SAR GLOBAL TOOL: the DVM U.S. Contractor Survival Knife Build – Complete Build – Day 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6

This knife just screams “stab someone”

Hey folks – I have been working with Spencer over at SAR Global Tool to make a DVM Contractor Fighting Knife. Below is his work in progress and some notes from him.

~James G

[Spencer from SAR Global Tool] Hey everyone,

I have been working with James for the last few months on a knife for him and possibly become for sale in the DVM store. James gave me some great input on what he was looking for.

Based on what his ideas I put this design to paper. James liked what he saw so I put the design to steel and got rolling, I will take pictures, write comments as I work on these three blades over the next few days.

The design is a fixed blade which is 9 1/4″ long 5″ handle 4 1/4″ blade, the blade features a modified tip sometimes referred as “harpoon”

I transfer the drawing to “lexan glass” to make a solid pattern, lexan is awesome stuff it holds drill tolerance, machines great, shapes great, tough and fairly cheap.

Now I can transfer to the steel which for these proto’s will be S30V

Now the suck part is band sawing steel, but hey it gets the job done!

Have to make sure things are flat and straight, using my 1/2 ton press gets things all good

Rough out and ready for profile on the horizontal grinder

The profiles are shaped to the lines and knives are ready for drilling. First hole is just a tad under the finish size.

Then I come back through with a precision reamer and make it pretty much dead nuts on.

With a 1/8″ ball mill I put in the thumb serrations.

It’s always a good idea when doing prototypes to make more than one in case “Murphy” decides to show up. I made three with the third one sporting a extended blade. Got a lot done and a ways to go, I will pick up tomorrow and get them ready for heat treat.

First prototype before the heat treat

**** UPDATED – DAY 2 ****

The mercury dropped last night but I was stoked to get started with the goal of getting the knives detailed and heat treated with at least one temper cycle done. I did some video today which is a first time ever in a wip thread, it takes time to set up, host it etc etc, if it seems a bit rough well it’s on the go off a tri-pod so suck it up…not looking for any Oscar’s just a desire to show you some of the work in real time.

First off is marking the bevels.

I paint the edges with dykem layout fluid, with a 1″ micrometer I get the exact thickness of the steel. In this case its .156″ divide that number by 2 and subtract 10= 68. I dial the height gauge to that exact number and lay the knives flat on the precision granite surface plate. I then slide the carbide scribe along the edges which mark to parallel lines exactly .030 they will be my guide to keeping things straight.

Perfect lines to grind to

I normally do not grind anything except the let in bevels, but today to make things a tad easier I did some of the grinding before heat treat to see how it was gonna work out for starters.

With a 60 grit belt I did the top edge first and finished with around a 120 grit, finding the right angle is kinda hard. You don’t want that top edge to come out to thin just thin enough to take a nice sharp edge.

Top edge video:

I pretty much do the same on the main bevels…called “roughing in”, just want to establish the grind height and remove some material before the knifes are hardened. The steel is soft, sluggish and grabbing, that will change when they get hard and become much easier to finish…

Main bevel grind video:

Still lots of details to finish before heat treat

Grinding in the pry tool with a 4″ wheel

Hand cut the nail nick

Then re-grind with a 120 to clean it all up

Using a “scotch brite” belt I clean and smooth all the bevels at this point they are ready for heat treat.

I drilled a few larger holes just to get the balance a bit better.

In the right hand when using the pry-tool the main bevel will be facing away from you.

Now that all the drill, mill and file work is done I can prep the blades for the oven. Because of the high temperatures required for HT its must that you wrap the blades in High temperature stainless tool wrap to prevent decarburization the goal is a oxygen free packet.

The wrap is deadly thin razor sharp .002 in thickness.

Foil wrapping a blade…taste just like chicken..lol:

After the HT cycle in the oven the blades are quickly removed to air quench on 1″x12″x24″ aluminum plates that I store in the freezer. The goal is to suck all the heat off the blades in a very rapid manner.

I also put a 50 pound anvil on the plates to get things flat and true, and a large fan blowing forced air between the plates…..so a blade removed from the oven at 1950 degrees will cool in this manner to touch in around 60 to 80 sec.

Heat treat video:

After the blade cools I remove them from the foil and do a quick check for straightness, at this stage I can do a little tweaking but not much the blades are very hard, lots of stress is built up and then will break very easily. These blades are all good to go.

