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Thanks.  I have done a blade like that of 180 layers and it looked really good, very bold, but you really have to get up over 300 layers to get the "3D shimmer" on ladder pattern steel.

Mr. jmforge,

Um..., Got to say..., I'm impressed. The knives you make are beautiful!

Forging and hammering out your own 450 layer damascus, eh?. 

I especially like the 400 layer random damascus blade and fittings, with the fossil walrus ivory handle and Tree Stump Leather sheath.  Such simple and clean lines.  A real work of art.

I also really like the 450 layer ladder pattern damascus blade and fittings, with old growth Honduran rosewood burl. I love it's overall look and blade shape.  What a pretty knife!

Impressive. Beautiful. Really great work!

Don't want to change the subject, but a quick question:

Can you run a 1" belt on on your KMG?

Yes, i can and I also have the KMG rotary platen atttachment. That still doesn't totally solve the problem of bad hand-eye cordination and heating up the edge.  My other option is the smaller Catrasharp machine, but even at the GREATLY reduced prices you see today, that is still like $1300 shipped plus more if I want a second set of finer grit wheels.  For that $1300, I can get a T7, the knife jig, a black wheel and a Japanese waterstone wheel as best as I can tell.

True on why you would thin a blade, but it's not always the case that a blade needs thinning if you have to grind away the bolster.  I've see a bunch of chef's knives like this one, http://tinyurl.com/mdacxvx, where when the knife is new the bolster is even with the edge.  In this case if any metal is removed from the edge when sharpening, the blade will never lay flat unless the bolster is also ground down.

The funny part is that people make knives with those extended bolster primarily because that is the way that Pierre and Klaus always did it.  Some of the German knives are not even drop forged from a single bar of steel anymore.  The 2 bolster pieces and that one small part of the strip blade steel are heated with an induction coil and  are forge welded together and then stamped out. There is a Wusthof video out there showing them doing it.  The selection of steel is driven more by how they have to manufacture the knives than by the performance of the specific alloy. The Japanese bolstered knives often have the bolsters TIG welded onto the blade and they are sometimes hollow. They rarely, if ever have an extended bolster even iof they are actually forge completly.  Bolsters do not mean better quality.  They just mean that it is a western style knife.   Even if I forge an integral bolster knife, it will never have the extended bolster.

I'm curious... What type  of belts do you use on the KMG for  initial edge setting?  Carbide?  Zirconia etc.?  What grits?

For that type and volume of work, I'd think you would have to continuously spend a whole lot of time with coarse side of the stone grader to keep the grinding wheel aggressive enough to remove that much steel. 

I also suspect that you set the initial edge on the KMG freehand?

Actually, you can use almost any belt, even AO. Typically, you start with say 220-320 and then clean up with 400 or 600 grit.  Oddly enough, the one type of belt that does not seem to work so well in this application is the Trizact 'Gator". I set the edge freehand.  That would be a problem with the new project as the blades may already have a Cerakote type coating so even if I had the time, I couldn't go back and hadn sand away any near misses.

I am a custom knifemaker.  Normally I set my edges on the KMG belt grinder.......and sometimes have to go back and hand sand the scratches where I missed. I am going to be producing what we knife knuts call a "mid tech" line which is another word for small production run with some hand work still involved. What this means is that I will have to set the intial edge on anywhere from 40-200 knives per run. I will be using some rather abrasion resistant steels like Crucible CPM 3V and 4v, CPM S35VN, CPM 154, Carpenter CTS-XHP and maybe Bohler-Udddeholm Elmax, M390 or Vanadis 4E all at a minimum hardness of 60Rc on most.  Will the T7 work for this application and if so, do I need to buy the black silicon carbide stone?

I've ground off the bottoms of bolsters, but I've never thinned one.  Why would you want to do that?!

Because if you have gotten to the point where you need to grind off the bottom of the bolster, you have sharpened away enough steel to where the edge will be too thick.

If you're also talking about edges outside of the kitchen, it also pays to gain an understanding of various types of grinds.  Each has strengths & weaknesses for different jobs.

You could put a "20 degree" edge on 5 knives, but if each one is ground differently as follows, they will excel at different jobs more than the others.

That is really not a very accurate representation of a full height convex grind. More like a full height flat grind with a VERY thick convex edge.