welcome to DIY easy crash comm how to make an American flag themed patriotic bowie knife now this particular bowie is almost 12 inches long it has a car backs American flag handle the blade is etched with stars has a brass bolster and it also has spine edging a very unique yet fairly easy to make American flag themed bowie knife now this project starts with a 1095 high carbon steel blank which is available from DIY easy crafts calm most night making projects start by using a little daikon glue on the edge and then you scribe to parallel center lines called railroad tracks when we're grinding the bevels we're going to really be just keeping an eye on those Center lines but we don't want to grow and past that line the particular workstation that I use is adjacent north guard tilt table it's not really a bevel jig it's really just a tilted work table but it's really kind of cool because it allows you to set the angle of the bevel and then you can just you know start grinding from almost any point on the knife you don't have to go from left to right or from right to left you just keep an eye on that set on line and as long as your finished product is ground evenly to that Center along and along the whole length of the blade that devil is going to come out perfect now having said that felt the last pass or so you do want to make a smooth pass from you know from one side to the other so I'm just gonna slowly start I'm using an Oregon blade maker 2 by 72 grinder it's paired up with a 2 horsepower motor so it's a pretty powerful unit I'm using 36 grit paper so it's a pretty aggressive paper you can move a lot of material very quickly with this tilt table setup you don't have to go fast you could go slow you could slow down the RPMs and take your time or you can kind of really lean into it and remove as much material as as quickly as you like just a different view you can almost see the set of lines that I'm grinding to on this video now I'm just holding the flat surface of the blade flat against that tilt table and the bevel will end up following the curvature of the blade a little cooling bucket next to the next to the grinder and it's it's positioned high enough so they don't have to bend over every couple minutes just to cool off the blade now in this particular project that this video would end up being too long for everything that's going on with this blade so I am going to break it up into two videos the first video I'm going to cover grinding the bevels as well as doing the etching on the blade and then heat treating and then for the second video we'll finish up the blade by getting the brass bolsters as well as the handles and and also do at that time doing the spine engine so what I've done here is I finished the bevel on one side and what are we about three or four minutes into the project really doesn't take very long at all I've now flipped over and I'm going to start to bevel the other side of the blade basically doing the exact same thing cooling off the blade every couple minutes all right every couple of passes anytime I see a area on the blade that is not grinding evenly to that satellite I can spend a little bit more time on that particular area Jason says that this is the closest people will get to actually freehand grinding bevels as compared to other jigs that that you know firmly hold the jig in position and and glide along a 90 degree work table most of those will end up with a straight cut bevel or a straight line bevel which is fine that means it makes a very nice bevel but towards the end of the tip your bevel may not be the same height what I'm looking at here is the bevel plunge cut I want to start to even up the plunge cut usually when I do bevels I stay a little bit further away with the plunge cut and then when I'm almost finished then I'll put the plunge where I want it I'll just grind that plunge by eye on both sides so that they match nicely now the plunge cuts almost even the bevels almost ready to go up to heat-treating that's good finish that plunge cut up and now the plunge on both sides of the blade is uniform and the bevels are done or the rough bevels are gone I've done after he treating one we're gonna come back and you know clean this plate up the blanks that I use already come with a quarter inch holes for the pins but handle pins I did add two 1/8 inch holes for the brass bolsters you you do want to remember to do that before heat treating now I like to do my blade etching before heat treating I just think that it ends up with a darker result to doing it so I cut a bunch of stars out on a silhouette cameo vinyl cutting machine and then I'm using a clear transfer film to transfer those self-adhesive vinyl stars onto the blade and this will act or each one of the stars will act as a resist so basically the etching process is going to etch everything except for the stars so the stars will end up being shiny the background behind the stars will end up being etched and dull and dark now of course I don't want really deep pink on the on the bevels that we just ground so just manually I'm gonna spend less time on those on that bevel area now I head just with salt water and a 12 volt battery charger I wrap up a little bit of gauze onto the