How to Make 'X-ACTO' Knives

To All:

Often times we have the need to create small but accurate shapes in
metal or wood. When the 'part' happens to be in two dimensions
rather than three, such as a stencil (!) or an airfoil template, a
common method of making the part is to simply print it out then glue
the print-out to a piece of shim-stock and simply cut it out. The
usual tool for cutting out such parts is an X-ACTO Knife which comes
to a point (ie, the #11 X-acto Knife blade). But if you find the
cupboard is bare and elect to order the part via telephone, you are in
for a serious shock, which goes something like this:

X-ACTO item# TCL X411, Classic Fine-point Blade, 15ea, X-ACTO#11,
$5.99
Shipping
$6.95

CA Tax $1.06

TOTAL $14.00
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's $0.93 PER BLADE.

Do this instead:

Find yourself some STEEL STRAPPING. Use your snips -- Dutchman or
regular tinner's snips -- to make ONE cut at a shallow angle, then go
about 2-1/2" down the strap and make ANOTHER cut... but at the
OPPOSITE angle. Go over to your BENCH GRINDER, the one fitted with a
pair of FINE stones, and SHARPEN the angles you've just created. Be
careful sharpening the OPPOSITE angle. With both angles ROUGHLY
sharpened, do whatever it is YOU do to FINISH the sharpening... but
only go through HALF of your finish-sharpening procedue. That is, you
want to leave the edges NOT QUITE FINISHED. Now cut the pieces
exactly in the MIDDLE and you've got TWO pieces that look kinda like a
#11 blade.

You might as well make up a dozen or so PAIRS.

If you do any metal work at all you probably have used a 'bomb' to
convert MILD steel into High Carbon steel. The 'bomb' is nothing more
than a NIPPLE of black iron pipe with a pipe CAP on either end. For
little blades like this... or little screws or whatever... your 'bomb'
is probably about three inches long.

Chuck the 'bomb' into your bench vise and pour about an inch of
CHARCOAL into the thing. Now pack the BLADES into the charcoal. Heap
it up. Then pack charcoal into the pipe cap and screw it on. Hand-
tight is fine.

I've found the best charcoal for this is made from old LEATHER. Other
common gunsmithing charcoals are made from BONE and so forth. And
don''t laugh at any of this. What's happening is that the different
charcoals contain TRACE ELEMENTS which makes them more suitable for
springs; for hammer faces, for frizzens, fasteners and so forth.

The TRACE ELEMENTS, along with the CARBON is infused into your MILD
STEEL part when you put the bomb into your forge, bury it in coke or
charcoal, and blow-up a good blaze. Don't rush; take your time. You
want the bomb to reach a BRIGHT YELLOW heat.

Once you've reached the proper temperature, you want to keep it there
for about ten minutes for a small bomb (ie, one made from 1" pipe, 3"
long. Larger (or smaller), work out the required heat by comparing
the VOLUME of the bomb divided by its radius. ( A BIG bomb is
something on the order of three inches in diameter by a foot in length
-- it'll take you a couple of HOURS to properly infuse the part(s). )

Use your tongs to pull the bomb out of the coals, and another set of
tongs to unscrew one end. Do this right on the edge of the forge and
right ABOVE a bucket full of old motor oil. Now tip the contents of
the bomb into the bucket.

The bucket is going to catch fire. Don't worry about it. Put a cover
over the bucket to smother the flames. Stir the contents of the
bucket a few times then wait until the oil is cool enough for you to
fish out the blades.

Collect all of the blades in a shallow pan and cover them with an
eighth of an inch of motor oil. Now set the oil on fire. Allow the
fire to burn out. It's going to be smokey as hell so you want to do
this outside of your shop. When the fire goes out, tip the blades out
of the shallow pan onto a piece of iron and allow them to cool.

Once the blades have cooled you may continue with your sharpening.
They should take a razor edge. If they crack, you've either left them
in the bomb too long or you've cooled them too fast. The tempering
(ie, burning-off) should not effect the cracking one way or another.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's how you make blades (or leaf-springs or what-not). To make a
HANDLE for your blade simply cut a slot in a dowel or a piece of
pruning from a hardwood tree or shrub, and affix the blade in the slot
using EPOXY. Epoxy holds the blade strong enough for most work but
for metal engraving or wood carving, you'll want a more secure joining
between the handle and the tool. You can achieve this drilling a hole
(or holes) into the blade BEFORE the hardening, and affixing the blade
with steel or brass pins.

