Lady Nelson by vossiewulf - Amati/Victory Models - 1:64

[donrobinson]

Beautiful looking knives, very well done. Should i PM my mailing address to you?

[Rick01]

I've actually used a makeup brush for a few years now and love the way it lays paint/varnish down. Love the knives but wonder - have you thought/experimented with a slight curve on the tail like this http://www.thewritingpenstore.com/p-1356-stabilo-easyoriginal-rollerball-pen-left-handed.aspx. I use one of these pens as a leftie and find that it helps anchor it quite securely.

6 hours ago, vossiewulf said:

Now back to the knives - don't worry Rick, we're almost done

It's OK I think I can still remember some of the mods I made to the kit! 

[vossiewulf]

1 hour ago, donrobinson said:

Beautiful looking knives, very well done. Should i PM my mailing address to you?

Thanks Don  If you can get to a point where you have a blade that just needs a handle, let me know ;-) It's the couple hours of icewater grinding that I'd be perfectly happy to not do again for a couple weeks. I never mind making the handles, it's a bit of precision joinery that I like. And also as you start sanding them out to final appearance you get the reward of seeing wood like this all nice and shiny for the first time, that's always fun.

 

25 minutes ago, Rick01 said:

I've actually used a makeup brush for a few years now and love the way it lays paint/varnish down. Love the knives but wonder - have you thought/experimented with a slight curve on the tail like this http://www.thewritingpenstore.com/p-1356-stabilo-easyoriginal-rollerball-pen-left-handed.aspx. I use one of these pens as a leftie and find that it helps anchor it quite securely.

It's OK I think I can still remember some of the mods I made to the kit! 

I've used them before, I agree it works but this is where form goes up against function for me and form wins  And if you hold these the way I do, it really can't get much more stable. BTW these knives are ambidextrous, I find myself using my left hand to do things often enough these days that I decided to make them left-friendly too.

[Tigersteve]

Good idea on the brushes. 

Steve

[popeye the sailor]

owmy ears were .....on fire......a little while ago.....what's going on!   you pitt experiment is most likely dead on.......there's probably alters the hue,  especially when it hits paper.   I have a bottle too and I use it to rejuvenate the pen when it starts to get dry.   there was a conversation {I think on Dan vadas's card model log} about the pen.   I only use it for simulated calking anyways.

 

brushes......fuzzier ones will hold more paint.   in some applications you do have to worry about the sponge ones {some of the boutique applicators}  as they also harbor air bubbles for a short time.  be careful not to get bubbly paint  

 

love the knife handles....they look ergonomically adaptable    i'm an x-actor kind of guy........but you be careful!   the first one was a warning shot over the bow.........I don't want to hear you cut someth'in off!  

[src]

VW, Just read your Knife tutorial, good stuff. Loved your machinist dye trick, I never thought of that for wood. Your results speak for themselves, I am curious though, would a properly sized transfer punch not have worked also?

Great work, pulling up a chair in a very crowded room.

Sam

[vossiewulf]

On 6/9/2017 at 11:22 AM, Tigersteve said:

Good idea on the brushes. 

Steve

Both Popeye and Rick were ahead of us already  Popeye's point about some of them being good paint applicators and some leaving bubbles is worth remembering, and it might make a difference depending on the viscosity of the paint/ink. So my purchase of the 100 cheaper ones may not have been a great idea.

 

Popeye, I promise to be careful, but remember these are not the first but like the 27th and 28th lethally sharp knives I own  I also prefer it when they bite you a little early, the ones that make me nervous are the ones that are saving it up for one big shot. 

 

5 hours ago, src said:

VW, Just read your Knife tutorial, good stuff. Loved your machinist dye trick, I never thought of that for wood. Your results speak for themselves, I am curious though, would a properly sized transfer punch not have worked also?

Thanks Sam. Yes a transfer punch would have worked great had the holes in the blade gone all the way through as they usually do, that would be the right way to mark the hole locations on the handles for a normal blade. But here they only went 3/4 through as I drilled them but didn't have anything that could have drilled through the Rc63 layer on the back side of each blade, so I had to get creative to figure out a way to transfer them.