Before temper I use a Ames hardness tester to measure the hardness Rockwell scale C the ht treat was perfect and the numbers are good 62 HRc after temper they will loose the stress and come down about 2-3 points leaving us at HRc 59-60 which is ideal for S30V.

They went right to temper first cycle is done and I will get back to it tomorrow.

If you have any comments or suggestions please make a comment, this is a DVM Community designs so let us know what features you would like in a knife.

***DAY 3***

It was a kick ass nice day here is the shop, can’t beat t-shirt weather in November. Not to mention good tunes to pass the day…life is good.

I left off yesterday after the initial temper cycle, got up this morning and put the knives back in for the final temper stage which is 2 hours @ 600 degree’s. I re-checked the “Rockwell” and was pleased with the numbers, all three knives tested at 59-60 so we are GTG and ready to start finishing the grinds.

Letting them cool down and getting the grinder ready to roll.

I use dykem on the bevels as a indicator of two things to ensure I am hitting the full bevel and when I move up in grits like 60 to 120 it tells me when I have removed the deeper scratches from the 60 grit.

Nothing sucks more than when you think you have a good even finish and low and behold there a rogue deep ass 60 grit scratch in the middle of the bevel. The only way to fix that shit is to drop back down and start over again.

Main bevel grinding Video:

Things grind better when the steel is hard it got less give, kinda like the difference between driving a Yugo vs a ferrari its got better response to the wheel etc.

The knives at a 120 grit finish…things are starting to take shape the bevels are full and mostly straight.

Because of the top edge I had to go back and forth from top edge to main bevels, took some time its a matter of bringing the 2 grind lines together at the right point with out removing to much.

Top edge finish grinding video:

With the final adjustments to all the bevels with a fine grit belt, I go to the scotch brite belt which applies a real nice satin finish and does some minor blending.

I did a compound grind on one of the blades the top and tip are flat grinds and the main bevel is a 10″ hollow……dead sexy and extremely strong tip!

At this stage of the game I can breathe a bit easier the chances of screwing the pooch are pretty slim….knock on wood.

Next thing is to get ready for handles, I used female standoffs which are pre-threaded inserts for a 4/40 torx head screw that get hammered into the pre drilled holes.

I grind off the excess, then with a set of “transfer punches” I clamp the blades down to the handle material, transfer the center of each screw hole to the material for drilling and then scribe a line for the band-saw.

Looks like this

The handle material I selected is textured Ranger Green G10, Green Canvas Micarta, and Grey G10. I will be doing some cool stuff with the micarta and grey to spice up the cool factor and provide some palm swell as well

Good place to stop, tomorrow I will get started drilling, shaping, contouring all the rough edges but I doubt I will be mission complete until monday. Still have another critical thing to think about…the sheath one will be in kydex, one will be in a spec-ops and I may crank out a leather covered kydex drop leg for the big blade…..that fucker is feeling good…and deserves it.

I did get side tracked today watching one of my favorite movies

“And I want my 100 Natzi scalps”

***DAY 4***

I had a email this morning from someone watching the work in progress asking to show more of the shop. I should have done this in the beginning, but I did not think it would evolve as well as it has. Another killer day nice weather, good tunes etc.

SAR Global Tool shop tour video:

We left off with the handle cut out so first things first was to get them drilled and counter-bored for the 4/40 screws

I cut all the screws to length then fit the handles and get ready to rough out on the horizontal grinder. I did a quick video of that action.

Handle shaping:

Roughed out

After the initial shaping they get the lanyard hole drilled out then I remove them and shape the front and back. Because of the pry tool, I have to recess the handle material some so you can work the pry-bar. Need to look at that a bit closer and see if there is a better way to do or just extend the handle a bit more?

After the initial shaping they get the lanyard hole drilled out then I remove them and shape the front and back. Because of the pry tool, I have to recess the handle material some so you can work the pry-bar. Need to look at that a bit closer and see if there is a better way to do or just extend the handle a bit more?

Gluing up

I need to let them set up over night, tomorrow should be the home stretch, I should be able to get them at least finished out and ready for sheaths.

Having fun with camera

*** DAY 5 ***

All right day is over it was another killer day in the shop. I met my goal of getting all the knives done to about 99.9 %. Tomorrow I will put on the final edge and take pictures.

