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hi I'm Chris Gillian and I make knives.
Continuing on with the fallen star project. We're trying to get ready for the Blade Show.
Blade Show is coming up in four weeks June 1st 2018. I'm trying to get six of
my knives ready to take down to the Blade Show. So yesterday I cut out all
of my bar stock and I spent all day and I got them flat and parallel.
Using the arbor press and a surface grinder. And today what we're going to do is
we're going to take this bar stock and machine it into a blade blank.
We're going to machine a blade
The Fallen Star - Part 2
Okay so welcome back to my workbench. Let me show you, this here this is my blade fixture.
And what this is is a piece of just Mic 6 that I have cut off.
Mic 6 is cast aluminum it's been precision ground and it is parallel. It's about an
inch thick, and what I've done is I've tapped this Mic 6 Aluminum with a ten by
twenty four tap and this is how I'm attaching my blade stock to to my
blade jig you can see here I use a #10x24 screw and the
clamps that I use to hold it down. This is just old blades. the pivot and the
stop pins is dead I turn into clamps and
I locate where to put the blade stock by using these stop pins this is just a 5/32 stop pin that I use for a
dowel rod that you could see I put into locating holes on the jig and then
very quickly I can locate where the bar stock goes so then I can clamp it down
and as I'm clamping it down you want to make sure that it's flat so I use a .004
thousand feeler gauge and what I'll do is I'll go around the whole part and
make sure that it doesn't go underneath
make sure that it doesn't go underneath the bar stock at all and you don't want
there to be any space at all so for example right here that's not flat
that's not down that's a problem I did set this top corner is my g54 and I used
the top of the fixture as my g54 zero in the z-axis so even though you have
various thicknesses of bar stock it shouldn't affect the programming because
your g54 zero is the top of the aluminum jig hope that makes sense and I've
already flattened these a flattened these on the surface grinder. I had some issues
with them really super-bowing that I couldn't hardly get out with the
arbor press and I actually some of these I had to put back into the to the kiln.
and a stress relieve them and so I have a few various thicknesses here.
I designed these in strips so that I could put a few of them on the table the idea was
that you could take one of these off and be attaching them, while the machines
making parts, working on another one
so as I was saying this is my base plate this allows me to very quickly change out my
fixtures, for inlays, to blades. The blade fixture attaches to the base plate using a
quarter-inch bolt
Again you want to make sure that this is down there's no space at all in
between the base plate and the fixture you want to make sure that it's down and
flat and so I *** the base plate I stone the bottom of the jig, cleaned it
off, and put it on the locating dowels. There is locating dowels underneath this and
then you want to check it with the feeler gauge. Again I just used a .004 feeler.
gauge here making sure that it's down this won't slide it underneath there so
I know that this is flat.
So at this time the air dryer should be cold.
I'm going to go ahead turn on the Haas. Warm it up, we'll change the tools in the carousel,
establish a new g54, and start making chips.
it's it's alive
Here is my aluminum fixture plate it's resting on the the base plate.
the base plate allows me to more
rapidly change out my aluminum fixtures they locate on steel dow pins and then
bolt to the table that way i can be loading parts on one fixture for example
here's my pocket clip fixture takes a long time to load that.
While the machine is making chips this just helps me as a one-man shop to try to stay somewhat
competitive.
so I haven't run the machine for a few days so while this machine
warms up I'm going to check the coolant.
I'ma change all the tools in the carousel and we'll get to making some some Blades.
while I'm changing out tools here very quickly I really like these MA Ford reamers
All I'm doing is I'm drilling and reaming through the bar stock at the pivot
location and then I'm gonna attach at 10 by 24 screw through the pivot hole to
remove the clamps.
so now that the holes have been drilled undersized and it's going to
have a quick tool break check to make sure that this undersized drill bit did not break
So it's going to probe the Reinshaw and soon as it knows that the
tool is not broken it'll put it away and get the next tool
* ((Machine Hissing))*
*((Machine Making Clunky Noises))*
*((Machine Beeps))*
*((Metal Screams as it is Machined))*
this is just a quick chamfer before the reamer
now we'll read the pivot to the correct size
and so the next step is to attach this bar stock to the fixture itself I'm using #10-24 tpi screws I'm just
going down through the pivot bolt and then I'll take off these clamps and now
this is programmed two I want to go through and we load these tools into the
tool carousel tool one needs to be the chamfer mill. Tool six needs to be a .125 drill
Tool seven a .147 drill and then here's a brief description of what
the program is going to do
so this next program is spotting all the holes before it gets into the drilling
what this is.. this is the stop pin locations and the jimping
This is going to ensure that this knife locks up perfect assuming I can grind the lock
correctly that's the whole clincher. All the blades coming off the VMC are
perfect within ten thousandths of an inch
you just have to grind them to match.
so now we're going to drill undersize the stop pin and I will later ream this.
