Home Forums Gear Knives and Blades Knife Build for Mr. Ossian Grahn........WIP

This is hopefully the last chapter in a saga that has been going on for a lot longer than Ossian or myself cares to think about. I am embarrassed to say how long this has been unfolding so I will keep it between Ossian and myself.
Quite a long time ago I made a 4" Denali for Ossian. All was fine until one morning he got out of bed and the knife would no longer work. After much discussion about the possible problems, I sent him some replacement parts for the pivot that he was more than willing to install to save sending the knife back from Sweden and back again to him. Once he got the parts in the knife worked like a champ........but not for long! After much "tweaking" he finally sent the knife back to me for repairs. Funny thing, when the knife arrived it worked fine. I kept it for several weeks and played with it off and on. Some days it would work and then when I was about ready to ship it back it acted like a piece of junk. Anyway we have sent this knife back and forth more times than either of us remembers....or cares to. The last time he contacted me I suggested he build a great fire and try to melt this knife into a blob and hopefully the demons and gremlins along with it. By this time he had deep feelings for the thing and just could not bring himself to do it. To try and solve this problem I asked him to please return this monster and let me destroy it and I would try and make him a replacement that was a notch or two above the original.

What I find strange is that through this whole ordeal this man has remained very calm, always the perfect gentleman, has not cursed at me not even one time even though I (sad to say) have really drug my feet on getting him a replacement.

I am not sure what exactly we are making but we needed some damascus steel for the project. I decided I would make this a work in progress thread. That way he will know when am working on it and when I am goofing off.

Mr. Grahn, my hat is off to you for showing patience that I am sure not many would have. I am truly grateful to have you as a customer.

Anyhow, I will be posting pics as this thing moves along. I have spent the last couple of days making some damascus steel. I finallly waited until I was sure the weather was warm enough so that I would be as uncomfortable as possible. It was 97 degrees in my forging shed yesterday. I am truly making myself as miserable as possible through this project. I promise.

When I made these pictures I was not sure about the WIP so they are a little random. As the knife parts come into being I will try and do a better job.













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Time to grab a Bud and keep an eye on the fire.

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It is always a good idea to make more steel than you need. Surely out of 3-4 feet I can get a decent 6" piece for the blade.

First thing I want to make sure I have a piece of steel to make the blade from. I hope to stay away from that fire for a while.

I rough grind my damascus with a Ceramic stone on a Black and Decker "Wildcat" sidegrinder. The only real tool B&D ever made as for as I am concerned. I found these stones quite by accident. This stone with this grinder makes short work of roughing in a bar of steel.



I cut everything on a Milwaukee Porta-Band. This is a variable speed machine hooked into a variac. The variac gives better speed control. You give up a bit of torque but in the end it works out.




"Sweetie" will be performing the "sniff test" on all who enter. Hopefully she will let me know if anyone is tracking in any contaminants that could ruin this project. She was not in on the last build. Maybe that is what went wrong




Wilkes should have been here this morning. He is a good surface grinder man. He also excels at hand sanding steel. He is good at a lot of other things but this is not the time or the place to go into it.



I think the steel is a go. This is 1095 and 15n20. Laddered W's. The count is 19 x 18 layers. Take a look Ossian. Now is the time to give it a thumbs down.

I deleted the last 3 pictures in the first reply and tried to redo them. I can not make them work. I am going to bed. Maybe I can get them tomorrow. If someone would like to give me a hand I would thank them.

Thanks for starting this-

I think the forum only allows so many photos in one post. I just copied and pasted your post into mine-



Time to grab a Bud and keep an eye on the fire.

Wish I had just a bit of your craftsmanship.

Sorry it took a GMK (gremlin-monster-knife) to make this thread happen but I'm very selfishly glad that it did. Very-cool(and hot) thanks for sharing. The only way to keep my Damascus-itus under control is to keep checking back regularly.

David, this is a an awesome thread. I very much look forward to the updates. We could all learn from Mr. Grahn and yourself.

