I am not a pro knifemaker, just a hobbiest. This is how I do it.

This photo is some nail marks cut with various dremel type wheels. The one on the completed knife is good. The other four are failures and the blades were scrapped.

This photo shows stamped marks. The blank blade is soft steel and shows how the stamp looks before clean up straight from the arbor press. the finished knife has had the mark deepened by hand and is ground, hardened and tempered (of course).

Here is the stamping die. Shop made by me from 1/4" O1 tool steel hardened and tempered to a staw color. Pretty simple to make with the grinder and hand files. One side straight the other a curved tapered radius. The little wheel is what I use to refine the mark after stamping. A 7/8" x 3/32" silicon carbide rubberized abrasive dressed down to a tapered radius.

Here we have the press with the die stamp fixtured in place. The fixture is also shop made. The actual photo shows my tang stamp in the fixture but the nail mark die is done exactly the same way

And since we are talking about shop made tooling I thought I would throw in a photo of this bench block steady. Made with the grinder and files, 3/4" thk x 3" wide x 5" 4140 Cr moly. Very resistant to dings and marring. I set my rivets and punch pins with it laying flat on the bench. When I need to work off the front I chock it up in the jaws of a horizontal vise

Pretty cool tool pictures and step by step instructions 2 speed. Thanks.
You can throw your scaps my way if you want.

i'm gonna move this over to our tutorial forum, don't want to lose this.

2speed, VERY COOL and functional tools.THANKS for posting them. The folding knife you show is AWESOME too !
Thanks for the help.

2 speed,

That is cool. I've never seen nor even thought about cutting nail nicks with a press.

I do have one question. Is there any deforming of the blade when it's pressed? Does the blade stay good and flat and maintain it's shape?

I will definitely have to try this someday. Looks a whole lot easier than trying to cut nailnicks any other way.

Thanks for sharing!

km 3, you are absolutely correct. Stamping the blade that close to the top displaces the metal and leaves a bump on the spine. Found that out the hard way. The way I get around it is;

scribe the layout leaving about 1/4" between the top of the pattern and the edge of the barstock and drill my hole in the tang.

stamp the nail mark.

profile the blank then surface grind.

Works out pretty good as you can see. A 1 ton press would work alot better but the 1/2 ton does a respectable job.

FOG, a jewelry maker friend said that the job could be done with the right graver by hand. It would take some practice but would give better control than a rotary type tool. Just another alternative.


Happy to help
Glenn

Thanks for sharing your technique!

Dale

Cut the nick before polishing, that way you can polish out the goof ups. Also, you can buy a cheap x/y vice from Harbor Freight, clamp the blade in it, and cut perfect nicks just by cranking the blade into the appropriate tool. Good luck.

Fly cutter with a carbide bit to cut. I have seen them stamped . I also have seen stones on a surface grinder which has been shaped to cut the nail nick. Mike

There are tools known as slitting saws used by custom gunsmiths to cut the coccking serrations on the slides of auto pistols. I imagine with the proper set up you could produce a very respectable long pull with one of those.

Wow, this thread had been going on a long time (good info). I like the press idea though. Harbor Freight has a benchtop milling machine that isn't very expensive and using a dovetail bit in it cuts a pretty nice nail nick. Long pulls are even easier. It is a bit time consuming though. A stronger machine (more $$$) wouldn't have to work as hard, but it is accurate and controlable.