SGT Run Ranger Run 2015 I.B. work in progress day 8

Run Ranger Runners and all you awesome supporters,

Knock on wood but we are pretty close to mission success here at SAR Global Tool, with the 2nd annual "SGT Inglorious Bastered knife". Hope somebody is feeling really lucky, the blade is exceptional. The hand selected material all has a bit a meaning to it and to the the blade and to the Ranger community, please understand that's from  my perspective only and of course opinions could vary.

The first set of handles for the back up Bastard just never felt right from the beginning to bulky,considering the thickness of the steel. So I dump them and decided on a tried and and true material called Green Canvas Micarta. It is as hard a wood pecker lips and impervious to anything, oils, solvents, enemy blood.........etc etc even sharks with Lasers......:)

 

Contouring the edges and getting them ready for hand sanding, you can see in the next picture how thin they are but trust me the knife feels the hand.

 

 Cutting kydex, same as last year O.D. Front blaclback

 

 Blue painters tape is place in three layers, two in one side and one on the other. The tape measures about .0003" and provides a little room so the kydex does not scratch of mar the finish of the blades

 

 Kydex is cooking at 350-375 for about 3-4 minutes comes out floppy and ready to mold. The black piece in placed down first and then the knife is put in position, green over that and then clamped down very tightly and left to set. It cools quickly and it taken out at the right time you can do little minor adjustments.

Lighting Strike Carbon Fiber

Almost ready

 

Stay tuned as we finish up this battle blades

RLTW

SAR

SGT Run Ranger Run 2015 I.B. work in progress day 7

Run Ranger Run folks and supporters,

 As usual "Murphy" showed on the second larger blade but have a back up plan that I should have went went with first go around.......that handles just not meet my expectation's and the over al thickness . Its not the first time stuff like this happens.

Here was the start point to today, all the edges needed to to be rounded, to include the blade. The only sharp edge should be the cutting edge........period.

 Using a small wheel I slowly radius the edge to set up for the hand sanding I will do out side

As stated all edges get broken , whih makes the hand sanding easier later.

 

The rough radius with 129 grit flex belt, before going to hand sanding.

 

Handsanding begins in a shoeshine motion starts at 220 grit and ends at 400 grit this buffed to a nice shine witch really brings out the best in Lighting Strike Carbon fiber.

 

Once all this is done the knife is cleaned very well and place in "Ferric Chloride" if there is is any spotting on debris it will be left on the blade. I left this blade in for 20 minutes and the etch cme ou nice and dark. Once removed it is naturalized with Windex  and the spray WD-40

 Better pictures coming promise

 Had poor sun but this are looking good

SGT Run Ranger Run 2015 I.B. work in progress day 6

Run Ranger Ranger Run folks and supporter.

Sorry for the delay, I came down with he flu on Sunday that turned to bronchitis. I worked until I had to made a appointment at the VA and was told to stand down for at least 24 hours. So lets gets back up to speed I plan to make my deadline. as promised, so we will get back to day 6.

At this poin the handles are rough fitted, and I like to finish the blades up to a close to the finish point. For these we will go 60, 120, 220, 400 grit.

 

Scott let me borrow his helmet Ethan Mad Max made him for Christmas this year ha ha

 

Handles are now fitted to the profile of the blade, its pretty quick work with a 60 grit knuckle buster.

From here its really all about cleaning up your mess you made.

 

 Finish point for day 6

Standby for more build action hope you enjoy.

Spencer A Reiter

SGT Run Ranger Run 2015 I.B. work in progress day 5

Run Ranger Run folks,

You guys are out there kicking some major butt, and some of you are in some pretty adverse weather conditions. So keep up the good fight

 " Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor"


So here we are day five and things are looking good, most all yesterday was fitting the handles to the blades. This picture is our start point, the handles are laminated and ready to go.

 The handle material is firmly clamped down to the blade and a proper size pin it struck with a hammer which gives me my reference for drilling.

Once all the holes are spotted we move over to the drill press and drill all the holes. In this phase if you are not careful you can be a little off and the screws will not line up and you have to start over. So it it really pays to pay attention. Not shown but once all the holes are drilled the material is flipped over and the holes are counter board with a special tool to put the screws below the surface.

At this point its time to use the band saw to remove as much excess material as possible, you could just grind it away but it creates a lot of dusts. Carbon Fiber and G10 are very dangerous materials, once airborne they stay airborne and get into you lungs even when wearing a mask. I use a dust collection system to mitigate that factor as much as possible.

 

So here is are start point today.