 

What I should have done is been a tad more patient and sent a drawing to Ron Hock as to what I wanted, he does custom work at very reasonable cost. That's what I did for my wenge knife among others, I recall the blade for that knife was just $25 or $30, but I did have to wait a couple weeks. And it was one small blade instead of effectively the two I got out of each of those $22 marking knives. I'd recommend anyone wanting to make knives similar to the above who are not cost-limited to do the same and contact Ron at Hocktools.com with a clear drawing with measurements of what you need, he will quickly respond with a price.

 

With nice normal through holes, the only tricky part is the rabbets. If you have a mill or a Dremel router base similar to mine, no problem, very easy to do. But you can also do it accurately with a knife and/or paring chisel if you're good with those tools, that's how they used to do it. I should draw something here, there's a three-step process to doing something that like quickly and accurately with a knife, if you follow those steps it really is quite plausible to cut those rabbets well with no power tools.

[vossiewulf]

Oh also, I should have remembered to clearly explain that the only reason the holes are really necessary is if you have the blade top line be the same as the handle top line, giving you an open-topped rabbet/mortise for the blades. When you do that the handle wood isn't going to provide meaningful resistance to the torsion moment it feels during cutting, so you run these pins through and through to provide the necessary retention.

 

If you have handle wood on both sides of the blade, there is no need for the pins and you can make a knife with a blade like these with none of that hassle. I just prefer the point to be dead on the handle top line, I think that helps me locate the point more easily, but it's hardly required.

 

Here are some examples of no-pins buried-blade knives with very simple handles to make.

[vossiewulf]

And one more before I go try to finish these, remember a goodly portion of the ooh ah factor here is just the wood, and buying a nice piece of wood requires no skill  If you have a local Woodcraft store or a lumber supply place that carries supplies for wood turners and especially pen turners, stop by semi-regularly and poke around what they have. Even the most stringent admirals generally don't complain about buying a $5 piece of wood that will make a very nice knife.

 

This is as expensive as it gets, snakewood. Very dramatic, $10 for one piece. Although I made two handles out of one blank I wouldn't recommend trying that unless you have a very good scroll saw, you need to cut it with the thinness of a scroll saw blade if you're going to get enough material.

 

Here's cocobolo and you get 5 pieces for $10. A total of $2 per knife handle or $1 if you quarter it like I did.

 

Really, the wood cost is very little, so no excuse for not having your own knives have really nice handles

 

 

 

 

 

 

[vossiewulf]

The evil Jay who sits on my shoulder suggesting funny but wrong things to do had a great idea - the day after I finish these knives, post that I tried them for a few minutes, decided I didn't like them, and am going back to my old knife. If I could then have a webcam capture the expression on Rick's face I think it would be good for at least a solid 30 minutes of laughing.

 

But then I decided he might actually stroke out and then his admiral would be understandably annoyed with me and I'd have to get on a plane for a funeral in Australia for a guy I killed with a funny knife joke, and I decided it was probably not a good idea. I'll just have to keep myself happy giggling imagining that expression

 

So one knife done, other just has a bit more to go that I'll finish tomorrow.

 

As alluded to in the last update, these were going to get my normal brass counterweight, it adds mass that I like and it moves the balance point to more or less the center of the knife, which I also prefer. And yes you need a lathe and basic metal lathe tools and knowledge, but otherwise these are Basic Metal Lathe Work, Chapter 1 level simple. It's not worth setting up the cross slide to do the taper, so I do them with files and sandpaper and the Mk.I Eyeball measuring system. You need a facing tool to face off the ends, otherwise the rest of the operations are all done with the parting tool you see here. Two reveals that I again do by eye, and I don't even measure the width of the shaft that goes into the handle, I eyeball more or less 1/8". This time I was +/- .005" for the two of them.

