Just yesterday I finished my first-ever handmade knives. They are Christmas presents for my 11-year old son and my son-in-law.
Attachment 11648
The design, and most of the method I used, came from an Instructable. Just before I started to actually make them, I did a little more research, some from here and crashdive123s posts, and discovered that I was basically going to do everything wrong. I have several old, all-steel circular saw blades, and was going to use them for the knife blades. I found that everyone who seems to really know anything said that was a bad idea.
Well, I had trouble finding a local source of steel, and I hate to pay more for shipping than for the item, and I'm pretty freakin' broke, so I just used them anyway. Considering that most cheap knives have crappy steel, I figgered these'd be at least that good, so I did a Doc Brown and said, "What the hell?"
I used on of those little Smokey Joe round barbecues and scrap wood for a forge. I used a Horrible Fright heat gun for a blower. I normalized the blades (heated to transition temperature and let cool slowly) three times, then hardened them with a motor oil quench. I tempered them in our kitchen oven. They did harden. When I was making the handles, I had to enlarge the holes in the tang (made them slightly smaller based on one guys method of attaching with dowels, and found that to be a problem). I had to try and remove some of the hardness from the handles to get the bit to drill out the hole from 7/32 to 1/4. I actually just burned through it eventually, because I didn't want to take a chance of changing the heat treat in the actual blade.
I had rough-profiled the blades by hand, but I finished them using this contraption that I built (from a suggested YouTube video):
Attachment 11649
I also used it to sharpen them (which is what it's really for anyway). I went up to 1000 grit sandpaper. They aren't "scary sharp" (like I'd really know what that is anyway), but they make a nice slice through paper, which is more than I can say about the knives in my pocket. That will change as soon as I put them on my contraption.
I'm pretty happy with them. They aren't polished. I went after them with a series of sandpapers, but could only get so far. You can still see some file marks on the back part of the profile. But, without sounding too arrogant, I think they're pretty dang good for a first shot.
Just wanted to share them with y'all because this forum has been pretty encouraging for me. Merry Christmas!