                                                                Stay tuned and enjoy your day

SGT Run Ranger Run 2015 I.B. work in progress day 4

Good Morning all you Run Ranger Runners,

Yesterday was not all that exciting, I spent about 8-10 hours preparing the handle material for the Bastereds.

As you notice or not I always shoot a picture of the the start point for each day, hope it helps to show the progress. Yesterday I dressed it up a bit with "Old Glory" and she was looking fine. If you look at the blades they have a kinda "Straw brown color" which is a good indicator of a proper heat treat to the steel.

 

Next I add what is called a female stand-offs which are .250" or 1/4" in diameter. They are threaded for a 4-40 screw. There are many ways to attach handles this is just the way that I do it.

This next picture shows the handle material I choose to use. At the top is medium textured ""Ranger" green G10, and yes its really referred  to as such. The red is called liner material and it will get laminated between the RG and a thin piece of black G10. The material with the sticker is called lighting strike carbon fiber, it was used in last years Basterd, not show is the yellow liner material. It will also get laminated to a thin piece of black G10. The LSCF just for that piece which is 1/8"x12"x12" cost at the time $120.00.....yikes

 

Not pictured but I use a square abd ruler to measure each piece, then it gets cut on the bandsaw

All the handle pieces are laid out and ready to get glued up. You have to do this pretty fast and have everything you need in place, the epoxy sets very quickly.

 I use a small brush to apply the epxoy and ensure that every little bit is covered.

 

Next they are placed between to blocks and tightened down in one of my vices, and left to cure for 5-6 hours

At this point I can now spot the holes for the screws, scribe the outline to the blade. Cut away what I can and then grind the rest away

 This was the last shot of the day while I still had light and had down just a bit of grinding on the blades.

Stay tuned for more action

RLTW!

SGT Run Ranger Run 2015 I.B. work in progress day 3

Good morning folks,

Yesterday went so smooth that we were able to really get some of the very critical tasked out of the way. Of course I will explain those in a bit more detail later.


Below we started the rough grinding. You start we a very coarse 2"x72" 60 grit belt, you do all your rough work and grind to the parallel we spoke of in the earlier post. The key is to get both sides as even as possible. If one side is different then the other it could cause the blade to warp in heat treat.

 

Constantly checking and measuring ensures that you get as close to perfect as possible. As you can see in this picture the the contact (Grinding wheel) is very small. I have contact wheels from 2" to 14" the larger the wheel the flatter the hollow grind will be. In this case I choose a 6" wheel which will produce a very deep hollow grind.  

 

Having some fun and grinding the blade with my eyes closed, please don't try this at home.....ha ha

 

All the holes are polished with scraps of belts, so they have a nice smooth finish.

After taking measurements and satisfied that things look good and ready for heat treat. We decided to do just that since we had time to get it done. I like to finish my grinding after heat treat as the steel responds much better, its much harder and the grinds are nice and crisp.

 

Before heat treat we decided to take nice group shot of bad ass things

 

The Heat Treat Station

 The knives are completely cleaned of any residue, then placed in the kiln edge up. Close the door, turn it on and it heats up to 1500 degrees. The first cycle is called "Normalizing" what happens is the knives are heated to 1500 degrees but they do not get quench in oil, they are removed and allowed to cool. What happens is it refines the grains in the steel you can do this several times before you do the final hardening quench. So in a nutshell it produces a better grain structure and stronger knife.

 

I opened the door for a quick view of the "Heat Miser" at work.

 

The blades removed from the normalizing stage and allowed to cool, this also gives you a chance to check and ensure they are straight and straight they are.

 

Back in the oven edge up, back up to 1500 degrees for 8 minutes. With fire proof gloves and metal tongs the first blade is grabbed at 6 minutes and plunged into the quench oil. The quench oil takes the blades from 1500 degrees down to 800 to 900 degrees in about a minute, in two minutes you can handle them with your bare hands.

 

At this point you have a very small window to check for any warping that may occurred, in the picture abouve you see a press I carefully use that to make minor corrections. To much pressure and the blade with snap......and yes I have snapped a few and it really sucks. 

 The blades after the quench, they have a soul, they are hard and ready to tempered.

 

The blades at this point are very hard....brittle would be a good term. If left in this state they would break under hard use or even dropped on the floor. So they go through whats called a "Temper cycle. Which consist of 400 degrees for one hour two times.

 I check them with whats called a "Rockwell Tester" very expensive devise but it's worth every penny. The rockwell tester has a diamond that penetrates the steel via a dial it tells you how hard the steel is. In this case it read Hardness Rockwell "C" scale or HRc 58-59

Stay tuned for more action

SAR