negative lead the positive lead gets attached to the blade and then I dip it in some warm saltwater this is set at 2 amps 12 volts 2 amps and the secret here is that you don't want to spend too much time in one spot I can spend 10 to 20 seconds in a spot and then I want pickup that goes and move it the reason for that is I don't want to overheat the vinyl stickers so that they lose their adhesion I this does generate a little bit of heat so you do want to you know move move that goes around a little bit I want a really deep edge on these blades so I'm spending a minute to a minute and a half a total time on on every area of the blade that I want edged not a very difficult process you know the whole thing you know probably I can do one side and in ten or fifteen minutes turned off the battery charger I've disconnected my my positive lead and I'm just gonna wipe off all the dirt and then I can start to pick off all of the vinyl stickers now again if you're gonna do this before he treating like I am you want to make sure that this is a very deep edge these blades are going to get sanded lightly after heat treating and also after tempering so this etching has to stand up to to light sanding I find that that minute meant in half really works well so the heat treating process my friend Jason heats up the blades with a oxy acetylene torch he heats them up until they're cherry red non-magnetic and then quenches them in oil results in a nice Rock well usually we end up with a rockwell 58 on the C scale after that I throw him in my wife's oven 375 for three hours then I turn off the oven and I let them cool overnight as a tempering that makes the the blades less brittle so now they're hard and less brittle and now I'm just gonna clean off you know all of that carbonization from the heat-treating and from the tempering and I do this with a this I haven't have a 220 grit paper in the sander very lightly very quickly and you're just cleaning off the surface or the Stars I won't be back to both sides and then the next step is going to be to clean up the bevels so no now I'm going back to that Oregon - by 72 Grindr I've got my tilt table still in place I have not changed the angle on that but I have changed the grid of the paper so I'm using an 80 grit paper right now you can certainly go you know any any grit you want you could go 120 or 220 you wanted to really polish bevels for the knives that that I make I kind of like to see the lines from the grinding on the bevel so I'm using an 80 or a horn 80 because I haven't changed the angle on this tilt table I can go right back to grinding and just apply you know a little bit more pressure on this particular knife I left that done that area between the scribe lines on the thickness a little bit on the thick side so I am gonna spend a little bit more time on this final grinding just think to bring my my edges together really doesn't take long I have a work light on my sander which which is great for my old highs but it doesn't work very well for for video so I apologize for the I apologize for the bright spots in the middle of the screen or on the knife you know from the reflection of the knife now while I'm finishing up this drawing I want to invite everybody to join us on the Facebook group knives and knife making you can just search on Facebook for knives and knife making and by all means join the group and share some of the images of your own create creations so I cleaned up the bevel on one side now I'm just going to flip it over clean up the bevel on the other side basically we're gonna end up with a a knife that is almost done you know we're gonna have the the bevels ground you're gonna have the blade edging done we're gonna have the holes in it for the bolster the eighth and trolls to the bolster and really all that's going to be remaining is adding the scales or the handles the brass bolsters as well as some finishing spine edging and forgetting and of course the leather sheath I didn't want to cut out too much of this grinding I really wanted to give you you know a real example of how long each one of these blades takes you know it seems long when you're just watching it on the screen but in reality you know I think we're spending four minutes maybe five minutes on each side for the for the main rough edging edging I'm sorry rough bevel wing and then also just really just two or three minutes per side on the finish bevel and it's the whole process really doesn't take that long there are certainly jigs available that allow you to apply pressure and allow you to grind pebbles a lot faster this is just the method that I'm using right now it's really is my preferred method because you really have total control over all of the grinding on the bevels what I'm seeing here is still just a couple of blemishes from the etching so I'm just grinding a little bit of material away just to polish that or those areas up a little bit and and the bevels are completely done now that blade is ready to be sharpened please check us out on the web at DIY easy crafts com be sure to check out our other how-to videos and remember that this is really just part one of a two-part series of making this American flag Patriot themed bowie-knife thank you very much