 

The reveals should have a shiny finish from the parting tool, the rest I finish with 1200 grit sandpaper to give it a considerably duller finish, the contrast is nice. It's not very noticeable when they're brand new but after given a chance to oxidize a bit it looks good, or at least I think so.

 

As these knives are tricky to drill on my small mill, I drilled the required holes by hand with pin vises. Like files, there is no such thing as too many pin vises. Another good example of where my giant pile of tools in many cases is just adding a bit of speed by for example having several pin vises each with a different chuck so I never have to stop and do that switching process again. I put three increasing diameter drills in the pin vises and drilled the normal way by doing say three turns looking at the piece from one orientation, ensuring the bit is aligned with the knife axis, and then rotating the knife handle 90 degrees and doing three turns, etc., you can drill holes very accurately that way. Final size was set by a small mill in my rotary tool, we need close here not a press fit.

Here's what they will look like mounted.

Let's go over the advantages of a CA finish for tool handles again:

1. It is the most crystal-clear finish I am aware of, perfect for highly figured woods.
2. It provides a better grip than any finish I am aware of, including bare wood. And the shinier it gets the better the grip gets, opposite of what you see with most finishes.
3. It is the hardest finish I am aware of. Rap a knife handle like these on the edge of your bench and it's the edge of your bench that will come out the loser.
4. When you spill super glue all over it you're just refreshing the finish
5. You can start, apply multiple coats, sand, polish, run around in the street naked while pouring mustard over your head and be back inside hiding behind a shower curtain while the admiral pretends to know nothing when the cops show up, and STILL be done in two hours with a knife you could use right then and there. Show me another finish where two hours is not replaced by two days, at LEAST. 

Disadvantages:

1. Difficult to apply on anything much bigger than a tool handle.
2. Easily the worst-leveling finish in existence. You HAVE to sand between coats and do so quickly while the finish isn't fully cured.
3. Any coat you apply needs to be fully sanded before you can do anything else. If you let it fully cure before you level-sand it, you're going to have oodles of fun getting it level. 
4. Comparatively very expensive, making it not worth it from a cost perspective also to use on anything bigger than a tool handle.

It's not perfect, but the disadvantages can be managed and I use it for all  tool handles now, I don't see anything else as competitive. And cost can be very much controlled by the process you follow.

 

Here is my sophisticated setup. I'm using nothing but thin CA here, and it's important you do so for the first coat at least, which is more of a soaking. The 8oz of thin CA here was $21 from Amazon, and I will use < 5% for these two handles- I fill the tube/bath, do the soaks/coats, and then pour the remainder into the bottle. I've found no negative effects on the glue in doing so. So I could make another 30 knives minimum from this bottle if needed. If you're concerned about buying that much volume, I've had much success making it last longer by storing it in the refrigerator, just let it reach room temp before use.

 

I tape on dowels to suspend the knife handle in the bath and keep it balanced, don't want it touching the metal as it can trigger local setting.

For the first coat, as mentioned it's a soak. I left these in there for an hour each, the thin CA penetrates as deeply as possible and you turn much of it into a composite material. 

 

For the later coats - you really shouldn't need more than one soak and two coats - you just dip and remove.

 

This is the tricky part, getting rid of the excess glue and then doing everything possible to keep the coat as even as possible and not pooling anywhere while it sets. I put a nice big double piece of foil down, and when I pull it off I shake it straight downward and touch the tail down to the foil a few times in an effort to get the excess off. As SOON as I think I have removed as much as I can/want, I level the handle's long axis with the horizon and then starting turning it constantly along that axis like a mini slow-roaster. And I keep turning it until the surface is fully set.

 

For the soak coat, the turning while waiting to set can take quite a while - 15 minutes or more. For the coats it acts more like thin CA and will set within a minute or two.

 

This is what it will look like after the current coat is set, you can see it's none too level. You definitely don't want to put on multiple coats without sanding fully level between coats. BTW, I am using 400 grit for the level sanding between coats.

