Simple Blade Grinding Jig

Description

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Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

this jig right here is set up to create your grind as your blade on a blade blank that you either forged cut out from scrap steel or something that's been water jetted something like that like a knife blank and I found this jig online guy named gout customs on his YouTube channel and I've made public four blades on it now just to find out what all the ins and outs were and see how it work and I can see that there's a few modifications I've made you know when I saw that he originally made you can see there's a screw hole here that's in front of this line here that's because his blade is thinner than the blades that this judge was set up was jig was set up to cut inch-and-a-quarter blades and this blade's not internet's worldwide so i had to go in here and put another hole in the pretense of this jig is very very simple you have a screw here that is a stop screw that keeps your file from going any further left or right and that becomes your plunge line on your drawing right there on the edge then you have another screw here that basically just keeps this knife blank from moving left and right and you have a wood clamp that holds it down to this piece of wood and you have a row of screws going back to justice camera out just a little bit for you you have a row of screw holes that goes back to the back back here of the eye bolt and you can adjust that forward and back to get your proper angle of grind I've got this one set up to 11 degrees right with just a simple square so now this file which is a it says axe right here on the handle of file this is a Nicholson file and I keep a wire brush to clean the shavings out of it right beside it and it's just clamped to a steel bar that goes through that I bolt which gives you your angle and a guide very similar to an old Lansky sharpening type system on a larger scale and then this is just clamped to this bar I'll show you how to set one of these up and build one of these in a minute but I wanted to really use one of these hard for a little while to figure out all the little ins and outs and tricks of the trade let's say before I built one of these and show you on video now one thing that I did find very helpful with gal customs video was he takes his files and he puts like a round edge on both sides of the file with a grinder before he uses it and really does that so that you don't get a squared off plunge line you get kind of a rounded plunge line which adds to the integrity the knives and it looks a little better to me as well so once you get all that set up remember that your file really only cuts in one direction like this so all you have to do is start to grind off metal if you got a good sharp box going to bite metal that way and you just remove everything down to your grind till you're halfway down the blade we'll talk about that in another video but there's ways that you can find that center point on your blade then you just split the blade over to the other side and start grinding the other side of your grind line but what I want to do they will show you how to make one of these does very simple process to make it and once you start using it I think you'll find that although it's a little bit of work if you don't have a lot of complicated tools this is a very easy way to make good clean grind lines on a knife blank that you've made and the cost of this thing is probably well under 10 bucks ok so what we need to make this is just a couple of one by fours here is what I use for stock and these things are about eleven ten and fourteen inches long these are going to create your team I've got one 3h piece of cold rolled steel four screws some wood glue this is a Nicholson axe file to one inch hose clamps a row of electrical tape to stovepipe screws and one eye bolt and these are all the same size they're a 3/8 by 20 if I remember right and then you're going to need drill bed set screw pencil to square and you're pretty good shape the cost of this stuff without the file that's probably less than 10 bucks you're right at 10 bucks add the file and you're talking about it or six or seven bucks per good Nicholson axe file that you know is going to be you know heavy duty cutter for metal that's an expensive part of this process but that file will last you a long time we'll just take care of it okay so all I'm doing is lining up the center line center line here I'm going to throw a little bit of wood glue on this thing just to hold it down I'm going to screw it as well line up our Center lines on the board's here throw a couple wood screws in just to hold things in place then we're just going to line this board up on the front throw a couple more wood screws in here just like that now okay now we have a line here or Scrolls and we're going to separate those about every one inch and we don't need them all the way to the end of this thing we only need one two three four five holes is definitely good enough we'll put six in there just for good measure all right we'll come back to Center punch those in a minute now we also need a line here add an inch and a quarter mark that and we'll come in and put a line across that and then a quarter

like this

and then I'm going to put another row in here another line of bolt holes at about three quarters of an inch as well actually at one inch I'm going to put one in there one inch so we'll have to set some lines there and the reason for that is I found that with smaller blades like the Mora size type blades you really need that second set of holes in there to secure that blade well without eating up the front end of your jig with the file and getting interference there and then the same thing here you want those holes about every inch and then like I said on this one I'm just going to put those holes in between itself with them an inch halfway in between like this actually house-senate constantly and there something else use that okay

