Just cuz it ain't broke, doesn't mean you can't fix it:

One of the things that really appealed to me about this blade was the thought of the 3 curves-- the spine line, the swedge line, and the grind shoulder-- all converging at a single point before further descending to the tip. Makes for a very pleasing presentation, in my book. On the reverse side they didn't quite arrive tho at a single point, as I had to sand further into the tanto face than I would have liked, to remove some concavity/irregularity on the blade face. Oh well.


2 hours initial flatsanding at 320, ready to move on:


Blade work only this time, handle shows light use. Gotta have some color somewhere:


Freehanded an edge on the front third of the blade to roughly match the coarse original factory edge behind it. Flatsanded to 3000 on glass, no polishing:


I figured I'd finish the 3000 N/S, but just couldn't get it to look even. So I tried E/W, which as it turned out is the way to go. This pix taken at sunset, w/ the light coming across the blade face parallel to the surface-- looks cool:



Some might recall a Warn 583-1 tanto I posted a couple months ago that I had also converted to a droppoint. On that one I also did a lot of work on the handle-- not this time, nor did I Flitz polish the blade faces. This one begs to be polished tho-- 154CM can take a bright polish as it's fine-grained, as opposed to the huge grain size that causes problems when polishing D2. Here's a comparison shot of the 2 conversions:


Lastly, a comparison of the 523 droppoint to the 520 blade on my much-used 522/520 (I've streamlined the spine of the 520 up top a bit for a cleaner look). You can clearly see the longer straight portion of the cutting edge on the 523 conversion vis-a-vis the 520, as well as the lesser sweep, and the lower/more-aggressive tip. All 3 are advantages in my book:


I have another 523 I'd planned to modify the spine only on, leaving the cutting edge as is-- use one, keep one. But now w/ the 520M4 a reality, and in spite of me having no problems whatsoever w/ 154CM as a blade steel I'll be turning an M4 into a user, to join my 522/520. So I'll likely end up moving this one, then sometime when I need a project doing the remaining 523 just like I did this one, except I'll polish it, and do some work on the handle.

Kept track of my time on this project, and ended up spending 8 hours over a week's time actually working to accomplish what you see here. But there was more time just handling the blade, figuring out what to do next, figuring out how to remedy something I wasn't happy w/, etc etc. These projects take a lot of time. But they're fun cuz you can spend 20 minutes on it then move on to something else, and cuz even w/ 5 minutes sanding, you see results. You just need to concentrate. The end result is cuz of hundreds of small steps, not a handful of big ones.

Thanks for looking-- Rick

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ryxlyx,

Man I hate to say it but if it was me, I'd just send it in with 30$ and get the blade swapped. You'd retain your warrantee that way. That said it came out pretty well.

I didn't want more 520 blades-- I wanted to do this. And since I don't plan to return the blades as defective, I don't know why warrantee would be an issue. But I suppose if it was, and I wanted a blade replacement for some reason, I could always just snap off the front half-- wouldn't look any different from any other broken tanto.

Rick--I think it looks awesome! Can you (are you willing to) post another pic that shows the contrast in width of spine toward the blade's tip? BTW, I too like the longer straight section of cutting edge on your modded tanto--losing some upsweep doesn;t bother me either.

Thanks TB-- I'll shoot something tomorrow, post it in the evening--

Response to TB's interest in tip strength-- if you look at the bottom photo above, comparing the 523 droppoint blade to the 520 blade, you can clearly see that the distance back from tip to full .125" thickness (where no grinding occured on the blade blank) on the 520 blade is twice that of the 523 droppoint. One could then easily make the assumption that tip strength on the 523 massively greater. However if you take a 520 blade and place the intersection of the grind line and the swedge line, on the blade face, on a flat surface, you'll see that the blade rocks forward/backward-- meaning a convex surface, meaning that the thickness of the blade increases at a greater rate initially, than if the line was on a flat plane. The 523 tip widens along straight lines-- however, the 523 also gets to full .125" twice as fast. The 2 photos below show the difference-- the E/W lines are rough kerf marks on a sawmilled slab of walnut, lines spaced 6.5 to the inch. The 523 DP is thickest on top, as the pixs show. The 520 blade tho is thickest just below the top, at the intersection of the 2 grind lines-- what appears to be a slight shadow on either side of the blade are angled reflections of the swedge grind, so the total thickness of the 520 blade must include that.

Bottom line, extremely near the tip the 2 blades would appear to have quite equal strength. However the 523 DP gains an advantage quickly (2 slightly different photos-- 523 DP on the left):




Hope that all makes sense. BTW, the width on the top of my 520 blade will be a hair broader than yours by comparison, as I've shaved some steel off the top, to streamline the profile-- Rick

Looking good. Nice work as always Rick.

Thanks for the extra pics, ryxlyx. Love that blade thickness. It'd make a heckuva hard-use knife!

very nice work on the blades