To add a bit of class to your burrens, gravures, knives and what-not,
you can fit them with copper or brass ferules. (Looks very sexy to
have an ENGRAVED data plate instead of some Joe Sixpak array of
stamped letters & numbers.)

-R.S.Hoover

wrote:
To All:

Often times we have the need to create small but accurate shapes in
metal or wood. When the 'part' happens to be in two dimensions
rather than three, such as a stencil (!) or an airfoil template, a
common method of making the part is to simply print it out then glue
the print-out to a piece of shim-stock and simply cut it out. The
usual tool for cutting out such parts is an X-ACTO Knife which comes
to a point (ie, the #11 X-acto Knife blade). But if you find the
cupboard is bare and elect to order the part via telephone, you are in
for a serious shock, which goes something like this:

X-ACTO item# TCL X411, Classic Fine-point Blade, 15ea, X-ACTO#11,
$5.99
Shipping
$6.95

CA Tax $1.06

TOTAL $14.00
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's $0.93 PER BLADE.

Do this instead:

Find yourself some STEEL STRAPPING. Use your snips -- Dutchman or
regular tinner's snips -- to make ONE cut at a shallow angle, then go
about 2-1/2" down the strap and make ANOTHER cut... but at the
OPPOSITE angle. Go over to your BENCH GRINDER, the one fitted with a
pair of FINE stones, and SHARPEN the angles you've just created. Be
careful sharpening the OPPOSITE angle. With both angles ROUGHLY
sharpened, do whatever it is YOU do to FINISH the sharpening... but
only go through HALF of your finish-sharpening procedue. That is, you
want to leave the edges NOT QUITE FINISHED. Now cut the pieces
exactly in the MIDDLE and you've got TWO pieces that look kinda like a
#11 blade.

You might as well make up a dozen or so PAIRS.

If you do any metal work at all you probably have used a 'bomb' to
convert MILD steel into High Carbon steel. The 'bomb' is nothing more
than a NIPPLE of black iron pipe with a pipe CAP on either end. For
little blades like this... or little screws or whatever... your 'bomb'
is probably about three inches long.

Chuck the 'bomb' into your bench vise and pour about an inch of
CHARCOAL into the thing. Now pack the BLADES into the charcoal. Heap
it up. Then pack charcoal into the pipe cap and screw it on. Hand-
tight is fine.

I've found the best charcoal for this is made from old LEATHER. Other
common gunsmithing charcoals are made from BONE and so forth. And
don''t laugh at any of this. What's happening is that the different
charcoals contain TRACE ELEMENTS which makes them more suitable for
springs; for hammer faces, for frizzens, fasteners and so forth.

The TRACE ELEMENTS, along with the CARBON is infused into your MILD
STEEL part when you put the bomb into your forge, bury it in coke or
charcoal, and blow-up a good blaze. Don't rush; take your time. You
want the bomb to reach a BRIGHT YELLOW heat.

Once you've reached the proper temperature, you want to keep it there
for about ten minutes for a small bomb (ie, one made from 1" pipe, 3"
long. Larger (or smaller), work out the required heat by comparing
the VOLUME of the bomb divided by its radius. ( A BIG bomb is
something on the order of three inches in diameter by a foot in length
-- it'll take you a couple of HOURS to properly infuse the part(s). )

Use your tongs to pull the bomb out of the coals, and another set of
tongs to unscrew one end. Do this right on the edge of the forge and
right ABOVE a bucket full of old motor oil. Now tip the contents of
the bomb into the bucket.

The bucket is going to catch fire. Don't worry about it. Put a cover
over the bucket to smother the flames. Stir the contents of the
bucket a few times then wait until the oil is cool enough for you to
fish out the blades.

Collect all of the blades in a shallow pan and cover them with an
eighth of an inch of motor oil. Now set the oil on fire. Allow the
fire to burn out. It's going to be smokey as hell so you want to do
this outside of your shop. When the fire goes out, tip the blades out
of the shallow pan onto a piece of iron and allow them to cool.

