I hope to own one....or a few .......some day, but this is the first time I thought to myself "GEC could/should do better"
RE ground the Rat 2's this morning, these knives were about .023 Behind The Edge. Well that's not bad for a modern knife but it's not good geometry for a knife used as a knife. With the thin blade stock it could be better.They're about .015 BTE now and they are excellent cutters.I tried to as an experiment and ground the R2-D2 to 220 grit but it gets difficult on the harder steels to get the 400 grit marks off. Lesson learned I went back to 400 grit and I think it looks better that way, it is after all a $35 knife.(Image removed from quote.)(Image removed from quote.)
That's great job! I just measured my 91mm SAK, and it's about 0.015 BTE. I could imagine being a much bigger blade, 0.023 BTE probably won't make it as good as a slicer, and improvement should be very noticeable afterwards. This is a territory I really want to learn more about as a knife enthusiast, I could touchup/sharpen/reprofile a blade edge ok, but making that primary grind is something I totally lack experience of.Btw, R2-D2, what a cool name for this value knife.
To do it takes nerve, or confidence or a lack of common sense, I have plenty of the last. This is my entire modern collection, minus the two Rat's.The Bugout, Freek & Smith & sons are the thickest BTE at .019, the Mini Barrage & Saibu are .016, the red & black wasp is under .015.The Bugout has become afraid of grinders and for good reason, it's got a good sized blade and is lighter than many knives half it's size. It's just asking for a regrind, I do like a knife that cuts well.(Image removed from quote.)
I see a Cypress in that bunch ol'knives. I didn't know you had one of those. Smith has only done or two runs of those. Good score. What your assessment of it?
A simple project today. I picked this Recruit up for the wife's tackle box but she didn't like it. She said it had to many blades and was fidgety but she wanted the openers. So my fix was to get her a case sodbuster and make a single layer SAK.(Image removed from quote.)
Again go slowly, remember you can take metal off but you can't put metal back on.
This is why I did the bullnose differenty.(Image removed from quote.)You can see in the first pic that the tang is longer than the back spring. So when opening the blade the top of the tang would rub the back spring. All I did to the back was polish a portion of the tangs top to smooth out the stamping marks. It would have smoothed out in time anyway I just rushed it.(Image removed from quote.)(Image removed from quote.)On your knife you want to concentrate your polishing on that portion of the tang, that rubs the spring first when you start to open the blade.The first half of the radius will smooth out that initial movement ½ way to the half stop position.The second half of the radius will smooth out the rest of the movement to the half stop. It can also soften the closing snap, you may or may not want to do that.Concentrate most of your polishing on the first half of the radius. That will give you time to get a two finger grip to open the rest of the way. Again go slowly, remember you can take metal off but you can't put metal back on.
One thing that will help a lot is to flush and re oil the joint every time you check your progress.If you don't the joint will feel dry and gritty and you won't get a good feel of your progress.
Nice job and cool scales !