WaddWatsonEllis Belduque WIP

Started by Josh Dabney, February 16, 2010, 08:52:47 AM

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WaddWatsonEllis

Josh,

As usual, I am dumb to express the quality of your work!  

One of the Romantic Poets wrote;

'Great with child to speak,

And helpless in my woes ....'

So I sit ... I never thought it would happen, but I have simply run out of metaphors and adjectives!

I too sit in antsy anticipation of the next step....
My moniker is my great grandfather's name. He served with the 2nd Florida Mounted Regiment in the Civil War. Afterward, he came home, packed his wife into a wagon, and was one of the first NorteAmericanos on the Frio River southwest of San Antonio ..... Kinda where present day Dilley is ...

"Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway." John Wayne
NCOWS #3403

Josh Dabney

Well there's a bunch of different kins of pards out there.  Some obsess about being neat and organized while other like myself obsess over gittin some work done, LOL.  Cleaning never has been my strong suit but occasionally even I have to realize that there's just no room left on the bench to work so I thought I admit what a train wreck I can be and show a pic of the bench today before I actually CLEANED it up,  LOL.


Now that we got things straighteded out a little it's time to git to work on the sheath.  We've got some .020 German Silver sheet, some snips, and of course our sheath body.


Now I cut off a piece of silver  and begin thinking about how to make it look like a sheath  ;)  This is where I'm planning on putting the seam so we'll get started there.



Josh Dabney

Here's the first attempt at forming the silver to the body.   I clamped it up with some spring clamps and started forming the edge down with my hammer, the same modified tack hammer used in doing the silver wire.


This method of clamping is definately NOT holding good enough so I moved on to holding it by hand to do the forming.


WOW,  This tuff is kinda springy !  Decided I need to pre-bend the last little bit close to the seam to help get started so I closed the vise enough to use it like a hand brake (tool for bending sheet metal)


Still trying different methods of clamping things down. here I'm hand bending to get some curve to the face of the sheet to match the dome on the body.


Josh Dabney

Now I'm back to using the hammer to work the sheet on the corner of the bench which is woking MUCH better than the previous clamping attempts.


We're finally begining to see some progress with the first bend pretty close to where it needs to be.


Moving on to the opposite side I've hand bent the sheet around the body as tightly as possible and marked where I need to begin getting some more bend in the sheet.


Now I've got the sheet formed enough that I can no longer use the corner of the bench to do my forming so I clamped up a piece of 1/8 x 1 1/2 ATS-34 in the vise to use as an anvil.


This process involved thousands of quick light hammer blows to form the silver.  Things do get a little dinged up but we're not doing too bad thus far.


Josh Dabney

More marking and more bending.  We're going slow here working the sheet a little, test fitting, marking , then working it with the hammer some more. 


This is a good angle to show what I mean by marking where it needs to bend more.


Now we're getting there with making the bend around the second side.


Here we're ready to make the last bend to join back to the start and create our seem.  At this point I've got it clamped up enough to hand bend the sheet and start forming with the hammer just the way it is in the pic to get us close.


The next 2 shots show me squeezing the silver by hand to check out the "fit".  Then a pic of how much it springs back which is why the hammering is needed to form the silver so it stays the shape you want it without being under stress


Josh Dabney

I'm close enough now to mark and trim the sheet to lenght so it will butt into the other side.


Here I've marked out where I need to bend the edge some more to close up the gap on the other side


Getting very close now.  Still have to work down the very end of the back side to form the seem


Here's a shot of the outside and inside of the seem to get silver soldered together.


Josh Dabney

Now for the fun part,  Soldering.... which is known to be a real bear at times and something I haven't done for a loooong time.
We've got the stuff though,  solder, flux, and anti-flux that is used to keep solder from sticking where you dont want it.


Here we are with attempt #1...  LOL


Now I do know better and after seeing daylight through the seem before soldering I should've gone back to the ole drawing board and straightened up those edges before soldering but something was telling me...  This is some fairly thick solder maybe it'll work fine,  LOL.


One benefit though was that the solder held enough that I got the oppertunity to tune up the shape with the hammer with the silver right on the body which was a BIG help.



Josh Dabney

Soldering... Take 2.  Looking a little better this time  ;D


Cleaning things up a bit.  I'm not really trying to get a final finish here just cleaning things up before trying it on for size.


Hmmmmm.  Alittle too tight I guess.  She popped back open when I was tapping it onto the sheath body.


This time around I filed the inside edges straight to be certain to get a good joint.  I should have done that the first time around ! I did end up with a bit of a solder blob on the inside of the throat which I took care of with an 1/8" round file.



WaddWatsonEllis

Josh,

I have always casually joked that asians got their sense of patience from learning to eat with chopsticks at a very early age ...somewhat non politically correct to say, but possibly true.

Then again, they might have formed silver at an early age ... I would have thrown the whole project out by now and started looking at leather ... I have very little patience if something doesn't happen the first time ....

But breathtaking work!

My moniker is my great grandfather's name. He served with the 2nd Florida Mounted Regiment in the Civil War. Afterward, he came home, packed his wife into a wagon, and was one of the first NorteAmericanos on the Frio River southwest of San Antonio ..... Kinda where present day Dilley is ...

"Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway." John Wayne
NCOWS #3403

Josh Dabney

Now I did some clean-up again. this time on a 220 grit slack belt so it's time to test fit once again.  


