Thread: My 1st knife

After giving a mate a hand with a knife he was making the other day

He offered to give me advice and a hand where I needed it to make a knife of my own
Pretty cool idea I thought

Now what to make i decided on an general purpose hunting knife something reasonably compact but also big enough to be useful

Now to find a peice of steel I didn't want to buy a peice so i was thinking skill saw blade
But all the ones I found had heat relief cuts which did leave enough steel
But then I found a old chefs knife made from 18/10 stainless it was sitting in a bucket full of rusty metal and was looking pretty worse for where the handles were long gone and it had enough metal to cut the planed blade from
So I marked out my pattern and cut it out with my dermmel and cut off wheels being careful not to heat up the steel to much.... fileing next this 18/10 is so hard but I got there in the end I borrowed the hollow ground blade of the chefs knife to to save some work but the tip needed hollow grinding with a file which I got my mate to help with as he's pretty handy with a file

Drilling tang holes was the next mission i buggerd about 5 drill bits before resorting to a tungsten tiped masonry bit sharpened which got through like a hot knife through butter
And fitted a small peice of copper pipe for the hilt

I talked to my mate that dose carving and gota couple of pieces of swamp kauri this greenish brown stuff unlike the more common bronze stuff is hard as all buggrey
I cut two blocks on the drop saw and shaped to fit inside the copper pipe hilt
I then drilled holes for the pins or in this case brass bolts
I then 2 pot glued everything including the brass bolts and the brass nuts up to help with clamping for drying

Left for 48 hours to be sure of complete bond
Then ground the heads and nuts off the bolts to turn them into pins
And shaped the handle

Then finally sanded everything and finished with danish oil

Very happy with how it came out and I'll be starting another very soon