Knifemaker Build-Off 2011 (Day 1)

For the past few years I have been organizing a friendly knifemaking competition on the Custom Knives and Guns Forum.

The rules are simple: 2 knifemakers compete against each other, making a knife in 5 days and documenting the process on the forum. The competition is great as it pushes the makers to make new models and try new things they haven't done before, and it gives the collectors an inside view of the making process and the shops.

Yesterday I started my competition against German knifemaker Uli Hennicke.

So I am supposed to start at 9am EST.... but I can't start right away... I have been thinking about this Build-Off since the first of the year, going through materials selection, designs and how I wanted to put everything together. The way I work is I go through a development process in my mind, then I start doodling and rough draft. Most of the time the rough draft is about 80% there. I had a design set but something did not feel right with me; the more I looked at it the more I felt it was not translating my thoughts and feelings. To many it would look just fine but I just wasn't happy with it.

At the last minute I went back to the drawing board. This was a good and bad thing: Good is that I believe the second drawing flows a lot smoother. I took elements from my past, polished it and upgraded it for today's knife collectors. The bad part about this is that I have been working the past 3 days on making patterns and I am not done. I will be spending part of today completing the patterns, fixturing and tooling. The reason why I spend so much time on these patterns is that it makes the knifemaking process a lot smoother and more precise. The cleaner your patterns, the better your knife turns out.

This is the first drawing:



This is the second one:



Here are some of the patterns already done:



After spending the morning finishing my templates; I finally get into the meat of it and start on the knife!

Drawing the various parts on the materials:


Cutting on the bandsaw:


Blade on the surface grinder:


Drilling the holes:


Putting the serrations on the blade with the pantograph:


Starting the grind:


Tri grind done and blade ready for heat-treating:


This is what I got done yesterday; I will post today's progress shortly.

A couple of new videos

First is a video of the spine whack test I performed on the Hogue Elishewitz EX-01 folder:



Then I have a 2 part video on the new Hogue Elishewitz EX-F01 fixed blade:





I am planning to do some more videos on the testing of the fixed blade.

I am back!

I apologize for the long silence.... 2010 was a very busy and hectic year and I was hoping that 2011 would be different, slower paced with more time out of the shop. Well so far it has not been the case!
Between the Shot Show, a sniper tactical match, the East Coast Custom Knife Show and a trip to Germany/France for the IWA Show; I have had barely enough time to unpack my bags. Besides revamping my whole set-up and patterns on the pantograph and proofing it with a nice series of Bolster-Locks, making knives for the custom show and a series of all titanium pens, I don't have much else to show for the first quarter of the year.





This is about to change though because I am home and working on a variety of projects: I will be making a series of prototypes for a new Hogue folder, I will participate in the annual Custom Knives and Guns Forum Build-Off and I will be making cool knives for the Blade Show! I am also hoping to be able to write more on this blog and share some of my experiences training in Southeast Asia for a month last November.... more to come soon!