James Stanley

I made a little knife

Sun 31 May 2015

I made a knife today. Just a little one, out of an old hacksaw blade. Only half a hacksaw blade, I used the other half to make a gasket scraper (not pictured).

I drew the outline of it on to the blade, then ground the hacksaw blade down with the bench grinder to make a knife "blank" (technical term), then ground a bit of a bevel onto the blade, then polished the blade part of the blank a bit to make it less rusty and nasty, and drilled an extra hole (the first one was already present from the hacksaw blade).

I traced the outline of the handle onto two little pieces of oak I had lying around, and cut it out vaguely. I drilled some holes in the pieces of oak to match the holes in the tang and held it together with drill bits while working on the general shape.

I used superglue and some brass wood screws to attach the oak "scales" (technical term) and I ground down the screw heads and tails (?) to make them flush with the oak and rounded the corners of the oak on the belt sander.

I sharpened the blade. It's not too sharp, because I am no good at sharpening knives. I've never managed to sharpen a knife properly.

The handle is "finished" with engine oil and dirt.

I left hacksaw teeth exposed on the spine of the blade, looks pretty cool.

This knife was just a practise, I intend to make a big-ass knife out of an old file at some point.