Skyjerk no more

[charisjapan]

Prediction: your cleaver will be a paring knife.

Careful, fingers can become stumps pretty quick, I would imagine.

Some of the kit knives were awesome, some pretty mediocre. I'm working on an awesome one now. Pretty nice stainless Persian, quite hefty, and will have Pink Ivory scales and a Bloodwood scabbard. The background is a little utility knife I keep handy in the shop ... Leopardwood scales.

My wife loves her new Damascus kitchen knives, and gave away all our Heinkel SS knives ... we thought they were great for 30 years (and they are good knives!), but nothing compared to a serious quality steel. I suspect you will have the same experience.

Yeah this guy is a serious machine.

Prediction: all the knives in my house are going to suddenly be really sharp by tonite

It’ll have to be enough for now. The anvil, forge, and heat treat kiln are all built-to-order items with 6-8 week delivery times :-(

Don’t beat yourself up, though. From what I saw those kit knives look like quality blades...

 

[Skyjerk]

Prediction: your cleaver will be a paring knife.

Nope

I found a great tutorial on how to use a grinder like this to get a razor sharp edge. One of the keys is using the belt up top where its horizontal just behind the top front bearing. the slack belt gives you a convex bevel that lasts a lot longer than a straight bevel. I have belts up to 1200 and then leather strop.

I have piles of shit knives to practice on before I try it with a nice knife.

Careful, fingers can become stumps pretty quick, I would imagine.

I'll do my best

Pretty nice stainless Persian, quite hefty, and will have Pink Ivory scales and a Bloodwood scabbard. The background is a little utility knife I keep handy in the shop ... Leopardwood scales.

theyre going to be nice

My wife loves her new Damascus kitchen knives, and gave away all our Heinkel SS knives ... we thought they were great for 30 years (and they are good knives!), but nothing compared to a serious quality steel. I suspect you will have the same experience.

Damascus is a goal, although making any decent sized blade will require I conscript a friend to be striker. Need a heavy hammer to get many layers in a reasonable timeframe, and I cant afford a power hammer

And yeah, I have a set of Wusthof knives from back in my chef days that are very nice, but I'm coming to find that good high carbon steel like 1095 is better than stainless any day of the week as long as you maintain them properly and dont allow them to rust

heres the full machine and base. Its not goin anywhere

 

[Ripthorn]

One item to watch out for using with wood: the sfpm on a metal sander is about twice what a wood sander is, so you will want to be careful about belt grit and wood selection. Cherry will burn almost instantaneously with too fine of a grit on a machine like that. If you are hogging material, I recommend the aluminum zirconia belts (blue ones) as the remove material faster and last a ton longer.

 

[Skyjerk]

One item to watch out for using with wood: the sfpm on a metal sander is about twice what a wood sander is, so you will want to be careful about belt grit and wood selection. Cherry will burn almost instantaneously with too fine of a grit on a machine like that. If you are hogging material, I recommend the aluminum zirconia belts (blue ones) as the remove material faster and last a ton longer.

No worries. The variable speed unit was about $500 more, so I took a pass on that upgrade, however I do still have 3 speeds available by manually flipping the belt into the other grooves on the pulley, and the slowest speed is quite slow. Slower than my other wood sanding machines. Medium speed is about the same speed as my edge sander, and the highest speed is really fast

I just sharpened my 7” Ka-bar, a cold steel 4” folder, and a 3” folder and they are all super sharp and I haven’t even stropped them...

@charisjapan they are all the same size they were when I started ;-)

 

[Ripthorn]

Most excellent. I would love one of those, but no more shop space, really, and really not enough money

 

[D'tar]

Prediction: your cleaver will be a paring knife.

Careful, fingers can become stumps pretty quick, I would imagine.

Some of the kit knives were awesome, some pretty mediocre. I'm working on an awesome one now. Pretty nice stainless Persian, quite hefty, and will have Pink Ivory scales and a Bloodwood scabbard. The background is a little utility knife I keep handy in the shop ... Leopardwood scales.

My wife loves her new Damascus kitchen knives, and gave away all our Heinkel SS knives ... we thought they were great for 30 years (and they are good knives!), but nothing compared to a serious quality steel. I suspect you will have the same experience.

I just cut myself looking at that!

 

[Skyjerk]

Most excellent. I would love one of those, but no more shop space, really, and really not enough money

I solved the money issue by selling all my skydiving gear (and a couple other things), but I'm having a serious shop space issue now

When I originally decided I wanted to go this route I also planned to sell my Harley. this was going to free up a whole corner.
I subsequently decided my bike and I have been through too much together for me to callously toss is aside, so I'm keeping it. So much for the space I would have gained.

