Fredeen Blades

     I apologise for disappearing for such a long time without notice. I've been very busy with school, I'm working ahead to finish high school one year early. Even though my parents and friends think I have lost interest in knife making I assure you I havent in the least. So in several months time I should be finished with highschool and making knives full time; at least for little while; you see I'm still not decided on whether or not I "need" to attend college.

                                                                                                                                                                    Glad to be back

                                                                                                                                                                                                  Josh

Good to hear from you again Josh.

No worries about the "extended" absense. I don't take attendence :wink:. I understand folks get busy with life and things that you like doing sometimes get pushed aside. I'm in the same boat most of the time myself.

Good luck with finishing highschool, that will be good to get out of the way.

As far as college, my view is that if you have the opportunity to go and think you may want to, do it. College is a valuable experience, even if you never "need" your degree. College can really shape who you are as a person and what you want to do with your life afterwards. Plus, if you are doing something else that doesnt need a degree, like knifemaking for instance, and something falls through and you have to get a "real job," a college degree (an applicable one) is a great thing to have to fall back on, and will keep you from having to flip burgers and earning minimum wage. I would definately not recommend getting a liberal arts degree, like an english major or something, as there is not really any sort of industry that you can apply that type of degree in, unless go get an education degree along side it and become a teacher. Same goes for a music degree, the only really job afterwards is becomming a music teacher, there are very very few with enough musical talent to go on to become performing musicians and actually be able to survive on it. I'd always recommend going for a degree that you can acually use in a working environment and will make you more desireable to potential employers. Business degrees are pretty good, any of the applied sciences like the various types of engineering (chem, geo, civil, electrical, mechanical, etc) are great (though admitedly not everyone is cut out to be an engineer), as well as some other degrees that can be used.

And remember, the nice thing about college is, if you want to take a year or two off of school and do something else for a while after highschool, you can always go back to college to get a degree at a later time.

Anyway, don't mean to get preachy on you, but thought I'd throw that out there. 

And as always, glad to answer any of your bladesmithing questions, or just talk about some knives, etc.

Thanks very much for taking the time to give me some good advice about college; I took what you said into consideration and decided that if I do someday go to college I'm going to study something in the medical field. Nothing major, surgeon etc, I was thinking of something more along the lines of a chiropractor. Anyways enough about that, I have some news regarding my painfully slow knife making progress:dry:. Quite a few months back I told you that I was working on my first ever "real" knife; and being as eager as I was to get started and use my new belt grinder for the first time I overlooked the importance of detailed planning ie the desired specs of the finished knife. I was almost constantly arguing with myself (stressing out) but in the end I did end up with an "ok" looking blade, a six and a half inch full flat ground blade with a "convex" edge, My main concern is the fact that even though I eyeballed it as much as I could, the main bevel on the left side of the knife still came out 1/8in off when compared to the right side; it may not seem like much to fuss about but it's a big eyesore; and I still can't, or should I say won't decide on the handle it will have:roll:. On a better note, I was able to get my hands on roughly 250lbs of leaf springs! for around 18 bucks!:D 

Getting a finely calibrated eye for bladesmithing takes a good deal of experience and practice. Its very difficult for the beginner to be able to make a knife just by eye. I usually do everything by eye, but I've spent many many hours looking at blades and making blades to get to the point where I can judge things by eye.

I can't remember if you are forging or doing stock removal. Leaf springs would suggest forging though :).

Something which might help you with your grinding technique is to get some practice on a couple stock removal blades with some nice uniform steel. Grinding forged blades can be somewhat more challenging due to their un-uniform nature. If your forging is good, the grinding goes quite easily, but if you aren't able to forge very precisely (centering the edge, same angles/depth when forging the rough beveling, etc) it can make grinding a good bit more difficult if you aren't solid in your techinque.

To help get a feel for grinding a blade and to help get you on your way with getting your eye calibrated, I would go ahead and get some nice clean new steel, design a blade, transfer the design to the steel, cut and grind the profile for the blade blank, and then actually lay out where your beveling will go. Scribe a center line for the edge along the steel and two other lines to lay out the thickness for the rough ground edge (say 1/16" or so). This can be done simply using some digital calipers (can be purchased at Harbor Freight for about $10 or so) and coloring the edge with a sharpie marker, then setting your calipers to the correct distance and following the edge of the steel with one jaw and using the point of the other to scratch off the sharpie, leaving a line. Then take some masking tape, and mask off where you want your plunge cut for your beveling to start on both sides (this will help you keep both sides aligned and to the same depth), and finally you might want to even use the sharpie to roughly draw in how far up the spine you want the beveling to go.

Grind in with a steep angle (say 45 degrees) with a "micro bevel" to your lay out lines on your edge (not to the center line, but to the two outer lines so that the edge will be 1/16" thick). Once you have the micro beveling established, you can gradually decrease the angle you hold the blade at with respect to your grinder platen and "walk" the beveling up the spine until you get to where the beveling should meet the spine. This should give you some good experience and feel for grinding.

Once you do a knife or two this way you'll get a good feel for doing things by eye and will probably be able to transition into just doing things by sight without the layout and of course grinding rough forged blades. It will probably also help you get a bit more accurate with your forging and getting things straight and centered where they should be.