Swivel Knife Preferences

[Arrow K Braider]

When using my swivel knives I can't seem to find one that is long enough for my hand. I have shorter wider palms and longer fingers. This has also given me trouble in finding one that is also thick enough.

[shtoink]

Hello. This is my first post and I am new to leather crafting. I am familiar with swivel knives and understand their working but what I want to do in my work is to get a smaller, thinner, detailed cut in some of my smaller designs. To do this I began using an Exacto knife. My question is, "Could a swivel knife be fitted with a much smaller blade similar to the blade of an exacto knife?"

I realize that my inexperience may to blame for going to this type of cutting tool. The areas I am trying to work in are so small, a regular swivel just cuts too big.

Thank you for your time,

tom

There are many sizes, shapes, and types of blades for your swivel knife. Depending on how many you have, you may want to have a specific blade mounted into each knife body. I know that isn't a universally common theme, as others may only have one or two knife bodies and need to swap out the blade as needed.

When using my swivel knives I can't seem to find one that is long enough for my hand. I have shorter wider palms and longer fingers. This has also given me trouble in finding one that is also thick enough.

This is one of those things that I think I may have worked out. I am probably not the only one that came up with a design that might work for you, but the shape of the yoke and a really wide range of adjustability of the yoke height make it very friendly for a wide range of hand shapes and sizes. The only downside I see with mine is that I have a minimum size for the barrel based on the limitations of the wood and bearings that I am using. Basically, I'm stuck with a minimum size around 0.5". Working on a smaller design is on my to-do list, but I have other things to work out first.

[shtoink]

One of the materials I have been experimenting with besides wood has been titanium. The reason being, it is a poor heat conductor and light weight. This means that it will feel warm in your hand in a very short time. The one really big shortcoming is that it's not the easiest to machine with HSS tooling. It can be done, but it requires frequent breaks to cool and resharpen the tooling.

This link below is my first cut into a bar of titanium and it got hot enough to ignite the oil I was using for cutting fluid. The chips were coming off glowing white and somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 °F. I clearly had my speed a bit too high and have since not had chips come off that hot.

http://s7.photobucket.com/albums/y285/shtoink/?action=view¤t=cutting_titanium.mp4

The other solution is to get some Tungsten Carbide tools to do the job, but the downside is that it's not a cheap option, but that's why I spent a good deal of time trolling around ebay for low-cost deals. That's what the following picture is about. I managed to score some carbide drill bits, spiral fluted taps, and a couple reamers. The taps and the bigger reamer are HSS, but will be used gently. If I had purchased all of this at retail, it'd probably be in the neighborhood of $300, but I'm a cheapskate and I have about 1/4 of that or less into them.

This is partially related to the process of making the swivel knives in the sense that it really helps to have the proper tools to do the job once in a while.