Building an INGO knife (a WIP thread)

[Lagrange]

Okay, the weather is a little bit better and I have some of my other stuff out of the way so it is time to continue.

I wanted to let you guys know that when I glued the pieces together for the bolster I used super glue...or gorilla glue. This is just a temporary measure to allow me to work on the pieces while they are together. I intend to glue them up with a permanent epoxy after I get all my fitting done.

Now I go ahead and set up my bolster fixture on my drill press to drill some retaining pin holes. I am using a standard 1/16th drill bit here and drilling through all layer and into the bolsters about 1/8 of an inch. Two holes per side.

Here is a shot of the holes after drilling.

I cut off a few pieces of 416 stainless 1/16 rod, added a little gorilla glue to the end and stuch them in the holes. This will help hold everything in place while I work on the bolsters.

Now I use my small belt grinder to smooth out the inside of the bolster where it contancts the blade. This has to be flat and smooth.

Here are the inside surfaces of the bolsters after smoothing them up.
Notice I ground down the pins that were sticking out the end. I just dont want them to snag on anything. I will be removing them later anyway before final glue up.

 

[Lagrange]

Now I am going to stick the bolsters back on the knife so that I can profile the bolsters to the knife. This wont be a final fitting, this is just to get them close. I need to get the bolster mounted and the tang of the knife shaped to prepare the wood handle to be fitted. I need to fit the handle before the blade is heat treated because I will need to drill some retaining pin holes through the tang. It would be virtually impossible to do this after heat treat.

Here the blade is clamped in place with the bolsters re-attached.

As I said, we are going to rough fit the bolsters. So here I am using a file to bring the top of the bolsters down to the spine of the knife.

In this picture you can see we have the top of the bolsters about where we want them.

Now we flip it over and work on the inside of the finger guard.
Because the inside of the finger guard has a heavy curve to it, I removed the G10 and stainless spacer from the bolster. Working with stainless steel is tough and I dont want to accidentally damage those other pieces.

Here I am starting the groove with a half round file.

After I get the groove started pretty good I use my dremmel with a coarse AO barrel to rough out the groove.

Move on to my home made sanding drum and start with 220 grit paper. Followed by 400 grit, 600 grit.

Here is the result. Remember we are only rough fitting these pieces. These parts will be finish fit at final assembly.

Now I need to prepare the tang for fitting to the wood handle.
I re-install the rest of the bolster material using just a little gorilla glue to hold in place. I need to scribe a line behind the stainless spacer. This is a guide to make my cuts on the tang.

After removing the bolsters you can see the line I scribed behind the spacer.

Using a small starett sliding square I measure and scribe the horizontal tang lines.

Now everything is layed out and ready for me to remove excess material.
I want to round this area that I am pointing to because I want to reduce the risk of creating a heat riser when heat treating, and it will give the tang more strength then having a square cut.

the best way to round the corner is to drill a hole inside the intersection. First I determine the location for the hole and then I use a center punch to keep the drill from drifting.
Here I am using a .140 drill bit to drill the corners of the tang. I am drilling the second hole at this point.

Here it is after drilling the holes.

Now we go to the bandsaw and cut the excess material away. I wrap the bolster area with painters tape to avoid excess scratching. Always cut outside the line, but as close as possible to it.

Now that we have it cut out, we are going to take it to the belt grinder and remove everything outside of the lines. When I grind, I will grind until the line dissapears.

Here we have the tang shaped and ready to go. I may come back later and cut some barbs in the edges to give the glue something extra to hold on to.

Tomorrow I am going to drill out the hole in the wood for the tang to go into.
Thanks for being patient with me.

 

[paperboy]

You got skills.....THAT IS AWESOME!

 

[Hdfb03]

Subscribed to see the finished product, looks awesome so far!

 

[tom1025]

Looking Good!

 

[Fergy35]

Looks really good Eric. Loving it so far

 

[Lagrange]

Had some unforseen honey do's today. Looking to get back at it tomorrow.

 

[cyprant]

You should raffle this off!!

 

[Lagrange]

You should raffle this off!!

How about I give it away??

 

[Lagrange]

...and again, something came up that is putting this project off for another day.
Sorry guys, but the family comes first.

 

[Mounty09]

How about I give it away??

I really like this idea.

 

[cyprant]

How about I give it away??

Dont tease me...

 

[Double T]

I love the tutorial

Though I don't have the tools, I am learning quite a bit

 

[Black Cloud]

The beauty of this particular How-To is that it proves one doesn't need thousands of dollars of equipment to make a craftsman piece. I can already tell that this is gonna be one helluva looker. Bravo.

 

[donnie1581]

This is an awesome project! I've been wanting a good knife for awhile but didn't want to drop a few hundred bucks on a blade. I might have to give this a go. I went to the website from the sticker on the blade stock and it would be relatively cheap to purchase a practice piece to work with.

 

[Lagrange]

For those of you interested in giving this a try, I thought I would list a couple low level belt grinders.

This is the belt grinder I started with. It's from Sears and I noticed the price has gone up.
Craftsman 21513 1/3 hp Electric Belt/Disc Sander (21513) - Tools - Bench & Stationary Power Tools - Sanders

Here are a few from Grizzly. I have never used one but I know others who have.
Grizzly.com

Here is a site that has belts for all sizes of grinders. They have one of the best selections and probably the best prices.
 Abrasives, Buffers, Grinders, Handle material, Stainless Steel, Damascus#

 

[nmcqueen469]

Wow, as humble as you may be you are one talented craftsman! I love your attention to detail and can't wait to see the finish product!

 

[sbnewsom]

This looks incredible! Well done Lagrange!

 

[Shiban]

Waiting with baited breath. This looks amazing so far. I'm actually enthralled by the process, thank you.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

Nice work!