Thread: To cut Cleanly?
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Old 11-21-2006, 06:35 AM
Allan Allan is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Baltimore. MD
Posts: 103
Default Re: To cut Cleanly?

JD

This has been a really interesting thread but it leads me to a couple of questions. What kind of metal are you cutting and how deep are you trying to cut it in one pass.

The reason why I ask is that if you are going too deep and are trying to move too much metal at one time the metal may mushroom as you are trying to cut it. I think because there just isn't enough room for the metal to roll out cleanly as it tries to get out of the cut so it may be pushing the edges of the cut to the sides. What you are describing is what happens to my apprentices when they tried to cut pewter for the first time. A soft metal and the tendency to go too deep causing the edges to distort.

The second is the idea that you would go back over the cut to correct the depth at the end of the cut. Usually that kind of cut is reserved for the start of the cut and only to correct the width, never the depth. If you are having to go over the cut to correct the depth at the end I would start cutting a little shallow and see if that makes a difference.

I don't cut much steel, very little in fact. But when I went to the chicago custom knife show to meet steve and looked at a lot of the knives I was struck by how shallow most of the better cutting was, except in the areas where there was inlay.

I just don't think your problem is linked to graver geometry, but to something a little more basic .

Allan
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