Thread: Show me your knives

Originally Posted by hotbarrels

After grinding up my first ever knife as a Christmas present for my older brother, he passed comment that he really needed a nice little knife for field dressing rabbits.
I did a search for suitably small blades on the net and discovered that Bark River are releasing one called the Rascal next week. Looks like a sweet little blade shape, but in my opinion, a tad small. So I upscaled it a bit giving an overall length of 160mm, and rounded out a few of the corners.

The end result, 1084 steel heat treated in my LPG bottle forge and precision bench top fan oven, double tempered for two hours to 205 degrees calculus (oven switching in at 190 and out at 205), targeting a 'book value' hardness of 60RC
Flat bevel grind to 120 grit, surface left 'as heat treated' and then pickled in some 'Grunt' cleaning acid to see what happened (no much). Camel bone handle scales with brass pins (camel bone polishes very nicely on the buffer - just saying).
Hand sharpened on water stone to a razor edge. Definitely felt like the blade was around the 60RC on the stone.
All of the above was entirely experimental for shits and giggles.

Came out not too bad. Just need to shoot a rabbit now to test it out.

Attachment 103739
Scales in the process of being shaped

Attachment 103740
Finished item ready for sharpening

Beaut looking bird and trout man. 1084 makes a surprisingly good knife aye