First design for a little knife

Leonardo,

No I just engraved one side. I wanted to do moth sides, but even for practising the knife isn't good enough. I mean I can't do al this effort once again on this, what I call a "fake knife".
So I will buy a knife made of the right materials to make a new design.

arnaud

Arnaud,
I can understand you perfectly. There is not anything worst than working with a bad material.
What do you think? Would it be Zamac (zinc alloy)?
I did a quick search in the Umarex site but they do not specify the mini knife's material. This is the link to the Umarex knives page: http://www.umarex.com/index.php?id=products&L=en&displaymode=0&no_cache=1&haupt_id=8&unter_id=1
Regards, Leonardo.

Thanks Leonardo, indeed thy don't give specifications on the material for the mini knife.
I don't think it is zamak, propably copper an a lot of zink to make it cheaper and white.
It is only the part I engraved, the rest of the metal looks ok.

arnaud.

Hi Arnaud

If I can make a couple of suggestions........

Finish the knife both sides. I know the material is unpleasant to work on...........but it is something you should get used to. As engravers we are handed a great many "unkown" metals to cut. You will be very surprised at what you learn on bad metals. With the next side try and work with the metal and solve some of the problems you encountered on the first side. You will learn a lot by doing that.

GRS sell some very nice knives at a reasonable price to practice on that are designed specificalley for engravers. You will find them here. http://www.grstools.com/almar.html and here http://www.grstools.com/buck.html

Don Cowles is a top knife maker and also makes a beautiful economy knife designed for this very thing and you can see them here. http://www.cowlesknives.com/DC_Mainframe.htm?DC_Contact.htm~main There is a couple of guys that have engraved them on the forum and say excellent things about them.

There was also a discussion about some cheap knives by Winchester (?) on the forum some time ago and you could do a search on the forum to find them.

Keep it up.................your doing really well

Cheers
Andrew

Thanks for the tips Andrew, I will finish the other side, but first I'm gone try a better knife. I have a good pocket knife I use, it is a Kershaw, and although I use it for some years, I can make it look more special.
And it is made of good material.

But I agree that I can learn a lot of bad material.

The knives you from GRS looks better indeed, and not so expensive.

Arnaud

Sweet job Arnaud! I like it! I've been waiting on you to get it done, I just now saw where you finished it. Thanks for posting, Dwayne

Arnaud,

My guess is that the bolster on that little knife is German silver also known as nickle silver. Lots of knives use nickle for the bolsters. It cuts kind of gumy and some of it will fuse to the tip of your graver. Over the years I've been asked to cut quite a few knives with such bolsters.

CRB

Thank you for the tip Roger, I will do the other side and will try to do it better.
I have some new experience on silver, so perhaps the shading will work better next time

arnaud