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Messages - kwakster

#1
A few pics i took for my own archive:









#2
Just finished with a bit of TLC and hand regrinding the blade to it's original full convex zero edge shape again.
Based on this i suspect it's also crucible steel (much more wear resistant than comparable German blades), and i wouldn't be surprised if the steel has a certain amount of tungsten carbides in it, or something similar.
It definitely wants to be sharp. (like reverse chest hair whittling sharp with an 800 grit SiC finish)












#3
On Bladeforums member Jack Black had this to say:

"The knife is one of the Sheffield 'Town Pattern's, made by hundreds of firms, and still made in Sheffield today.
It is one of the patterns described in Sheffield as a 'Whittle-Tang Bowie'. Tens of thousands were sold to Boy Scouts, and so they were sometimes referred to as 'Scout Knives', with at least one early maker (Maleham & Yeoman) etching the blade 'Scouts Woodcraft Knife'.
W.Mount also made Girl Guide Knives, a small folder with a Sheepsfoot blade and Marlin Spike, of which I have an example, but they seem to have been an obscure company."
#4
Anyone here familiar with Sheffield maker W.Mount & Son ?
There doesn't seem to be much info about them on the internet, or i'm looking in the wrong places.
My educated guess would be that the W.Mount & Son is from about the same time frame as my Wade & Butcher Boone model (1920's - 1930's), and was made with boy scouts /or hunters in mind.







The knife itself is definitely a quality piece, with especially the handle construction being strikingly similar to my Wade & Butcher model.


#5
When it's time to put the washers back on the tang in the correct order i apply a good quality thixotropic glue between them and then tighten the pommel.
The pressure causes this type of glue to temporarily become more fluid which helps to penetrate the leather & fiber better, after which the stack is allowed to dry (still under pressure) into a solid block.
The gluing makes sure that the washers will not shift anymore when the knife is ever put into use again.

When thoroughly dried the still uneven surface is then sanded smooth using homemade "sanding linen" (actually fine wet & dry SiC paper reinforced with packing tape, and then cut to strips)
This allows me much more choice in finer grits then with real sanding linen, as my goal is to remove as little from the stack surface as needed to smoothen things out.

When this is done i apply several coats of Granger's wax, using an old hair dryer between each coat to make the wax penetrate the leather as deep as possible.
When everything is cooled down again i clamp the knife blade and use strips of an old towel to seal the handle surface and give it a bit of a gloss.

The aluminium pommel is polished separately in a two-step process after sanding the stack & pommel itself.
Best to use different strips of reinforced wet & dry SiC paper for the leather & fiber and for the aluminium pommel, otherwise you risk contaminating especially the fiber washers next to the pommel with fine aluminium powder & sanding particles
This can dramatically alter their color and thus the appearance of the knife.
#6
Knife Sharpening / Re: Paper Wheels
August 04, 2026, 03:16:10 PM
This thread about a Forever SC-16WB ceramic knife can be also be included here:

https://forum.tormek.com/index.php/topic,5672.msg41579.html#msg41579
#7
Knife Sharpening / Re: Paper Wheels
August 04, 2026, 03:08:54 PM
This thread about two Kohetsu santoku's in HAP40 steel belongs here as well:

https://forum.tormek.com/index.php/topic,5669.msg41557.html#msg41557
#8
Probably more AI nonsense,
#9
Knife Sharpening / Re: Paper Wheels
July 28, 2026, 03:42:34 PM
Currently busy with the same mod of another Gerber Applegate-Fairbairn folder like i showed earlier a few pages back.
This is how the knife looked when i received it from the owner, still with a single edge & an edge angle between 40 and 45 degrees inclusive.





And this is how the knife looks after grinding the new edge on the back of the blade & trying to match it with the reprofiled edge on the other side.
The scratch pattern complete with burr remains still present on the apex comes from a Rubber Wheel coated with ~ 170 grit diamond powder & wax.






The idea was to make the 2 edges / 4 bevels as visually similar in width & curvature as i could, with a specific edge angle of ~ 35 degrees inclusive, without damaging the names on the blade, and to create a new point that would be centered as much as possible.
Trying to achieve all these things at the same time freehand, together with many visual checks with a Victorinox loupe in between passes isn't easy, so i took my time.

Below you can see the end result after refining the initial edges with a Paper Wheel coated with 15 micron diamond compound & deburring with a second Paper Wheel coated with 0.25 diamond compound.
Both edges are treetopping sharp.










This is how Applegate intended the knife to be, a true folding dagger.
It can still be carried in your pocket, but the top edge is only about 2-3 millimeters inside the handle, so when deliberately trying i can just feel the apex with my index finger.

Now the thumb lugs stop on the grooved linerlock tab, so it would be easy to use a file or a Dremel on it's surface to lower the blade a tiny bit deeper inside the handle for added safety, as there is some room for it.















#10
You could very well be right about that.
The air rifle had been previously lubricated with another type of oil (Tri-Flow), but it was already rather dry again when i applied the Ballistol.

