Kydex Belt Clip

Continuing on from yesterday, I did a little more work towards making my belt clips from Kydex.

Today I milled a female piece to go with the belt clip mold. Usually Kydex is molded between foam...I wanted something sharper. To make this work, the thickness of the kydex (.080") needs to be taken into account. The female part is two thicknesses (.160") wider than the male part.

Sheath Stuff

Making this sheath got me thinking about things. For one, I don't like how these belt clips only have a single hole. It allows them to turn and that's no fun (so I added another hole and second rivet). Next was, "how do I make a better belt clip?"

Not Much Today...

...just a new knife:

A new Mini. Red C-Tek handles with G10 bolsters over black liners.

What A Weekend!

Yeesh. I'll tell you what, I work more at home than I do at work. If I got paid for all of this other stuff, I wouldn't need the day job. But hobbies are hobbies, and they rarely pay for themselves.

Friday was mostly spent doing secret squirrel stuff, and some work on my Stirling engine (we'll get to that eventually). Saturday meant working on my truck. Nearly 250,000 miles on it...it needs stuff. Then I drank beer and did stuff like cooking and more secret squirrel work.
Today was another story. I wanted to move the bikes out of the garage and do some cleaning. Set up the welder. Ya know, stuff every dude does on Sunday. Then I decided to fix the alternator on my chopper and shit got weird.

So...replacing the alternator turned into a full engine swap. It turns out that the key that drives the alternator decided to wipe out the crank shaft. A damaged crank means that the whole engine needs to come apart. Damn. The silver lining is that I have the engine from Organ Donor (the bike I crashed). I can swap that in and get back on the road while I rebuild kOOk's real motor. This is what she looks like right now. I'm at the point where I just need to pull two bolts and then get the motor out.

Where Was I?

Catching up...(my life is chaos)

An acid etched Tacti-Hunter. We'll talk more in depth about that process later as I learn more about it.

Carrying On...

Forward progress...

So...the other night we saw some red burlap getting ready to go into the press. This is the raw block, ready to get cut into handles.

Catching Up

Been a few days...

A big purchase for me. A 10 ton hydraulic press from Baileigh. Such a nice tool! Very well made...and it's sure to get put through the paces. I've been wanting a press for a long time.

Three New Finished Knives

Some progress was made tonight...

The first of its kind! The Tacti-Hunter. 4 3/8" cutting edge, approx. 9" OA. 3/16" thick A2 blade. The handle is my own black canvas micarta. The blade is sandblasted.

A Very Good Afternoon

Occasionally, I get to leave the day job a couple hours early. Which is what I did today. For some reason, this act has a tremendous effect on my motivation. I got home ready to hit the shop. And hit the shop I did!!!

OK...this is actually from yesterday. Not my knife. It's a Cold Steel that belongs to a coworker. He wanted a new sheath, and I wanted to practice working with Kydex. I think it turned out pretty good. Gawd, that's a bit knife, though.

The Last Couple of Days...

...have been exhausting.
Anywho, I've been working on some grinding guides and other tid bits. I also spent some time on a secret squirrel project that I can't show here per my customer's request.

The Tacti-Hunter. Something was bugging me about the grind. We'll get to that in a minute.

Keep It Moving

Just another day. Gotta keep that progress moving along...

I try to stay organized. Sometimes I do...sometimes I don't. Baby steps!! One thing I did to this end is to get all of my handle hardware sorted and to establish storage for spare drill bits. I like to have 2 or 3 spares of all of my most used drill bits on hand. Since a drill index only holds one of each size, these little Plano boxes are perfect for the back ups. The drill bits in the hardware box have specific purposes related to handles, so they are stored there.

Valentine's? You Mean, Tuesday?

While everyone else was out eating cheap chocolate and drinking cheaper wine...some of us were being productive. I'm not much for holidays, and Valentines' has never been on the top half of my list. Anywho, let's get into the shop.

Four knives to wrap, and exactly enough foil left on this roll to wrap them. This marks the end of my first full roll of stainless foil for knifemaking. I had another roll that I bought several years ago for making plane irons...and that has been used up too. This one, however, is a bit of a milestone.

'Twas a Productive Day

Lots got done today. Let's have a look, shall we!

Two pairs of Outdoor knives...ready for the band saw. I like to drill the handle holes before sawing, also, I like to add a bunch of relief holes to assist in sawing the inside curves. If I was going to name a least favorite part of this process, it would be sawing.

Darn Day Jobs

I was supposed to be gone for a week...ended up gone for two. Trying to catch up.

I finally finished this acrylic handled Large Outdoor knife.

First Post on New Blog

Here we go...
Getting up and running on the new location. You can visit my old blog here .
Unfortunately, I don't have time to go into a lot of detail today. I've been up since 3 a.m. and I'm tired. I'll be updating the look over the next few weeks.

I want to work on these today. I have some limited time, and I'm not likely to finish. A friction folder, neck knife, and a hunter.