Finish Spotlight: Up close and personal with the hand rubbed Satin

Fewer finishing techniques are more valued for their beauty than what's called a "hand rubbed" satin finish.  The term satin just refers to a polished finish that still has striation patterns in it that keep it from being a high polish.  By hand polishing the blade using an abrasive, not only does one even out the bevels to be perfectly smooth, but this technique leaves nice striations in the blade as well.

Here's a Protech Brend 3 I customized a little while back, but recently I touched up the original bead blast finish by hand applying a satin using 220 grit abrasive and scotchbrite pads.  The process is time consuming and requires quite a bit of concentration to get the striations going parallel.  That said, I think you can see the results are quite attractive, especially when paired with my custom drill work.

If you would like your blade hand rubbed, feel free to contact me.  I charge 30$ for the service due to the time involved, and I can satin finish almost any blade style.  Satin finishing can also take out small scratches in the blade that may have been caused by use.  

New Knife Completion: the "Radioactive Toy" Benchmade 425S Prototype

Recently I managed to win a Benchmade 425 prototype off eBay and decided this would be the perfect knife for a Moonglow rescale.  Recently Moonglow has become a really popular acrylic substitute for traditional G10, metal or wood handles, but it's also a pretty rare and hard to get material.  I had just enough to knock this rescale out, but this knife represents the last of my Moonglow stock.

The 425 is designed by Mike Snody, and while Snody is an excellent designer, I think the handles could have been a little more interesting on this particular knife.  Don't get me wrong, black G10 is great, but Moonglow is so much cooler, don't you agree?

I had to be very careful when I was working on this knife; Prototypes are VERY collectable, and when it comes to Benchmades, the 425 is one of the most popular.  Taking special pains to make sure the original hardware and knife remained unscathed during my build, I carefully made the Moonglow scales by tracing the existing scales onto my Moonglow sheet and ground each scale to fit exactly into place.  Then I finished the scales by sculpting them first with 60 grit belts and later hand sanded the scales out to 220 then 600 grit and finally with a scotchbrite pad to help make the scales nice and satin finished.  I think the results speak for themselves, eh?

New Knife Completion: "Moon Special" Spyderco Military

I recently got the opportunity to work on a Spyderco Military, and while the Millie presents a few challenges, I'm never one to shy away from trying new things.  The first issue with the Military that I had to overcome was the nested liners, which while it reduces the weight of the knife to make it almost impossibly light, also proved to be a royal pain in the rear for me.

I overcame the problem using my new mill and careful dremel work.  While it's almost impossible to CNC this kind of thing, manually milling the slots necessary isn't too bad, it just requires some time and careful work.  Once I had the nested liners in place, I milled my slots for inlay and ground down my red G10 to .245 inches, just ever so slightly thinner than the slots I made.  Putting the slots .15 inches apart makes them look much better than my wider spaced earlier jobs.

The thing about white G10, and let me just be blunt, is that it's a pain in the butt to work with.  White G10 has the tendency to soak up dirt and debris from the shop and will discolor if you get dirty water or oil on it.  As such until I finished the knife, I couldn't cool the G10, which made grinding the handle a rather cumbersome task.  Still, once the G10 was sculpted I think it looks pretty good.  While it may appear more off-white than snow white, it's a very bright titanium white that contrasts the blood red G10 very well.

Removed.

Removed.