Tag: knifemaking

It has character flaws, it’s far from perfect, but for a first fully completed knife, I’m very happy with the end result.

Now I need to think about what I want to do next.

Did the handled today! Cut scales and filler, drilled holes, shaped the ends of the handle, then epoxied everything together. I’ll try and pop in before we leave for England to square up the handle, and hopefully be able to shape it over Christmas.

In the latest installment of Richard tries to make a knife, I wanted to work on the handle tonight. Instead, by trying to fix a small section of scratches, I managed to completely cock up my flat grind on one side of the blade because my freehand grinding skills still suck. I ended up chasing a small issue into a giant pile o’ shit. I found a good way to pivot out of my predicament though by using a dremel to texturise the top part of the blade and mostly cleaning up the edge before buffing it into a matt finish. I’m actually really happy with the end result. Now that all the grinding is done, all I need to do is put a handle on and the final sharpening (not to say that the blade isn’t already sharp enough to slice part of my palm open – happily only superficially).

Did the clean-up grinds on the blade and the edge grinds at multiple grits. Next step, handle and sharpening.

Prepped the pin holes, heat treated (skating file tested!) and oven-normalised. Next steps: cleanup and final grinds.

Start of a Japanese-inspired kitchen knife thingy. Initial profile and grind done, needs heat treating, sanding, final grinding, buffing, handle, and all the rest.

For the 1st time in over a year, I’m back in Colin’s shop trying to make a knife. I realise that I’m crap at manual work like this – I need a lot more practice – but I really enjoy it. Colin’s travelling for work from tomorrow, buy we’ll carry on when he’s back. Can’t wait.

Colin and I achieved red-hot metal without explosion or immolation. This is a win in our books. Going to start trying again to make a fully fledged knife.

Trying to drill holes through pre-hardened steel led to epic failure. The drill wasn’t doing anything. I’d managed to get a hole through by punching a screw and was trying various ways to widen the hole. After breaking yet another drill bit, we tried a brute force approach involving the screw, a block of wood and the vice. It seemed to be working, then we heard the dreaded p-ting noise… So… Plan B.

Finally! Finally finished the edging! Still not perfect but good enough for a 1st knife. Now, sanding. Lots and lots and lots of sanding.