#11
Knife Sharpening / Re: Paper Wheels
July 23, 2026, 06:50:36 PM
Spyderco Southard with CTS-204P blade, which has been in use for a few years now with a Dutch scout leader.
It has already been sharpened several times by him on stones, plus two times by me on Paper Wheels (once up to 6 micron diamond compound, and once up to 15 micron diamond, the latter performing noticeably longer for the owner)

This time the knife was reprofiled from about 30 degrees inclusive to 25 degrees inclusive with a standard Paper Wheel with 220 grit SiC, then deburred with a second Paper Wheel with 0.25 micron diamond compound.

This produces a polished semi-coarse edge with an aggressive bite, as the knife is going to be used to cut a lot of 10 mm polyprop rope in the coming weeks.





The owner just informed me how the edge on his Southard is doing so far.
He had used the tip of the knife to cut open about 50 dusty/dirty cardboard boxes filled with porcelain mugs, and this resulted in blunting that tip to a point that it could only barely cut copy paper.
But according to the owner this was most likely due to the fact that the tip hit the mugs every now & then.

After all 50 boxes were opened & emptied the Southard was used to cut down each box, which he measured to be a total of about 80 meters or 262 feet of cardboard.
Afterwards the edge was still able to easily shave the hair from his legs (except about 15 mm of the tip), and the owner feels that the knife isn't due for a touch-up yet.
He also noticed that the CTS-204P steel holds this edge noticeably longer than the S30V steel in his Spyderco Sage, which he had sharpened himself and used earlier for the same job
#12
Knife Sharpening / Re: Paper Wheels
July 21, 2026, 06:22:02 PM
Recovered some pictures from an old harddisk.
Several years ago i got sent these two user Emerson folders from neighboring country Belgium; a Commander model with a Krein regrind and a CQC7 model.
The owner was unable to get them sharp again with only his Sharpmaker, and the request was also to give the new edges a bit of bling.

As they came in:






After sharpening/polishing.









On the CQC7 i made the asymmetric bevel a bit wider to remove all different scratch patterns, and just touched up the existing mini-bevel on the other side.







Both knives could now be easily touched up on the Sharpmaker again and the owner was happy, :-)
#13
Knife Sharpening / Re: Paper Wheels
July 21, 2026, 06:18:40 PM
Vintage Al Mar Denali mid-backlock folding knife with hollow ground blade from the 1980's and made in Japan. (probably by Moki)
The cocobolo handle is inlayed with a gold shield picturing a fighter plane and the text "United States Navy Fighter Weapons School".
The 1986 movie "Top Gun" with Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis was partly filmed on the grounds of this elite school for US Navy pilots.
Bernard Levine thinks this version with the gold shield was a special edition, not standard production.

The original edge measured about 35 degrees inclusive and wasn't really sharp, so i changed the angle to 30 degrees inclusive with a treetopping sharp bling & bite finish.










Specs:

Length open: 17,3 cm
Length closed: 10,0 cm
Blade length: 7,5 cm
Blade thickness: 3,0 mm
Steel: Masahiro RS30 stainless steel
Hardness: 57-58 HRC (?)
Handle material: Cocobolo wood & satin stainless bolsters on brass liners
Handle thickness: 11,0 mm
Lock type: Mid-backlock
Weight: 100 grams
#14
Knife Sharpening / Re: Paper Wheels
July 21, 2026, 06:17:43 PM
Wootz/Vadim testing heat build-up in the edge when using Paper Wheels with diamond compound:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvMISROgs_c

He never told me this in our e-mail conversations, but i recently found that he mentions me by name in the on-screen text,  8)
#15
Knife Sharpening / Re: Paper Wheels
July 21, 2026, 06:16:05 PM
The owner of this Sebenza 25 bought the knife brand new through an official dealer in the Netherlands, but although he was and is still very pleased with the knife itself, he soon found that the factory edge didn't cut too well.
He tried to improve things with the help of a Spyderco Sharpmaker and a leather strop loaded with some green compound, but to no avail.
So he sent the knife to me, and the first thing i did was to measure the edge angle.
According to my Tormek Angle Gauge it measured 50 degrees inclusive on the straight part of the edge, going up to 55 degrees inclusive from the belly to the point.(!)
This is how the knife looked before sharpening:








First i removed the apex of the old edge by cutting a few times lightly into an old silicon carbide stone, after which i reprofiled it freehand on my Tormek SB-250 Blackstone to an even 30 degrees inclusive.
This was followed by a Paper Wheel with 220 grit SiC to smoothen the grindlines made by the Tormek, then refined with a second Paper Wheel coated with 15 micron diamond compound, and finally removed the burr with a third Paper Wheel coated with 0.25 diamond compound. (this leaves the 15 micron scratch pattern intact as much as possible to preserve bite)
The resulting edge treetops the hair on the back of my hand, can slice single-ply toilet paper, and survives a few cuts into my laminated testblock without any visible damage (checked under bright light with the loupe in my Victorinox SwissChamp)
This is how the knife looks after sharpening: