Knives on The Stump VII

I almost totaly forgot about The Beans series I started last year. Foud them "at the bottom of the drawer" last weekend. The series was almost ready for heat treatment so I decided to finish it and send for a heat treatment. Two pieces in G10, two in micarta and two in wood: ironwood and thuja. Looks like this right now.

I also decided to work a little bit with another neck knife. This one I showed two weeks ago - the first knife cut with our CNC machine. Because of skeleton handle made with the cutter it is extremely light. Think I will add a orange G10 an titanium tubes for this one.

 

Kydex-leather combo sheath for a bushcraft knife

   Sometimes people ask me to make a sheath for their knives. I usually told them that I don't make a classical leather or kydex sheats because there are many great sheatmakers even in Poland who do that for a living and many of them are far way better than me. I also told them that there is one kind of sheath that I would like to do... my favourite leather-kydex combo. No everyone likes that combination of materials but I have just found a person who agreed to my kydex-leather proposition :)

   The sheat and a firestarter is made for a very popular in Poland bushcraft knife made by Mariusz "TLIM" Przybyłowski. This is a first sheath where I used Fiebing's Professional Oil Dye. It is saddle tan color. I also use for the first time a famous SNO SEAL leather protection to make it waterproof. Seeing results, I think that I will use Fiebings Professional Oil Dye and SNO SEAL as a standard in my sheats. It looks clean and proffesional, and what is more important - leather is well protected. Can't wait to make another one :) 

 

SOLD

Going CNC!

I have a very important announcement today :)

On the beginning of 2014 my brother and I decided to make CNC machine to be use in our knifemaking and other projects. The main reason for this was to be able to do knives without a workshop. I can visit my workshop only one, two times in a month but with the CNC machine, located near my house I will finally be able to go further with my knifemaking projects.
 My brother was a general constructor in the project as he has experience in building a CNC and is unstoppable when it comes to the construction of machines ;). As he suggested for a base element for it we have used a manual mill/drill machine. It was improved by addition of 3 stepper motors and an automatic numeric control which consists of controller for motors and PC with a freeware operating system Linux CNC. What is more we have made many many improvements like cooling system or dust suction. Of course it is easier to say than done but now, after half a year, the machine is ready for work!

The machine weights over 100kg and with a base we build for it it weights over 200kg and is strong enought to mill steel and titanium. We are steel making test and buy more and more equipoment for it but I can already show some results of our work. I hope to show more CNC creations in the near future.

   

Making a Victorinox SAK scales was one of the first task for the machine. We have used micarta and titanium. I have done a lot of custom SAK scales in the past and really like making them. Now with the CNC, results are much better than when I make it only by hand. Also it reminded me that years ago I made a tutorial "how to make scales for SAK" in polish language. I have to translate it and put on the blog as well as some pictures of the scales I made. Maybe it will inspire someone to make his own customized Swiss Army Knife.

   

We have made many tests in milling titanium as it is one of mine and my brother favourite materials. It is also a very difficult to mill.. A lot of coolant is needed to prevent titaniuym and cutter from 'burning''. We cut a bottle opener and a couple of two-finger neck knives from the drawings I made. Of course still a lot of work has to be done by hand to finish them, but the most time-consuming part of the job was done.

   

Our first knife! It was cut with the mill and we also use the machine to make a rough grind. We are really proud of it and it is a proof that the machine we have constructed, will be able to help us during the most important stages in making a knife. A huge success!