My First Knife

[Jacktheknife]

Gentlemen,


I have been reading the Knifenetwork Forum ever since barely surviving a Motorcycle wreck 5 months before 9-11, 13 years ago! The first I ever heard of knife making was a Blade Magazine article: "Making knifes from Junk" Wayne Goddard. I was in the bathroom of my Colorado girlfriend Carol and saw the magazine on the floor, picked it up and began reading. After I came back to Texas I made a 'file knife' for Carols son Brant whose magazine it was. That was in 1990, 10years later I was a disabled coma patient living alone on my farm and I was always out of beer!
Before my wreck which was not an accident, I owned Hamilton Roofing Inc. and we did houses and commercial roofs! I made a good living and I lived in my truck. But being disabled {I was reported dead by the police department that was called out the next morning after me laying in the ditch all night, no breath, no pulse, DEAD! That's pretty disabled. The guy who's front yard I had laid in all night, heard the ambulance driver tell the cop "I don't know who taught you to tell a dead man from a live one, but this guys not dead, he will be before we can get him to Baylor Hospital in this traffic, call the helicopter!"
I met the Mexican cop a few years later and he just stood there and stared.
"That was the deadest man I ever saw!" he said.
"That motorcycle helmet looked like a truck had run over it, a great big one!"

So I live on disability and stay home all the time to save on gas. I have made a profit selling Rail Road Spike Knives but they are even more valuable as gifts to Doctors as Doctors haven't ever seen anything like that. It really gets me in good with one of my Doctors to give him a 'spiker.' But as for knives... not junk... but knives made from brand new store bought steel, I have been working on new steel for years and have never finished a knife, TILL NOW!
I could profile and drill a blade blank. I could sand one and put handles on it. But I have never been able to bevel a knife blade and I found out why!
It was 'Masterbladesmith Dan' who taught me to use new steel and sandpaper or a file so as not to ruin the blade with a machine.
A new friend 'Masterbladesmith Stan' {no relation} taught me to bevel a knife blade.
I was trying to bevel a knife blade after it was hardened and tempered! I thought that that was the way to do it but Stan said that a blade must be beveled before hardening! Then after hardening, tempering in peanut oil rather than the used motor oil I was using.

And I had a scribe, but I could never see the scribe lines till I made an monumental discoverey 'Blue layout Dye'.
With the steel beveled while annealed plus the Blue layout Dye and scribe I finished a knife. It had a bad file mark by the plunge cut but I know where to be careful now and have 5 more blade blanks cut out, painted with the dye and scribed ready to be profiled, beveled and drilled, handled and shined up.
The only thing missing is a camera as my 35mm wore out 10 years ago and a digital camera is in the makings. {I've an old friend who has a camera}

So how about that!
The blue dye is impossible to rub off and the scribe lines are able to be seen quite clearly all the way through beveling.
Much better than the old felt tip pen!

I'll get a camera and share a picture of the work I have done the last 13 years.
All the junk knives, nailed to a piece of plywood on the wall in the barn {Knife shop}
the spikers, and now... the skinners.
Thanks to the Knifenetwork Forum folks and especially Ray.



Jack the Knife




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