now I'm going to pre-drill all of these holes and I'm going to drill them a little bit smaller than the screws that I'm putting in them to use the screw as a tap in the end so I've got a quarter inch bolt here I don't know if I said 3/8 but they're quarter inch bolts all of these are quarter inch these just corners by 20s and I've got a 3/16 bit which is just a little smaller that I'm going to use to pre-drill all of these holes ok so once we have all of our holes pre-drilled what we can then do is we can't chase each one of these holes with the stove bolt and it will essentially tap the hole for us using this screw and make it easier the next time around so now we have to go through here and pre tap each one of these holes by chasing it down and pulling it out okay

so once we've chased all of our holes now what we want to do is we want to figure out how long we need this bar to be now we're going to attach our file to and if we just slide it through that back bolt give ourselves I don't know four or five inches of room behind the bolt back here and then lay it on the jig or table take our file and lay it about even with the jig to the front here that tells us what length we want this thing to be and mark it up to where the handles out on a file just like that and now we can cut this bar off now I take my rod just round it off you could do that with this file or you could do it with a grinder really doesn't matter lay your rod up inside here figure out where you're going to lay on here because that's where you're going to put your clamps so we're going to put one clamp about right here and one clamp about right here and we're going to use a little bit of electrical tape on here just to cushion this thing to give that file something to bite into when we clamp it down so we'll wrap a few wraps of tape around it just like that pull it off goodness snug now what we're going to do is we're just going to lay this on top of our file and we can change this but you got a chorus and a fine side on here so if I've got two of these jigs I might set one up for course or one up for fine or vice versa so this one I'm going to set up for course because the other one set up for fine and now I'm just going to slide that hose clamp up there just like this and screw it in place to hold that where I want it close everything adjust it where we want it here dad screw right over top of that file just like that and you don't have to get crazy with it just make sure it's snug so it can't move on you

and you can slide your other one over the top and do the same thing now you're pretty much ready so what you're going to do set this thing up is you're going to clamp this down into something whether it be a vise or you could actually clamp it down to the side of a table if you wanted to as long as you don't interfere with any movement side-to-side okay now I don't have this clamp down anything right now it's just on this flat table so I can pretty much show you how to set this thing up what you're going to do is you're going to figure out which side of your blade you're going to grind and this is just a blank butcher blade here from waterjet and what you want to do is you want to come over here and you want your plunge line or the beginning of your blade to be fairly close to Center so you really want it to be one of these two Center holes here depending on whether you're going left or right it could be as far back as the next hole so move that back in there drop this screw down and this screw is going to be left up pretty high is this really just a stop that you don't want this file to go beyond here alright and you're going to put that right at your plunge line and I've marked the opposite side of the screw so I know where that plunge line is going to be on this side and I could raise that screw up just a little bit just like that and that becomes a stop now for that file it can't go any further this way on the blade where I'm making my plunge line it then I'm going to come over here and I'm going to put another one in at the front of the blade and I'm going to drive it all the way in just like this I say all the way in I mean just far enough down so it doesn't interfere with the file but it stops this blade from moving this direction alright so once we get this thing where we want it and remember that we're going to take a spot on a bevel both of these edges before we use this thing and once we get this set up so that our plunge lines at the markets back up to the screw now we can just take a clamp and clamp the backside of this knife on the handle area just like this so that it can't move so we have it held in place in the back a positive stop here a file stop here for our plunge line and now we can just go along the blade this way and it will hold whatever angle we got set back here in the back alright guys well I appreciate you joining me today for this video on how to make a custom jig that will grind an exact bubble line on your knife blank interviews I appreciate your support I thanks for anything easy for our school for our family for our business for all of our sponsor instructors affiliates and friends I'll be back to another video says I can't thanks guys