Kevin, I'm only 3 years in to making knives, but I do mine before I heat treat the blade. I have not had any problems with fit after HT. I've heard some guys do it afterwards, but i had the same thought about being annealed. I've always used needle files for fine tuneing,

Hope this helps, but if not I'm sure there will be others to join in.

Dana

Well you can do it either way. I usually do mine after heat treat, depending on the blade. Most of mine are differentially heat treated in one way or another, like clay coated. So I have a less hard ricasso area, especially near the tang. I have done both ways.

The one big thing to watch out for if setting your shoulders before heat treating, is sharp corners. Especially where the tang transitions in to the ricasso. A sharp 90 degree angle at this area could result in stress risers and cracks. So a rounded transition would be the way to go. You can use a 1/8" chainsaw file with your shoulder filing jig on the area.

Brion

I wait till after heat treat to file the ricasso shoulders. I dont harden the ricasso anyway, but will go back and soften the tang/ricasso junction just to be sure. I have rarely had a blade crack during heat treat, but it's enough to keep me from spending time filing the shoulders in the unlikely chance the blade might crack. I hand file my ricasso shoulders.

To add a couple of points to what has already been mentioned, filing the shoulders after HT will leave you a good clean surface without scale or anything else that may cause interference with your fit.

There are also arguments for filing the shoulders after final finish of the blade to prevent rounding the shoulders while hand sanding. When doing this, a thin piece of card stock needs to be placed between the filing jig and the ricasso to prevent scratching the ricasso.

Brian

Hey Kevin,

I'm sorry if we lead you to believe that cutting the guard shoulders after heat-treat was the ONLY way to do it. Clearly, it is not. The confusion may be because we were having you heat-treat your blades with a view to preparing the blades for performance testing and not focused so much on building a finished knife. The Beginning Bladesmithing class is more about learning how to forge and heat treat a blade. Turning the blade into a finished knife is the next step and not so much what is shown in the Beginning class. But, your question has pointed out that the instructors would do well to provide a little more information on the completion of a finished knife. So, thanks for that.

When you choose to cut the shoulders is a matter of figuring out what method works best for you. Or, what will work best on that particular blade. Sometimes, the choice can be governed by the type of blade and/or whether you do a full quench, or a differential heat-treatment; hardening only the edge. Some makers like to do a differential heat-treatment and push the hardening back into the riccasso. This could make cutting the shoulders a little more difficult after heat-treatment in that you will have to be careful to make sure that the tougher hardened part of the riccasso is cut level with the softer portion.

I typically cut the shoulders before heat-treatment. There is a small concern about scaling in the cut shoulders when done before heat treatment. But, my processes for hardening are designed to minimize scaling, so it works for me. As Brian mentioned, you have to be very careful to not round the shoulders while doing the final hand sanding. As always, what works best is the method that works for you. Try both ways and see which method is easier for you.

My apologies again for leaving you confused.

Thanks everyone. I wondered if that was the case. It seems logical to me to do as much as possible on a unhardened blade. I guess the only part I'd worry about would milling across the flats of the ricasso. Does the inner corner need to be rounded from the end mill cut? The spine and edge sides look fine as the edge is the radius of the mill.

Steve,

It wasn't so much y'all left me confused as overwhelmed. You, Dave, and Greg did a great job of teaching us to forge a blade and dumped a ton of information that I, at least, are still digesting. As I work through actually making a knife, I find areas I am unsure of and sometimes my notes are incomplete, coffee and oil stained, and, in one case, singed. In retrospect, if I were to ask anything be changed in the class, I'd say to take a blade to totally finished. I know we have the other classes, but for us absolutely newbies it would be nice to know how to do the steps. (I warned y'all I was a total beginner.) I got this little pile of things I forge, rough grind and harden....

And if I haven't told the 3 of you, thanks. I learned a lot, had a blast, and it was much better than therapy for a break from my day job.

Kevin