Another issue is that while it's relatively easy to sand the overall handle level, glue will build up around the handle/blade joint, and you really really don't want to let that fully cure before you deal with it. Here you can see I'm in the process of trimming that back, using the first knife I made, an xacto replacement. This is what disposable blades are for, cutting through nasty glue

 

You can also see what the surface looks like after sanding, this one has been fully level-sanded before working on the glue buildup.

And this is Ms. Takita, who closely monitors all my activities so she always knows exactly how much she needs to disapprove of them. This is the electrically-warmed bed that sits on one of the tool chests of drawers right next to my workbench, where she has a good view of everything noisy and annoying that she needs to disapprove of. And the bed is close enough to where I sit to demand regular ear scratches to make up for all of the bad things I am doing. 

 

 

Here is the second knife getting ready to go in for his initial soaking. Since the wood is so nice here, the handles are sanded out to 2000 grit before getting their finish.

Once we have our three coats and everything is level sanded with 400 grit, we're ready to finalize the finish. I work my way up through the grits again to 2000 grit. Then it's time for the final polish, I'm using Novus plastic polish #2. There are a couple hundred ways to polish something like this, I use Novus because it works very well on CA, you can get it about anywhere, and it's not super-expensive at least compared to some other options. 

 

You can use a cloth and do it by hand easily enough, and with a rotary tool the most common thing to use is felt points. I am using these floppy polishing disks as it makes me let the polish do the work.

As you see I apply the polish to the handle, not the disk. You can do it the other way around, but if so I recommend full face coverage and not wearing any clothes you like  Also I'm running down at like 5-6k rpm, the only thing accomplished by going faster is creating a mess.

And after only 5-10min of polishing, we have a final finish  Go ahead and look at the full-sized version here, you should be able to see why the wood was sanded out to a polish before adding the finish, I'm not aware of anything that shows off figured wood better than this.

I used a cutoff wheel to cut some notches into the brass tailpiece shaft to give the glue a mechanical hold as well as the adhesive hold.

 

And we have a new knife. His brother will join him tomorrow and we can start working on ships again!

 

 

 

 

[Rick01]

You very nearly set Australian/US relations back to the Battle of Brisbane with your first paragraph (if you've never come across this WWII pacific theatre episode Google it   ). However someone who looks after cats so well can't be all bad so I will continue to assist as and how I may.

 

Will have to say WOW really can't think of any other comment here.

[vossiewulf]

21 minutes ago, Rick01 said:

You very nearly set Australian/US relations back to the Battle of Brisbane with your first paragraph (if you've never come across this WWII pacific theatre episode Google it   ). However someone who looks after cats so well can't be all bad so I will continue to assist as and how I may.

 

Will have to say WOW really can't think of any other comment here.

On the up side, I got to say "I'd have to get on a plane for a funeral in Australia for a guy I killed with a funny knife joke", so I think it's a wash

 

Ms. Takita is not just well looked after, she is maintained in a totally spoiled bubble of perfect catness. I think she has four different heated beds now, not to mention the fireplace we turn on most evenings. If she's not in one of her beds a couple feet away, she's in my lap. At night she sleeps under the blankets of the bed, apparently unaware that cats don't do that.

[vossiewulf]

14 minutes ago, vossiewulf said:

On the up side, I got to say "I'd have to get on a plane for a funeral in Australia for a guy I killed with a funny knife joke", so I think it's a wash

Reminded me of the Monty Python Funniest Joke In the World sketch.

[Rick01]

LOL

 

Our guys only have their own outside run with climbing frame and sun beds. Heating is provided courtesy of 12 floor vents throughout the house that fit cats perfectly (or so they think).

[src]

VW, That is a great looking finish, I will have to file that trick away for the future.

 

Your explanation of the issue with the holes makes perfect sense now. I had thought maybe the dimple they leave would have been to big for accuracy at this level. I have used them at work several times on wood but those hole could be a 32nd off and not be an issue. Chopping those mortises out by hand shouldnt be too hard, about like setting hinges by hand I would imagine.

 

Oh, and for attracting the attention of the local LEO's I have always found a bottle of single malt scotch, a bonfire, some sheep leggings and a bit of 70's disco to dance naked to works well. Just watch the "dangly bits."

