Hunting knives and related projects

[AZ. Old Guy]

You, Sir are an artist!!

[Von Gruff]

I get a great deal of pleasure from these little projects and very often feel bless'd to have others who will entrust me with their own projects


So the steel came in for these knives (O1 2 x .2 ) so I got the pig stickers cut out and ground to shape with the plain beech handles cut out as well.














At the same time I got the light hunter cut one out from some 1 1/2 x .125 1084 and got it ground to shape with the main bevels ground in. It has has jarah bolsters and walnut handle slabs.

[montana]

[Von Gruff]

If you ever get a hankering to move to Montana I would sure love to have a neighbor like you

I saw that you guys are having severe snowstorms with up to 5 ft in one area so I will stick to our very mild climate for now. lol

[montana]

Yes, but the sun is in the right place in the sky here.

[Von Gruff]

Been a busy couple of days with a Lee Speed stock inletted and a companion knife got ready for heat treating so that when I do the 4 pigstickers and the light hunter I can do it as well. It has ebony bolsters and walnut (from the stock blank) to match the rifle stock while the light hunter has curved jarah bolsters and walnut handles with the pigstickers having plain beech handles. All the blades have been hand sanded to 360 grit

[montana]

Coming along very nicely!

[Von Gruff]

Projects will have to take a back seat for a bit. I am still going out getting firewood for next winter with yesterday being one of those days and with a hunt planed, today was load testing for my recently built 6.5x57.
A friend from down south is coming to join me for the hunt into the high country next week, so today, I thought I had better get out and sort a load for the 6.5x57. I could take my Grendel-Max but this new rifle deserves to be blooded. I had 123gn A-Max, SST, 120gn TTSX and 139gn SPBT Privipartisan bullets, and chose to go with the Privi bullet. I loaded up 10 at the starting load of 42gn ADI 2209 (H4350) to get the scope dialed in but that only took 4 to have it sitting 1 1/2 high at 100 yds. You can see that as shot one in the pic below.
My ladder test loads were in .4 gn increments from 42 up to 46.4 which according to QL would give me 2812fps at 57K psi.
Normally I like to do the ladder test at 200yds but thought I would get a reasonable reading at the shorter distance and it proved to be the case. You can see that shots 1 through 7 are hitting high which means that the bullet is leaving the barrel at the top of the oscilation, shot 8 is at the bottom of the vibration swing but shots 9 through 12 are in the center where the barrel is "at rest" (so to speak). There is every possibility that there is some shooter induced windage error as this is not a target trigger but even so to have 11 of 12 shots go into 1 1/2 x 1 5/8 with a varience of 4.4gn of powder is a reasonably good result (or at east I thought so). I have loaded the remaining brass at 46.2gn which should get me right on 2800fps and that is not a bad velocity for the 139gn bullet which should deal handily with the goats and be good to go for deer up to wapiti size if the ocassion arrises.
Shots 10, 11 and 12 (with different powder charges) have gone into a 1/2 inch so confidence is reasonably high that this build has been a real sucess and taking just 12 bullets to get a load dialed in is one of the advantages of the ladder test. Normally I would do a number of groups with the loads from 10 to 12 but the consistency of the shots allows me to expect that this is an excellent node so the chosen 46.2 gn is set for this hunt.

[montana]

Looks good to me. I hope you and your friend have a great time and a successful one. Try not to fall off any steep slopes retrieving animals

[Von Gruff]

I set up for heat treating this morning so another facet ticked off the list



And the tempering done



So the next step is to hand sand them to 600 grit before the handles go on. I had a bit of trouble getting the fire up to heat and had to keep at it with the bellows so I am going to build an air forced forge before the next lot gets done. Lynette will be pleased to not have this happen in the kitchen as well so another little projects for me and a happy wife, win win.

[kmon]

Your abilities continue to impress and thanks for sharing the progress of the varied projects

The 6.5X57 is another good 6.5 round I have had the fun of reloading and shooting some. That one was a Jap Arisaka that was rechambered to the 6.5X57. Since I loaded a bunch of those for a friend with him helping with which he has taken hogs, whitetails, mule deer and a New Mexico Gemsbok with those loads using 160gr Hornady soft point round nose bullets. His choice of bullet selection. I was actually very pleased we found a load that was just under MOA accuracy

[Von Gruff]

I had bought a short chamber 65x55 barrel to start with so it could be rechamberd for the 6.5x57. The gunsmith here has a german match chamber reamer and after fireforming the brass I do my loading with a set of Wilson straight line dies which Ithink has helped with the accuracy but even so I was quite impressed with the results. Not often you can get a load sorted with just 12 shots but it is a good indication of why the ladder testing is so efficient.

[Von Gruff]

Been a long day hand sanding but got them all to 600grit and the handles on the pig stickers with the bolsters on the compannion knife and the light hunter. while I was at it I decided to do something about having to constantly take the spanner that hangs by the vise for the swivel nuts and go to the knife vise which uses the other end of the spanner so cut it in half and set each of them into a bit of walnut which I will shape up into handle for them tomorrow.

[Von Gruff]

Today saw the second part of the handles on the companion knife and the light hunter, the two spanner handles bought to a semblance of shape that will sufice for the workshop and the rifle stock shaped but it still has a bit of refining to be done.

[montana]

Coming along nicely. Cutting the closed end wrench was a great idea. They look great too.