David, you know just some times knives turn out that way, and there is no fixing them, just start over and make a new one is the only way. I don't know why this happens but it just does.

Takes a pretty big man, to openly tell that story and make it right also. Can't wait for the next round of pictures. Good stuff David

+1 - This is really a great thread Mr. Winston and I look forward to seeing how it progresses. It makes one really apreciate the work that goes into a fine knife!

+2 to the above....looking forward to the rest of the thread

Very interesting thread will be watching for more.

Me too. Cool to see where my knives actually came from and to actually see What David looks like after talking to him on the phone so many times.

Btw David, I have been busy and tried to call once or twice to let you know the sheath you sent works a-okay............Ken

Ya know....now that I have seen these pics on how and where you build your knives...looks like I need to order another. I really enjoyed the picture saga, keep it going if you can.

Thanks, Lee

Very cool I will be looking for more too thanks for sharing

Enjoyed every bit of it , now just waiting for the rest.

Sorry it took so long to get back to Ossian's knife project. If I live to be 100 I expect to be working a minimum of 36 hours a day.

The plan is to modify my template for the 4" Denali. This will allow me to take advantage of some special materials for the bolsters and also make the knife a bit more streamlined.

I am only removing a very small amount (.030) from the top and the bottom. By taking the same amount from both this will allow the pivot hole to remain true to the pattern. I am doing this by laying out the new piece with the old template. Then I scribe around the new pattern with a carbide tip calipher and grind the profile.

So...I make some new templates.....







One thing to remember, when scribing around a pattern you have to take out all the line when grinding the new piece. A scribed line made with a sharp carbide scribe will measure about .010. If you don't get it all and the dimensions will be off. At the same time you don't want to go past the line.



I did the same for the original blade pattern also. The same .030. I removed this from the top and on the bottom I only removed material until I got to the curve in the blade. This lets the length of the blade remain full length.

Also I drill the pivot hole in the blade and the handle templates using the old templates as a pattern for location. Pivot only. Not the stop pin.



After the new handle template is made I will locate the stop pin hole and drill it. On this knife I locate the hole down from the top at .200 . I measure the distance from the pivot hole to the stop pin hole on the original because the length of this knife is not changing. Once I have scribed the location of the stop pin I use an Optical Center Punch to mark the hole for drilling. One thing to remember at this point is the distance from the front of the knife to the pivot must always be greater than the distance from the pivot to the center line of the stop pin. This prevents the blade tang from sticking out past the front of the knife when closed. The optical punch is the only way I have found to mark holes as close as possible to where they go. It is just impossible for me to use a regular punch and get anywhere close.



I think I have used up my picture limit on this page.

Well, maybe not.

Next I will lay out the pieces for the handle halves. I am cutting rectangles that are 1.5" x 5.5". This gives me plenty of room and still have little waste. Don't be stingy with material here. It is better to have a little waste than to struggle trying to get your template on the piece.



Next I will dye the titanium and the blade material and get them ready to lay the template on and first drill pivot holes, stop pin hole in the handles and then scribe and get ready to cut. At this point always use the template to drill the holes in one side of the handle then use that side as a guide to drill the other side. If you use the template to drill both sides the holes will not line up in a 100 years. Not in my shop anyway.





We are now ready to start cutting parts.

The blade steel cleaned up at .161 thick. We will go with that. The thickness of the blades dictate the dimensions of all the other parts in this knife. Since I do not use any "Store Bought" parts this should not present a problem.

Since this is a fairly large knife I decided to go with .063 titanium instead of .052.

At this time I really don't have a concrete plan. I have a line of attack in my mind. I guess this is a build of do as you go. I have not yet cut out the frame and already changed the thickness of the titanium. Before this is done there will be more changes I am sure.

As you can see, I am cutting out two sets of parts. If all goes well Ossian gets one and I get one........If not Ossian gets one and I get none.....

More tomorrow I hope. I have to pick beans and plant tomatoes in the morning.

Very interesting....I've been looking forward to updates. Thanks!

+1