Sam

[vossiewulf]

7 hours ago, src said:

Oh, and for attracting the attention of the local LEO's I have always found a bottle of single malt scotch, a bonfire, some sheep leggings and a bit of 70's disco to dance naked to works well. Just watch the "dangly bits."

Very creative! If I still hosted parties like I used to you'd be top of the invite list. They almost always ended in flashing lights and one or more chase scenes.

[vossiewulf]

For anyone who wants the same look AND is lucky enough to live in the land of milk and honey and low shipping costs, 3/4" x 3/4" x 5" Amboyna burl pen blank for $10.19. As mentioned I suggest making that a single handle rather than two unless your scroll saw/saw frame can easily handle making straight cuts in this.

 

They also have some nice-looking options in coolibah burl and malee burl and (I've never heard of any of these BTW, you definitely want to wear dust protection) thuya burl along with more standard burl woods. All $10.19 per blank.

 

Coolibah, Malee, Thuya in order.

[vossiewulf]

Been really sick last couple days. But just need to resharpen these and off we go.

 

Second knife.

I wish I could find a pen with a really fine line, most of these will make a fine line on paper and nothing else.

[BANYAN]

Simply stunning Jay; very nice finish and i really like the shape of those blades - some serious carving to be done with those.,

 

cheers

 

Pat

[popeye the sailor]

very good tutorial on Knife making.....the handles look great.   I hope your sickness wasn't due to breathing in CA fumes....I've heard some folks don't handle it very well.   

[vossiewulf]

Thanks guys. No Popeye, unless it was sudden onset as I've had that in my face since I started using Zap a Gap in like 1988? 

 

Pat, I'm very please with blade shape and handle shape. The taper of the blade from the top view makes it nice and thin and low cutting resistance at tip, and my hand really likes the new handle design, super secure and stable.

[Tigersteve]

Very nice crafting of knives. Hope you feel better. Looking forward to more progress on your ship! (Hint, hint)

Steve

[vossiewulf]

What, this isn't Model Knife World? Who knew?

 

 I used them briefly officially for first time a little while ago, they work exactly as expected. But I've been sick since Friday, very unusual for me to be sick more than a couple days, finally broke down and am going to doctor in morning just for being sick for the first time in about 25 years. But only because I have a cough that's bad enough to potentially be bacterial. Anyway haven't gotten much done since finishing the knives.

[Rick01]

More to the point - coughing with sharp implements in one's hand isn't exactly recommended! Hope your Dr can fix you up quickly.

 

[popeye the sailor]

BY ALL MEANS......take care of it quick!   looking forward in seeing the new cutlery in action.  

[mtaylor]

Sweet work on the knives.   The wood selection really sets them off.

[rwiederrich]

Magnificent workmanship Wulf... stunning actually.

I work in knotty maple for furniture...and I'm impressed.

 

Your Lady Nelson is fantastic as well....

 

Rob

[vossiewulf]

Thanks Rob  I've been thinking about selling a range of tools for modelers that are a considerable step up from hobby shop tools, just don't know where the time is supposed to come from. I'd have to find someone who can totally manufacture what I want to my standards, no way with the job I have to do another job on top.

[Rick01]

Hows the planking coming on? I find the last couple of runs can be real sods when attempting a perfect fit! I guess work and your cough have probably been in the way a bit recently.

[vossiewulf]

So I've been away for a while much longer than intended, life, health, work, yadda yadda boring stuff. Apologies to those who were following.

 

I finished the planking, have the main wale on, and have painted the interior gunwales and stern red ochre or at least my version of red ochre. Main question I have now is should I place the deck fixtures and plank around them, or glue them on post-deck planking? The instructions recommend the latter while I think the former is more accurate.

 

I think I'm going to paint it black topsides except for the stern (holly) and the wales (cocobolo) and below the waterline, all of which I'll leave natural. The lighter color of the boxwood can represent the white lead paint without covering over all the planking.