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The "secret" to WELL DONE mirror finishes is not a lot of buffing. The most important thing is flawless high grit sanding. More focus needs to be placed on sanding and not buffing. A high percentage of mirror shines often show irregularities in the surface. A nice shine, though, but tiny "waves"...

Here is part two of Lin Rhea demonstrating his forging of the X-Rhea knife.Please watch Part 1 first!!

See if this floats your boat. This is the first installment of four 1-hour-long videos of Lin Rhea demonstrating and teaching his method of creating his world famous "X-Rhea" knife. Please be sure to watch/listen to my introduction first. (I explain a few things)

I'm a Minnesota knife maker - or at least act like one.

That is fantastic!! As an ex-Illinoisan I am thrilled to see this. My hat is off to you, Doug.

If you press the ladder in too late in the bar forming process, and then forge it back flat, when you grind your bevel, you don't get all the way through the jacket portion. Just press it in earlier. Also, the stainless doesn't move the same amount as the tool steel. You can literally squeeze...

What I would do is press the ladder in a little earlier. The press back flat and reduce to final thickness. That way you don't have the outer jacket going all the way to the edge. You don't want that 'cause it won't harden.

I don't think you'd want to use ladder dies - would you? Won't you just end up with stripes? I have no idea how you make you billets or from what. I would run mine through, but I don't think I'd like the effect.

These are from using drawing dies. It's also a great visualization of what's happening inside your steel when using drawing dies.

I've been "preaching" your point for years - thanks for saying it. My quote has always been, "When you're sanding out scratches - you're not sanding the scratches. You're sanding everything that's NOT a scratch." You need to take everything down equal to the bottom of the scratches. Which means...

I use my mill. Really cuts down on the dust.

The 'secret' to a really beautiful imperfection free mirror polish is not the result of high-quality buffing. A good mirror polish is the result of effective sanding. You don't remove imperfections in your work piece by buffing. You need everything perfect at 2000 grit, or 3000 grit. Then...

I tip my hat to you.

Dour - you're the man.

Probably not a "take-down" talk, but more about fitting fittings. But the two topics are so closely related they go hand in hand.

In the summer it's only 20-22 hours long.

I'm certainly going to try to make it this year. Tracy twisted my arm, so I may be doing a knife fittings "fitting" talk/demo/Q&A. I've done full four hour talks on take down knives, which are mostly about getting all the parts fitted up, so we may just be covering the basics. If I see some...

It's a new secret technique. :3:

Great work, Doug. I can't wit until you get to Minnesota! (Good luck.)

That is fantastic news. Thank you - from all of us.