I ordered stencils for the DVM logo but they will not be in until next week, kinda sucks but hey we got to move forward.

This morning was all about handle shaping, texturing, and working all the rough edges off the blades to prepare them for a tumble/stone-wash finish.

With everything dress right dress I start by fitting all the handles up.

Next up is final grind to fit and finish, then I radius and texture on the small wheel.

Once I have the final fit for the blades all the areas that the handles do not touch minus the primary and secondary edge get smoothed over and radius-ed.

Edge finish video…..great song BTW:

The blades and handles go into the bead blaster which shoots 70 grit aluminum oxide at around 80 pounds PSI, it smooths everything out and cleans the material.

Handles come out like this

and blades like that

Next the knives go into my tumbler for a stone-wash finish.

Video on tumble operations:

After tumbling the handles and blades get washed down with wd-40 and cleaned up real good. Next video is how I apply my “Makers mark” which goes on the left hand side of the knife. When the DVM stencils come in I will mark the right side of the blade…:

I did kydex for all three blades but will have to go on post ( Ft Polk ) and pick up some “Spec-Ops” brand sheaths to see how that will work out.

After press forming all the sheaths the get drilled, cut, final shape and riveted.

Here is a quick shot of the three blades, they now have a photo shoot date tomorrow which works out well the early morning light is the best for getting great shots.

The U.S. CONTRACTOR SURVIVAL KNIFE – hand made by Spencer Alan Reiter, SAR Global Tool

Thanks for all the great comments, I hope this thread served its purpose in showing the amount of time, attention to detail and time required to build a handful of prototype custom knives. This project is far from over, we have to have a set of CAD/CAM drawings done, shop for a production facility, material consideration, etc etc.

James I would like to thank you, allowing me to build a cool knife for a great place and most of all your patience in waiting for me to clear my bench enough to get after this project.

*** DAY 6 – DONE! ***

First off this was a cool project, it motivated me to do the best work in progress to date. It made the project much longer, but it helps other makers, collectors and people that have not the first idea about what goes into making things by hand with the aid of simple machines.

James has approached me to do a limited run of custom blades for those that would be interested. So give us some time to figure it all out, and something will be posted by James when the conditions are set for success.

For this work in progress:

- 118 photos taken 90 edited and used
- 13 videos approx. 25 minutes total.
- 5 days in the shop 6th day final final finish and photos

I will leave the hours spent out…lol

The photo with the DVM logo has been computer applied just FYI, I do not have the stencils for DVM on hand yet.

U.S. Contractor Survival Knives

All knives are made in S30V HRc 59-60 .155 thick, all have a primary and secondary edge, handles are G10, micarta, or a combo. All sport a custom kydex sheath with multiple option for fixing to gear, belt and leg etc.

U.S. Contractor Survival Knife – Model 1
. 155×9 1/4″ OAL with a 4 /14′ primary edge and 1 3/4 secondary edge
- Ranger green peel ply texture handles
- 4/40 torxs fasteners.
- 3/4″ wide pry tool on back end.
- 6.4 oz and 9.4 oz with sheath and all hardware

Video of knife and sheath action:

U.S. Contractor Survival Knife – Model 2
- Handle is a bit taller with a rounded thumb ramp
. 155×9 1/4″ OAL with a 4 /14′ primary edge and 1 3/4 secondary edge
- Grey G/10 with ranger green palm swell, aggressive random texture pattern.
- 4/40 torxs fasteners.
- 3/4″ wide pry tool on back end.
- 6.9 oz and 9.7 oz with sheath and all MOLLE hardware

U.S. Contractor Survival Knife – Model 3
- I wanted too see what this would look like with a slightly longer blade, I fucking like what I see.
. 155X10 3/4″ OAL with a primary edge of 5.5″ with a secondary of 1 3/4″
- Green Canvas micarta with carbon fiber palm swell, aggressive random texture pattern.
- 4/40 torxs fasteners.
- 3/4″ wide pry tool on back end.
- 7.1 oz and 14.8 oz with sheath and all rigging, sheath is removable from drop leg rig for regular carry.

Another sheath video:

Group love shots and details…lol

Thanks for the comments and for following this wip I hope it was interesting! Look forward to writing some articles on edged/survival tools for DVM in the near future.

~Spencer Alan Reiter, SAR Global Tool
DVM Resident Knife Pimp

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