And here we are finishing up the day with the first part of throat shaped and fit to the body, soldered and cleaned up a bit.



Operation THROAT will continue tomorrow as she still needs to have a cap made with a slot for the blade and soldered onto the piece I made today.

What do yall think so far ?

-Josh

WaddWatsonEllis

Josh,

Besides the breathtaking workmanship, I think you are pretty historically correct too ... I am reposting the Searles Bowie and sheath ... the one you are making could have been made 200 years ago ...

My moniker is my great grandfather's name. He served with the 2nd Florida Mounted Regiment in the Civil War. Afterward, he came home, packed his wife into a wagon, and was one of the first NorteAmericanos on the Frio River southwest of San Antonio ..... Kinda where present day Dilley is ...

"Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway." John Wayne
NCOWS #3403

WaddWatsonEllis

Interesting information on Bowie Knives and 'Spanish knives' ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowie_knife
My moniker is my great grandfather's name. He served with the 2nd Florida Mounted Regiment in the Civil War. Afterward, he came home, packed his wife into a wagon, and was one of the first NorteAmericanos on the Frio River southwest of San Antonio ..... Kinda where present day Dilley is ...

"Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway." John Wayne
NCOWS #3403

Josh Dabney

WWE,

Interesting read,  Thanks !

Yup,  I do believe this one could've walked right out of the past   ;D    LOL. 

-Josh

WaddWatsonEllis

Now all through my volunteering tomorrow, instead of thinking about what I am doing, I am going to be thinking about the next group of pics tomorrow night .... LOL
My moniker is my great grandfather's name. He served with the 2nd Florida Mounted Regiment in the Civil War. Afterward, he came home, packed his wife into a wagon, and was one of the first NorteAmericanos on the Frio River southwest of San Antonio ..... Kinda where present day Dilley is ...

"Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway." John Wayne
NCOWS #3403

Forty Rod

Quote from: Josh Dabney on April 05, 2010, 05:18:19 PM
Forty Rod,

It would have an affect on balance but probably not that significant.  The closer to the point of balance that changes are made have less affect. 

Now going from no clip at all to a clip half the blade length will have a big impact on the balance point.

Another factor is how thick the blade steel is to begin with. 

Say for example your knife is 1/4" on the spine then your removing quite a bit of steel to get a sharpenable clip.  Where-as if the blade is an 1/8"  not much steel has to be removed to make it sharpenable. 

It would seem that it would be a direct ratio meaning the 1/8" blade is lighter so it would still have the same effect on balance but that's not really the case because  to get the thick blade thin enough much more steel has to be removed.


Now if we're talking about a false clip then it's mostly just a factor of where the maker wants the grind line for appearance reasons.


Hope that didn't just confuse things further,  LOL   Josh ;D

Well, you did, but I was born confused and have gone downhill steadily since.  :o   ;D 

Actually, that's exactly what I was hoping to hear.  I want the top sharpened, but like the balance where it is.  Thanks.
People like me are the reason people like you have the right to bitch about people like me.

Josh Dabney

Continuing on with our german silver throat today Pards I got started by tracing the collar on the top (1/8" Plate) and laying out the slot for the blade to slide through.  We want some extra wiggle room on the slot so we've got room to fit a tiny liner around the inside to protect the blade from scrathes.


Taking a measurement on the top and bottom of the slot to figure out what size drill bits to use for the ends of the slots.


I'm using a coping saw to hand cut out the inside of the slot.


Here we've got the slot cut and cleaned up with files and sitting on to of the sheath body to size up the slot.  Once I lined it up I traced around the bottom with a sharpie.


Josh Dabney

Cut the top out on the bandsaw with plenty of extra so here's a couple shots of how it's gonna go together



Here I've got my bolsters traced on the top of the throat and a piece of damascus left over from the blade billet.   You can see I've got some sharpie marks on the damascus to highlight where I'm gonna be removing material.  This piece is going to become our retention device that keeps the blade in the sheath until swung open.   I'm kinda of designing as I go here so bare with me as this takes shape.  The pics are going to do the best explaining with this part so it'll be easy to undestand as we get towards being finished.




Josh Dabney

Here you can see how I'm using a MAPP gas torch to get a localized heat and get the steel to bend right where I need it too.


The first bending is forming a blacksmith curl on the end which I tightened up just a touch after this pic was taken


This next set of pics is a series of heating, bending, checking, and repeating to get the desired shape.








Josh Dabney

Here you can see that I've ground a little off the front side to get some clearance around the bolster and layed out where the pin will be that allows this to pivot out to allow removal of the blade.


This is a neat little trick.  Here I've made a transfer punch out of an 1/8" drill bit by sharpening to a shallow point on the shank. This allows me to line up the "gate" where I want it to be on the throat then slip the transfer punch in the hole and give it a gentle tap to get a perfectly placed center punch on the throat top.



WaddWatsonEllis

Josh,

All I was thinking of was a little leather retainer strap and a frog ... this if definitely over-the-top!

I love it!
My moniker is my great grandfather's name. He served with the 2nd Florida Mounted Regiment in the Civil War. Afterward, he came home, packed his wife into a wagon, and was one of the first NorteAmericanos on the Frio River southwest of San Antonio ..... Kinda where present day Dilley is ...

"Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway." John Wayne
NCOWS #3403

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