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The Shop

Grinder – Grinder in a Box

It all starts here. This is one of the most important pieces of equipment in my shop.  This machine is very universal.  There are many different attachments a flat platen, small wheel, and 8” rubber wheel.  I have modified the design a little bit.  Most of the changes I made are ones that have been added to the GIB 2.0 kits.  I have outfitted it with a Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) which makes speeding up or slowing the sanding belt down very easy.  If you can wait to do a VFD on your sander, I would highly suggest waiting and saving up for this upgrade.

Drill Press – Jet JDP-17DX

The drill press is the second most important piece of equipment in my shop. This helps make sure I drill holes perpendicularly, in addition to being easier to use than a hand drill!  I use this to drill the holes in the tangs of the knives, in the handles, to make fixtures, and even punch holes in my leather sheaths for stitching.  This is a very versatile piece of equipment even if you are not making knives.

Shop Vise – Yost 750 DI

This is one of the most used pieces of equipment in my shop. It holds the knife at the proper angle for me to do filework, sand the handle, or a bunch of other things I need a third hand doing.  This vise is big and strong.  I love being able to rotate the head to whatever angle I need it to go.

Band saw – Craftsman 9”

This is one of the workhorses in the shop.  It helps me process knife handle material very quickly.  I mainly use this for processing blocks of wood.  With the saw blade being so thin, I don’t loose as much material as I would on the table saw.  The bandsaw removes about 0.030″ of material per cut, where the table saw would be removing a little over 1/8″ of material.  Some of the blocks I get are only 3/4″ thick.  If I were to remove 1/8″ in the middle, there would not be the proper amount of thickness on either side.

Table saw – Craftsman 10”

Nothing can process wood or handle material as fast as the table saw.   The table saw is my go to machine to quickly cut up sheets of G10 or micarta for handle liners.  Being able to hook this up to the four inch suction hose on my dust collector helps make the shop much cleaner.

Dust Collection System

This is one of the best investments I have made in my shop. Not only does it help me clean up the shop quickly, it helps keep particles out of the air so I don’t breathe them in.  I use a respirator, but never want to solely rely on it.  If my respirator does not work for some reason, there are a lot less particles to potentially breathe in.

  • Shop Fox Wall Mount Dust Collector – Model: W1826

  • Rockler Dust Right® Canister Filter – Item #: 53522

  • Super Dust Deputy 5″ Cyclone Separator – Item #: AXD002030A

  • Jet 1000CFM Air Filtration System – Model Number: AFS-1000B

Heat Treat Oven – Evenheat KF 22.5

I heat-treat all my knives in this oven. It can accommodate knives up to 22.5 inches.  The oven will go to 2200ºF which is hot enough to heat treat all the blade steels I use.  I made a handy rolling stand to place it on.  It is great to be able to roll it away from the wall or tuck it away when not in use.

Rockwell Hardness Tester

This piece of equipment determines the hardness of the blade after it has been heat-treated.  This was one of the coolest things I have ever found.  One of the guys I know, his dad was a metallurgist.  He had purchased a few different hardness testers over the years and he was looking to get rid of them!  One of the best “Right place at the right time” things for me.

Foredom TX Flex Shaft Rotary Tool

This is an awesome piece of equipment. It helps to make portions of knifemaking go a lot faster.  This is like a Dremel on steroids.  The TX has 1/3 HP which is much more than a Dremel.  I can use it to help cut groves in the handle for filework, help take material away to make pins fit better, or a number of other intricate details.

Photography Equipment

I regularly use a photo box and Nikon D5500 for all of my high resolution images. This is a great DSLR camera that takes much better photos than my iPhone can!  The light box helps to light up different areas of the knife without having shadows on other areas.

Milwaukee Deep Cut Portaband – Model: 6232-20

I rough cut my blade blanks on this portaband saw.  I mainly use it with the SWAG Off-Road 4.0 table.  This helps make the portaband a very multifunctional piece of equipment.  I also built a base where I can clamp it to any horizontal surface I need to.  Having pieces of equipment you can get out of your way is very useful in a small shop.

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Around the Grinder – November 2017

What has been going on in the shop this past months? It has been a crazy few months at KHDaily Knives. I feel badly that these blogs were one of the things that just had to get cut out with all that was going on. Hopefully, I can keep up with it going forward. The […]

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Around the Grinder – May, 2017

What has been going on in the shop this past month? This past month I have been finishing up a couple of knives for special people I know. One is going to be going on an elk hunt with some of his family and another for his father. For the elk hunt, he wanted a […]

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Around the Grinder – April, 2017

What is Around the Grinder? Around the grinder is a type of blog post that I talk about what happened during the month.  It will be some knife making stuff, some stuff about life, and other miscellaneous things. There was a lot of cool things that happened this month.  This month started off with not much […]

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