I also still have an anvil and forge coming that will take up floor space.

So this weekend I'm going to revamp the entire shop. Build a buttload of strong, wide shelves, and get everything I can up off the floor. I'm going to reduce the space the bike takes up and slide my table saw over toward one side instead of having it smack in the middle.

The anvil and forge will need to be near the garage door (for obvious reasons). the heat treat kiln will go on a shelf.

I think this will allow for everything to fit, although I'll be cramped. I guess I could have made room for CNC after all, but I'm glad I didnt. I'll just keep building guitars the way I have been, and open a whole new world of metal

Maybe I'll figure out how to shoehorn a mill in there at some point

 

[Ripthorn]

Not too hard to get a mill in there I still need to do some serious shelving, and I just got rid of some larger items so that I could do the garage floor. Now I'm on vacation, so when I get back it's a full reorganizational job. We'll see just how much space I have left, though cnc and a drum sander have priority, followed by a new router table.

 

[fatdaddypreacher]

having been a bad boy of late, and not checking in on the corner as i usually do, i just saw this thread. Well kudos to you for your new venture. My first love years ago was metal working, in particular i wanted to build knives, but the stuff was so much more expensive (i thought at the time) than woodworking tools, I opted for wood working. Knowing your skill level and zeal for perfection, I for one can't wait to see your work. If you don't post somewhere on this forum, please let us know where we can watch your progress. Much looking forward to more jerkiness, whatever it's called.

 

[Skyjerk]

having been a bad boy of late, and not checking in on the corner as i usually do, i just saw this thread. Well kudos to you for your new venture. My first love years ago was metal working, in particular i wanted to build knives, but the stuff was so much more expensive (i thought at the time) than woodworking tools, I opted for wood working. Knowing your skill level and zeal for perfection, I for one can't wait to see your work. If you don't post somewhere on this forum, please let us know where we can watch your progress. Much looking forward to more jerkiness, whatever it's called.

This far I have found ZERO on-line communities for blacksmithing that are anywhere near as cool as MLP, although there are some decent ones. Hopefully some day someone starts up mbk.com (my big knife)

I may sneak a thing or two on here mixed in with guitar pix as long as the mods don’t give me the boot

 

[Ripthorn]

I will say that the what's on your work bench thread says nothing of guitar only posts allowed...

 

[DaveR]

My build thread featured a ton of furniture stuff (mostly at the request of @fatdaddypreacher). I don't know how, but it even wound up featured on the front page of MLP so I guess the mods didn’t mind the decidedly not guitar related content.

Good luck with the new metal hobby. I’ve done a bit myself back in college and enjoyed it, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever do it again because of the cost of getting properly outfitted. Have you ever dabbled in furniture building? With your woodworking and design skills, tools, finishing abilities, and now the metal stuff, I’m sure you could craft some fine pieces. I enjoy the hell out of it and they don’t have to “play” well, just look pretty.

I don’t know what you have in the way of mobile bases for your big tools, but they’ve been a godsend to my limited shop space that also has to store cars on snowy days. I’ve purchased some mobile bases and built a lot of my own with cheap casters from Harbor Freight.

 

[Roxy13]

Do you sell on ebay under the name Skyjerk? If so I just bought something from you!

 

[fatdaddypreacher]

i agree. i think he would build some phenomenol furniture.

 

[Skyjerk]

Do you sell on ebay under the name Skyjerk? If so I just bought something from you!

LOL. No. What did you buy?

My Ebay name is Blahr97. I have a guitar for sale there as we speak

Hard to believe theres another skyjerk out there...I just did a search of sellers on ebay by that name and came up empty. must have been close but no cigar.

theres only one skyjerk

 

[Roxy13]

LOL. No. What did you buy?

My Ebay name is Blahr97. I have a guitar for sale there as we speak

Gold knurled nuts for Switchcraft switches. They came yesterday and the return name on the envelope was Skyjerk, lol!

 

[Skyjerk]

They came yesterday and the return name on the envelope was Skyjerk, lol!

I dont have knurled nuts

 

[Roxy13]

I dont have knurled nuts

I'm going to guess that's a good thing?

 

[Skyjerk]

I'm going to guess that's a good thing?

I think so. I’m getting older, but I’m not that old yet ;-)

 

[SlingBlader]

I think so. I’m getting older, but I’m not that old yet ;-)

Knurled, not gnarled...