So what were doing is a quick tool check break and
once the machine knows that the holes have been drilled it will not break the reamer
now we're doing a quick chamfer before we ream the holes
now we're reaming the stop pinholes to the final dimension.
By using the VMC we ensure the knife all open and close properly on the stop pin in the open and
closed position
now we're going to drill the jimping this is so that your thumb
can get a better purchase on the knife if you're wearing gloves
Or if your hands covered in blood, or slime, or mud, or something to that effect this ensures
that the knife is held securely in the hand.
a lot of guys don't like jimping
I like jimping... somewhere I read you're supposed to only have three holes.
But I don't know if that's true or just something that the you have to have for the Guild.
I don't think there's any rules to making knives... just make them like you want them.
the coolant that I'm using is Koolrite 2290.
it's designed specifically for stainless steels and exotic metals like titanium zirconium
all they good stuff
after the jimping has been drilled, its going to get a smaller tool bit and put
tiny jimpin on the flipper tab
I've often thought about removing the jimping on the flipper tab but I think
it helps my knife flip better
so what I'm doing here is I'm putting tiny little jimpin on the flipper tab
and this is a theory but I believe that by doing so you get better friction
between your finger and the flipper tab and more kinetic energy will be
transferred to break the detent ball. I don't have any way of proving that
that's just a theory but it takes some time... but I think it helps improve the
knife I think it helps it flip better it just drilled the flipper tab
jimping and now we're going to chamfer everything so it doesn't cut your
fingers to hell when you're and you're hitting this you know and up here too
yeah well the wolf
it'll it's got bite it'll grip your thumb great but it won't hurt you
that's what the machines doing now it's going
in there and chamfered all the all the holes it just drilled and so what the
machine is done... it has drilled all the holes for the for the jimpin on
the top of the knife that's what these holes are this is to stop in location
holes for the open and closed position and these tiny holes here is for the
jumpin on the flipper tab now what most makers will do is they'll have all this
water jetted out for them and then they'll put it in a machine like a
gardener machine and it'll double disk grind this to make it perfectly flat and parallel.
I started with flat in parallel and then my fixture is flat in parallel
and so I'm able to do it this way I'm able to program everything for z-axis is
off the top of this fixture you're Chamfers will come out the same because
the machine is thinking in terms of how high it is in elevation above this
fixture above this imaginary plane.
it's not imaginary it's real
on top of this fixture so the next thing we're going to do is we're going to
profile this out and make a blade... a blade blank and I'm gonna do that with a
.188 I use .188 all the time it's basically going to come in come around
and cut out this blade blank. And the blade blank will have perfectly aligned
pivots and stop pins to ensure that it opens and closes in the correct position
and so we're coming up on 15 minutes so I'm going to keep this short
you can see that I have profiled out two blade blanks the next thing I would do
is flip them over and machine the backside
so what I have is a blade blank
and here's what the end result of that will look like you can see it's just a
blade blank and from here you have two options you can either grind the bevels
on the kmg on the 2 by 72 belt grinder KMG is a knife making grinder and I do
that sometimes another option you have is to machine out your bevels I also do
that I use both methods and I will show you both in two separate videos in the future
mmm one thing to note due to time constraints
I programed this just on what's called a mirror
it's a very nice way to start out your programming you only have to program one part and in
this the mirror is just a slave to the first one.
obviously my jig can do up to eight knives at a time I do in fact make eight knives at a time
excuse me and we have more processes to do we have to make the hole for the thumb stud
we have to engrave this we have to surface grind it down to
specified thickness and that's a great opening into new topics of like
mathematics for the knife maker how to determine your feeds and speeds and so
we'll cover all these topics and more in future videos... so if your into this sort
of thing please like my video subscribe and hit the bell for notifications again
My name is Christopher Gillian, and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.