Tristone Bladesmithing WIP Cont'd

Would love to be in on this too if it happens. Canberra here.

 

I was going to do an international and domestic pass around. I might send both knives out and about. I will start a new thread for these knives and the passaround.

 

I have unintentionally omitted the weight of these knives as well. I cannot weight the ones I have already sent however I do have the weight in grams of the three knives that didn't sell. The balane point is approx 25mm in front of the ferrule where I pinch grip my knives, so when I use them it feels perfectly balanced.

I have also reduced the price in my "Mans Man" knife, the copper bolster and G10 blade as it is a working one and it is heavier than my other kitchen knives. The handle definitely sits in your hand and feels like it wants you to know it is there. The revised price is $950 including international shipping and insurance.

Please excuse the crap phone photos, but it does get the point across. None of my 245mm chef knives weigh more than 190grams, the copper bolster knife weighs 280grams.

Thanks for looking,

Chadd.

 

I really love that copper knife. And if i wasn't on a forced hiatus by the wife i would be seriously looking to pull the trigger.

 

Chadd, what is heel height of the copper knife and where is the balance point in a pinch grip?

Thanks.

Ferry

 

The blade length in a straight line is 208mm, the height at the heel is 49.5mm.

I took a picture to show the balance point of the knine, I do not deny this knife is heavy and the balance point further back than I would prefer. It does not feel clumsy in the hand though, more just sits in it.

Thanks for looking,

Chadd.

 

Few measurements on one of my knives. We are looking at a zero grind so about 2mm behind the edge is 0.2mm thick.

Comments welcome.

Regards,

Chadd

 

More Wip Pics,

S35VN hunter
S35VN steaking knife
Couple of custom orders in RWL34 and Niolox

 

I love the WIPS so much. I guess as a frustrated craftsmen getting to see the projects come together is so much fun.

 

Since January I have been renovating my house with my dad between shift work. Combine this with getting a new puppy, the wife starting University and life in general, getting knives out the door, or even getting progress on some of my knives has been next to non existent.

Luckily I have some patient customers who were willing to wait for some knives and finally I have been able to make some progress.

I'll attach a few pics of where I am up to in the next few posts! Exciting times as well for those customers as I have been trialling a new grind. I have loaned a blade out to another member on here for some feedback which has come back quite positive.

I have conducted comparison tests, worked with what I have learnt and made a baseline blade geometry design that I am satisfied with. I am quite happy with and it will become my new benchmark, which will stay the case until I do more testing with a 48" and 72" radius platen I will be getting in the next couple of months.

Regards,

Chadd

 

The top blade in the above post is a 250mm bull nose butchers knife in S35VN at 800grit polish.

The second is a 284mm RWL34 gyuto with my glass finish mirror polish. This blade sports the new grind, addressing drag and food release.

I have a 240mm rwl34 gyuto with the same polish on the way with the same grind. So keep your eyes peeled.

Regards,

Chadd.

 

Nice to see you QC at work inspecting the blades

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

Always quality checking brother! I'm just glad to be back in the shop making knives

 

G'day Gents,

It has been brought to my attention that I have been absent from this forum for a while now! Well I am going to rectify this as it was not for lack of making knives. Below is a mix of mid-construction knives for the Sydney Knife show. There is a mixture of RWL34 blades, AEBL blades and R2/SG2 San Mai in 210 and 240/245mm Gyutos and a couple Masamoto KS profiled blades.

I have conducted some testing on the SG2/R2 steel and have been revising my heat treatment for my purposes. So far I am quite happy with the performance of the R2/SG2 core steel. I will likely be making this a regular addition to my line up.

As you can tell by the full tang construction of a few Gyutos I have been making amends to the previous full tang construction knife I produce in the past. After hardness testing these tangs will also be tapered, which not only reduces weight but I feel is more appropriate of a high quality custom made blade.

I will update this thread with details of the builds, feel free to help me decide on what handle materials you would like to see on both the full tang and WA handle blades.

Regards,

Chadd.

 

So whilst getting ready for the knife show it became apparent I would need a better method of holding all my handles together whilst the 2 part epoxy set over 24 hours. I figured I could also make this work for holding the blades into the handle under pressure whilst the epoxy sits, so I do not need to worry about movement.

So I made the following little "Tristone Bladesmthing Wa Handle Jig of Glory!" as depicted below. It would not be a proper jig if I did not christen it with some sweet sweet handle making efforts. What you can see is a 120mm black buffalo/snakewood handle for an SG2 195mm x 52mm Gyuto, and a Black buffalo horn/Buckeye Burl handle for a 255mm Masamoto KS profile RWL34 blade. Plenty more to go! And these are just the WA handles..

 

Here is a sneak peak at some blades I have polished and taped up for the Sydney International Knife Show. A mix of AEBL/RWL34 full tangs (SG2 in the works) and an assortment of SG2/RWL34/AEBL WA Gyutos in different sizes.

 

So, SG2 is a bit of a **********. Turns out my HT methods cause so much stress to the steel that I am having issues keeping the core and the layers in one piece. I also had my core samples rockwell tested. Below is a story of my experiences so far.

Initially I obtained eight pieces of SG2/R2 core laminate from Knives and Stones.


Then they got wrapped up in some pretty little bags before they got a thermal spa treatment.


After removal from the packet, the outside layer showed some interesting snakewood patterns that purely relate to the process of squishing the blades between plates to quench.



After the heat treatment phase, I had three temperatures I was interested in testing as part of my R&D stage I use when working with any new steel.


Suprisingly there was a difference in the way the core steel and laminate performed at different temperatures, which was interesting as there was definately a sweet spot. After checking these pieces of chipping and other issues, I rockwell tested the core on three different pieces. The results, depending on the HT cycle ranged from a consistent 61.5, 62.5-63 and 63-63.5. My personal opinion is that this steel when run over 63HRC gets too chippy.



Here are two unrelated testings of my RWL34 Heat treatment at final polish(KS Gyuto) and pre grind(Both tempered), to ensure I am still hitting my desired marks repeatedly. In my opinion RWL34 at these hardnesses performs fantastically, perhaps the 64HRC is stretching it a bit though an I will dial it back 1- 0.5points in the future though.


Now that I was armed with my findings I went on to make full sized knives from SG2 at my two designated Hardnesses (61.5 and 62.5-63HRC). Staying true to the ol' saying, "No pain no gain" i suffered horrendously on the larger blades. I had two blades completely fail due to splitting, and another two with minor issues I could grind past. Here is one of those split blades.



On the other blades I did have success though, and after grinding them and polishing them to the desired level of convexity I gave them a test run.





I have since lost two more SG2 blades from this batch whilst they were at 95% completion, one because of tang tapering issues (That is now a 195mm Hidden tang) and the other 210 because whilst I had it in the etchant I had the tang issues on the other blade, lost my ********, forgot about it and didn't remember until the following day:

Suffice to say I was not a happy camper as this knife was fully polished, finished and just needed a handle.

As all things go, so does the story of my SG2 knives. I have luckily been supplied with five more billets of this steel to try address the aforementioned issues and hopefully (This time) I will have a full serviceable batch of knives ready to rock and roll. Wish me luck. Also I will be in possession of a 36", 48" and 72" radius platen for putting in S grinds on the new SG2 blades. Pretty excited about that!



I hope you all enjoyed the adventure as much as I did. So much more to go and to do!

Take care,

Chadd.

 

Thanks Chadd. Very enjoyable. beautiful knives

 

Awesome post , thank Chadd