We will now interrupt the regularly scheduled program for this good old blows micro podcast. A well-executed pocket knife is nothing really without a well-executed nail nick. If you're going the nail-nick route, the uh the worst thing I think that you can do is is make an oval nail nick. Now, it's it's not just my conjecture or things like that. It really has to do with uh the fundamentals of how the nail nick is supposed to function and the way that it's supposed to look based on nail nick tradition. Now, whether you are cutting in your nail nick with a punch or fly cutting it, or using like a right-hand angle uh mill cutter, or whether you're using a stone or a uh uh a drill point thinner, there are nuances to the way that you cut your nail nick in that really make it easy or difficult and whether uh it's executed well or not. I'm going to focus primarily on nail nicks that uh utilize stones because that's probably what I'm most comfortable with. Reason why I focus on stones is because I think that's the area where I think it has the most versatility because let's face it, uh if you grind your bevels and you work out your swedges and everything, if you have them, and then you want to put a nail nick in, the easiest way obviously is after the fact. So after it's heat treated, after you've done your beveling and swedging or whatever you're going to do, and then you place your nail nick because you can realistically put it in the perfect spot. Um, but the problem that a lot of makers face is the uh the process in which they put their nail nicks in and how they're utilizing their stone uh to do to do everything uh with a nail nick. So I'm gonna kind of go into that. Uh something that you have to understand about nail nicks and stones is that it's all about uh geometry and it's all about grit fracture, all right. Um the the geometry I'm talking about is how deep of a cut your your abrasive wheel gets depending on uh the circumference of the stone itself and also the thickness, all right. So those play a fairly large role because if you're using uh a one-inch stone for for instance or a one and a quarter, cutting a 45 degree uh angle in that stone or dressing one is going to uh result in a deeper, longer nail nick than if you were to use a narrow stone with the same 45 degree. Um, you can dress that stone in a lot of different degrees in order to get the the look you're going for, but that's where um you know finding the the right thickness stone, the right diameter stone, and and selecting your angle of dressing to get that sharp top on on the nail nick are probably the three fundamentals that you need to figure out in order to get good at nail nicks with stones. Now, not all abrasive wheels or abrasive cutting wheels, regardless of whether you're using a uh an angle grinder stone or a bench top grinder stone or whatever, are not all created equal, and they all have uh different characteristics for the abrasive, and that will determine somewhat how you're actually using it when you're grinding your nail nicks out. The other thing uh to keep in mind is that uh as like as with uh talking about the different abrasive types in wheels, you also have to consider that abrasive is constantly fracturing off of that wheel and it is is losing the dressing that you initially put on it. So you will will oftentimes have to redress your stone after you cut your nail nick to get your final finish on the nick itself, all right. So I'll go over my process. Um, I have a uh versamil, which not everybody's gonna have that. They're kind of odd ducks in the machining world, and I was you know very fortunate to pick it one up from a friend that that had it, and it allows me to cut my nail nicks because I can lay the the blade down flat and I could choose exactly where the the stone is going to hit, and I can slowly address the the abrasive stone to the knife in a way that's not going to fracture as much abrasive off as quickly. But the I I have a a Norton white stone inside of my versamil, and the angle that I've chosen based on the fact that I I believe it's a quarter inch, uh quarter inch stone is a 45 degree angle. When I am initially going down and and touching that stone off to my pocket knife, I'm removing material and slowly, if you pay attention when you're when you're uh when you're grinding your nail nick in, you'll notice that at the area of the nail nick where it's supposed to be sharp at the top, that if you're using a stone, it will slightly tip downwards and give a kind of rounded look to it. The way that I get around that is I will initially make my deepest cuts to the length that I'm looking for with just uh tapping uh slowly and getting that a wheel to cut in the nick. All right. And if I need to, I'll use a little bit of uh coolant, so water or Windex or things like that, something that's not going to uh uh disrupt the the abrasive moving the material out and cutting uh cleanly, all right. Then once that's done, I will take a little diamond dresser and you can pick them up on Amazon. They're like a little uh rectangular tube that has diamond impregnated on the end and a little uh a round handle, and I will eyeball but get pretty close to just dressing or like redressing and cleaning up the wheel, and then I will very, very slightly tap down on it to cut that straight line across uh where it needs to be and and fix those little curves that happen because the abrasive is uh is being fractured off on the stone. Now, if you're using a drill press or a mill to do this, and you're using a a bench top um a benchtop grinding wheel with with an arbor, you can do the same thing, but you're just you know just you're just addressing your work at a different angle. So typically you'll have something in a vise that holds your blade and you can tap it against the uh the uh the the blade and the stone uh appropriately to to cut in your nicks. But if your stone is not dressed, and it's if it's not dressed every single time you cut a nail nick, then you're doing yourself a disservice because it in in reality you're likely causing more of an oval um nail nick than you are a um I don't know what you would call the shape, but you know what a traditional nail nick should be like a crescent of sorts. Um the the best way I can I can uh give advice is to dress your stones before each nail nick and then dress your stone when you're cutting the the nail nick in. So after you've done your initial uh removal cuts, go in and clean up the the cut and get those lines sharp again by going in and redressing the stone. It it's the same kind of concept that comes from uh using a surface grinder and a stone on that, because when you're making cuts, your the face side of your wheel that is touching the work uh first when it's removing on each pass will wear away quicker than if you are um it'll just wear away quicker. So you sometimes in a piece of work that you're doing to get things super flat, uh unless you're taking just a very, very, very small amount, like half half the ten thousandths off, uh you're going to want to redress your wheel at some point, and you need to know when that is. So in surface grinding, it always makes sense. So that same kind of concept uh follows through with using a stone, you got to dress it. It's a little bit easier when you're using a drill point thinner because the dresser is already is already on the machine, uh uh usually. Uh but uh what you need to do is always make sure you're redressing. It's it's okay to redress a stone and and then re-cut your work as long as both are in a static position where they're not moving around, otherwise you're going to botch it. Um but uh the right-hand um arbor and and cutting tools are great uh for cutting it in in unhardened or annealed steel. But something to remember is that you have to run those incredibly slow. So uh depending on whether you have a mill that that will run you know less than 100 RPM or not, uh kind of depends on whether you can use them. And the the the right-hand angle uh grinders or or cutters are actually kind of expensive. So if you can find them re-sharpened on eBay, uh maybe you can find them for you know sixty, eighty, a hundred dollars. If you buy them new, they can be four or five hundred dollars. And usually that's a high-speed steel, those are not in carbides. So um on fly cutters, there is an art to cutting fly uh fly cutter, uh, you know, the cutter itself and doing the relief properly. I am not good at it at all, so probably not the person to ask. But there are options if you want a fly cut where you do everything um in an annealed state, and you can uh you go you go half the width of the blade plus uh seven thousandths, I believe it is. Um, and that will get you the nail nick geometry that you're looking for when you grind the bevels, um, because uh everything is accounted for in the depth of cut when you're uh when you're cutting in the nail nick, and then it uh it takes into account that you're you know uh grinding fifty percent on either side of the blade. So I hope that helps.