMA

   Today I have something special for you :) About two months ago my younger brother Kamil started to run his own blog about the stuff he makes. I have already showed you some of his knives on my blog: Kamil Woronowski Custom Knives. He is not making many knives lately but we are cooperating very often during my knifemaking and titanium CNC projects. He also makes a lot of his own stuff for fun and for our workshop: tools, machines, CNC machines and lately a custom jewellery. 

Finally he decided to put it in one place:

steelstigma.wordpress.com

I know my brother very well so I am pretty sure there will be a lot of original and interesting stuff;)

Mini titanium PRYBARS!

A couple of months ago, while making Titanium PRYBARS for Maciej, I came up with an idea to make a series of easy to carry mini prybars. Small enough so it could be carry on a keychain.

As always, I had problems with choosing the best design, so I made 10 pieces, each one different. They are in size of a large door key and there are generally two groups: 'helmets' and 'coffins' (and two pieces with colorful circles). All of them are made with 1.6 mm-thick Ti-6Al-4V titanium. I have used many different finishes on them: polishing, bead blasting, stonewashing, heat and voltage anodizing...
Some of them are still available.

 AVAILABLE

Oh! I also found some pictures from the making process

Victorinox Swiss Army Knife scales 2

   Finally I can show you some custom scales for Victorinox SAKs I made this year. I have finished only two pairs of scales in 2014 so far, but a few more sets are almost ready to go and will be finished next month.
I also put some pictures which I made during titanium and micarta finishing tests. It will certainly be useful in my future projects.

Here are two finished customizations I made this year.

Bantam ORION 

This is a special project made by request. Bantam with titanium 2,5mm stonewashed scales and blue anodized 'stars' creating Orion constellation. The scales have been milled in the inside to reduce weight.

SOLD

Recruit with brown micarta scales

SOLD

Titanium PRYBARS for Mirek

A couple of weeks ago I got request for another set of prybars - one with stonewash finish and second one anodized. The design we came up with has 1/4'' bit wrench, bottle opener and milled slots for better grip.

For the first time I used my new device in the workshop, a carbidizer that we have built with my brother by combining Dremel engraving tool and DC power supply of our production.We use broken 3mm diameter carbide cutters as a source of tungsten carbide. Can't wait to use it for carbidizing cutting edges on titanium knives.

SOLD

Making a Pioneer knife Part 2 - milling grinds and drilling

 Hello! It's been a while... I  finally found some time to show you second episode of making the Pioneer knife. Me and my brother have been thinking about making knife grinds with use of milling machine for a long long time. The most important question was: is it possible to make it with a compact milling machine and homemade CNC control. The answer is: Yes! One of the problem was to choose a proper milling cutter. We decided to use a bullnose cutter with tungsten steel round inserts (8mm diameter). We chose it because of its durability, long tool life and the smooth finish that can be made with cutter of such a shape. We have made grinds for four blanks with one set od inserts and it seems that it is possible to grind many, many more knives without changing the inserts. We had to make a special holder for the Pioneer blanks as you can see on the pictures. It helps us to fix the blanks to the table and to position the CNC machine. You can see that a lot of coolant is needed for the milling process. It took us one whole day to make grinds and holes on four blanks of Pioneer knife. Grinds are rought but all of them will be finished with belt grinder in the next episodes. Stay tuned and don't forget to watch the video :)