After breaking a couple of expensive carbide drill bits I had enough of drilling hardened steel and decided to head down to my friends waterjet shop. My buddies over at Rustworks were able to help me out and make short work of skeletonizing the tang on a couple knives for a customer. If you are ever in need of a waterjet or metal fabrication service and live anywhere from Carmel to Napa (Central CA) don’t hesitate to contact Jeremy or Jesse over at Rustworks. They do some absolutely amazing work with all types of materials and are 2 of the nicest guys I know. With a client list that includes Apple, NASA, Cisco, Google and Tesla you can be assured that they know what they are doing.
A water jet is an impressive machine that is hard to believe until you see it. Witnessing a stream of water and grit cut steel and rock is amazing. Operating at 60,000 psi it can cut up to 4″ of steel and 6″ of stone. I took a video and some pictures to show you the process.
Waterjet cutting a Busse SAR5
Waterjet cutting a Busse Active Duty
[...] May 26, 2011 by norcalblacktail This Busse Active Duty is unique because it has a Gamewarden handle on it. It to me with a white coating on it. The owner wanted me to give it a full satin finish with convex edge and also wanted me to remove the talon hole and enlarge the choil so you can choke up on it. The last request for this knife was to skeletonize the tang so it would be lighter. I documented that in this post –> http://knifemods.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/skeletonized-tang/ . [...]