Once the blades have cooled you may continue with your sharpening.
They should take a razor edge. If they crack, you've either left them
in the bomb too long or you've cooled them too fast. The tempering
(ie, burning-off) should not effect the cracking one way or another.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's how you make blades (or leaf-springs or what-not). To make a
HANDLE for your blade simply cut a slot in a dowel or a piece of
pruning from a hardwood tree or shrub, and affix the blade in the slot
using EPOXY. Epoxy holds the blade strong enough for most work but
for metal engraving or wood carving, you'll want a more secure joining
between the handle and the tool. You can achieve this drilling a hole
(or holes) into the blade BEFORE the hardening, and affixing the blade
with steel or brass pins.

To add a bit of class to your burrens, gravures, knives and what-not,
you can fit them with copper or brass ferules. (Looks very sexy to
have an ENGRAVED data plate instead of some Joe Sixpak array of
stamped letters & numbers.)

-R.S.Hoover

I felt good - just reading that old recipe. Thank you

Brian W

On Mar 15, 8:41*pm, Brian Whatcott wrote:

I felt good - just reading that old recipe. Thank you
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Brian,

I don't know how true it is ( ie, the infusion of trace elements in
leather charcoal ) but I've heard it from more than one machinist
whose advice I feel I can trust. The only quantified test I know of
[done with a 'gas chromatograph'??] showed that different leathers did
in fact show different amounts of things such as chromium and
vanadium. Ditto for bone charcoal.

A modern-day metallurgist would probably laugh me out of the shop but
I've got a couple of burins (ie, engraving tools for gun work) that
I made in the mid-60's which still produce a neat curl of metal from
most rifle receivers.

As for the steel strapping, back in the 1960's when I was doing a lot
of black-smithing I hammer-welded about twenty feet of half-inch strap
into twelve inch bar then drew out to a thirty-inch sword blade. That
was taking the Japanese method sorta backwards but I swear that sword
had no trouble cutting mild steel.

-R.S.Hoover

schreef:
Often times we have the need to create small but accurate shapes in
metal or wood. When the 'part' ...
(follows a minute description of how to make cutting tools)

Jeez Bob that comes pretty cvlose to black art to my officeman's eyes.
Be careful or next you'll be giving away the recipe of the ointment
that allowed Shakespeare's witches to fly off the stage on their brooms!

wrote in message
...
To All:

Often times we have the need to create small but accurate shapes in
metal or wood.

{{SNIP}}


Collect all of the blades in a shallow pan and cover them with an
eighth of an inch of motor oil. Now set the oil on fire. Allow the
fire to burn out. It's going to be smokey as hell so you want to do
this outside of your shop. When the fire goes out, tip the blades out
of the shallow pan onto a piece of iron and allow them to cool.

Once the blades have cooled you may continue with your sharpening.
They should take a razor edge. If they crack, you've either left them
in the bomb too long or you've cooled them too fast. The tempering
(ie, burning-off) should not effect the cracking one way or another.




Robert,
You are simply amazing. Your directions fit right there with what all my
father attempted to teach so many years ago. (The forge is long gone).

But the tempering process . . . is there a method less smoky and noxious?
For the faint of heart who live in an area where the neighbors are less
tolerant of flames and smoke?

Thanks

Flash
(Yeah, my neighbors only put up with a certain amount of disturbance, and
the Mayor is not exactly a personal friend)

" wrote:
That's $0.93 PER BLADE.

Do this instead:

While your post was otherwise informative and provides a fine educational
hands-on exercise, the alleged economic justification is, to put it
diplomatically, misleading (in other words I don't think you should have
bothered with that particular rationale because it just doesn't fly - even
costing the labor at minimum wage and assuming free material and zero
amortized tool costs, it would have been cheaper to buy the blades.)

Just saying....

Jim Logajan wrote:

While your post was otherwise informative and provides a fine educational
hands-on exercise, the alleged economic justification is, to put it
diplomatically, misleading (in other words I don't think you should have
bothered with that particular rationale because it just doesn't fly - even
costing the labor at minimum wage and assuming free material and zero
amortized tool costs, it would have been cheaper to buy the blades.)

Just saying....

