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So I’ve been an equipment junkie for quite a while now, and while perusing the forums back in October I came across GinjaNinja’s post about his blade making journey and I contacted him about possibly having him make a blade for me. Through that process and dozens of emails back and forth I started to get very intrigued about making my own blades.
Fast forward a few months, and after extensive research into woods (all woods, not just the common ones used by butterfly etc), I purchased numerous veneers and a few core materials from a variety of sources and started experimenting. As a very analytical person I was very curious about trying combinations I hadn’t ever seen, and seeing how different woods combine to make a blade...how slightly different hardnesses and elasticities effect the bounce of a blade. I even tried some very bizarre combos just to see what would happen. Unfortunately the first template I made, I screwed up and accidentally didn’t turn off “to scale” when I printed it, so I ended up with my first three blades that I routed being about 8mm too small edge to edge....woops! Lessons learned!
I did all this without having any equipment to do the actual work...my friend is a woodworker by profession and has a nice shop in his basement that he let me use...however time and my impatience led me to buy my own router table, router, dust collection, router bits, etc.. that leads me to where I am now....with my first finished blade.
This blade was constructed as a 5 ply wood blade. The materials used were Makore (with a nice fiddleback grain), longleaf pine (a southern yellow pine...soft, but not very elastic), and then a 3.6mm kiri core positioned at 90 degrees. The handle is Birdseye maple...not too fancy yet on the handle, as I didn’t have a lot of material yet for handles. The blade is 5.96mm thick and weighs 90.7g
Attached are a few pics...
Fast forward a few months, and after extensive research into woods (all woods, not just the common ones used by butterfly etc), I purchased numerous veneers and a few core materials from a variety of sources and started experimenting. As a very analytical person I was very curious about trying combinations I hadn’t ever seen, and seeing how different woods combine to make a blade...how slightly different hardnesses and elasticities effect the bounce of a blade. I even tried some very bizarre combos just to see what would happen. Unfortunately the first template I made, I screwed up and accidentally didn’t turn off “to scale” when I printed it, so I ended up with my first three blades that I routed being about 8mm too small edge to edge....woops! Lessons learned!
I did all this without having any equipment to do the actual work...my friend is a woodworker by profession and has a nice shop in his basement that he let me use...however time and my impatience led me to buy my own router table, router, dust collection, router bits, etc.. that leads me to where I am now....with my first finished blade.
This blade was constructed as a 5 ply wood blade. The materials used were Makore (with a nice fiddleback grain), longleaf pine (a southern yellow pine...soft, but not very elastic), and then a 3.6mm kiri core positioned at 90 degrees. The handle is Birdseye maple...not too fancy yet on the handle, as I didn’t have a lot of material yet for handles. The blade is 5.96mm thick and weighs 90.7g
Attached are a few pics...
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