Perhaps but I think it would be fun to do just once to prove I could.
I'd probably use old hacksaw blades to make my own 'X-ACTO' type knives.
They already are made of the right steel and they're easy to anneal and
harden.

Tony

Flash wrote:
wrote in message
...
To All:

Often times we have the need to create small but accurate shapes in
metal or wood.

{{SNIP}}

Collect all of the blades in a shallow pan and cover them with an
eighth of an inch of motor oil. Now set the oil on fire. Allow the
fire to burn out. It's going to be smokey as hell so you want to do
this outside of your shop. When the fire goes out, tip the blades out
of the shallow pan onto a piece of iron and allow them to cool.

Once the blades have cooled you may continue with your sharpening.
They should take a razor edge. If they crack, you've either left them
in the bomb too long or you've cooled them too fast. The tempering
(ie, burning-off) should not effect the cracking one way or another.




Robert,
You are simply amazing. Your directions fit right there with what all my
father attempted to teach so many years ago. (The forge is long gone).

But the tempering process . . . is there a method less smoky and noxious?
For the faint of heart who live in an area where the neighbors are less
tolerant of flames and smoke?

Thanks

Flash
(Yeah, my neighbors only put up with a certain amount of disturbance, and
the Mayor is not exactly a personal friend)



Certainly, try a table top furnace and KaseNit.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

Bob Hoover wrote:
On Mar 15, 8:41 pm, Brian Whatcott wrote:

I felt good - just reading that old recipe. Thank you
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Brian,

I don't know how true it is ( ie, the infusion of trace elements in
leather charcoal ) but I've heard it from more than one machinist
whose advice I feel I can trust. The only quantified test I know of
[done with a 'gas chromatograph'??] showed that different leathers did
in fact show different amounts of things such as chromium and
vanadium. Ditto for bone charcoal.

Gunmakers loved this method of "color case-hardening" their actions.
The charcoal adds the surface layer carbide particles to provide that
thin hard surface layer no doubt - but they prized above all the colors
that could be got. You didn't mention the horse droppings ingredient
though :-)
.....
As for the steel strapping, back in the 1960's when I was doing a lot
of black-smithing I hammer-welded about twenty feet of half-inch strap
into twelve inch bar then drew out to a thirty-inch sword blade. That
was taking the Japanese method sorta backwards but I swear that sword
had no trouble cutting mild steel.

-R.S.Hoover

The other Damascus approach I have heard about used the scrap metal
-working bandsaw blades alternated with mild steel strap.
The combination of toughness from the mild steel and hardenability
from the alloy blade looked good (when acid-etched) , and worked well
apparently.
Brian W

The other Damascus approach I have heard about used the scrap metal
-working bandsaw blades alternated with mild steel strap.
* *The combination of toughness from the mild steel *and hardenability
from the alloy blade looked good (when acid-etched) , and worked well
apparently.--------------------------------------------------------------------

The method I saw used in Japan, at a guy's shop near Kuriyama, was to
brush the billet on both sides as they workd it out from a billet of
about 4 x 1 in. to a piece about 8" x 3/4" was to BRUSH the faces of
the billet with a wad of rice straw dipped in what appeared to be
water. After each brushing it was re-heated back to bright yellow
then folded inward, onto the face that had been brushed last. After
folding it was worked back to its original size (ie, about 4 x 1
inch). This wouldn't make a full size sword of course, and the fellow
may have done it just to demonstrate the technique. He was a
westerner but a registered sword maker who had several Japanese
apprentices. He used traditional tools and clearly knew what he was
doing.

I assume the straw -- or the liquid -- provided the required carbon.
The billet was folded eight times (ie, two to the eighth, or 256 layers
[?]). The result was a single-edged blade, about 1//8th inch on the
back and a bit thinner than a knife on the cutting edge. In forming
the cutting edge the natural camber resullted in a slight curve. Very
stiff.

Off & on, I spent a total of seven years in Japan, not always
stationed ashore, but I pulled two fairly long hitches, both at HSA
Yokosuka. There were quite a few traditional metal smiths on the
Kuriyama peninsula, including a shipyard (!) that could handle hulls
up to about 120 feet (they launched them sideways); mostly fishing
boats. It was a very interesting time for me.

-R.S.Hoover
-(USN, Retired)