Home Forums Gear Knives and Blades What was the first knife you made or tried to make??

Uhhh, about a hundred knives later I said I was not going to make any more. And I think I almost mean it. Unless that urge comes over me again. Making knives is not rocket science and most guys who can weld or have good eye hand coordination and an interest in learning a little can do it. I have been a wood worker, so am familiar with tools and materials and how to do things. It just takes different tools and methods to work with metal. Well, it does help if you have a little talent and it is especially important that you have some experience past skinning and butchering more than a couple of bucks. Knowing what works and what does not is critical to knife design. Ask me how I know. I made several that didn't work at all. But that is part of the learning curve in knife making.

The problem with that approach is that most guys do not have the required amount of cutting /gutting/skinning time and paying attention to how a certain blade / handle shape works. They get all excited about how a knife looks. Looks never skinned and butchered a buck . The heart and soul of any knife is the STEEL it is made from and how that steel is shaped, ground, hardened and stress relieved. Once you get that part right, you can wrap the handle with duct tape and it'll work fine.

But so many people today just want a PRETTY knife and they don't care about those things because they are not going to use it anyway. They are going to DISPLAY it. Nothing wrong with that, but when those people begin trying to dictate knife materials and design, the wheels start to fall off . There are a lot of people making pretty knives because they KNOW their knives are not going to be used. I would rather make my own and know what it is designed to do, what materials it is made from, how those materials were heat treated, how hard the blade is, and how well it CUTS! If it will not do those things, far as I am concerned, it is useless. I have made knives like that, but I only did it once and tried to learn from that experience.

Knives are such personal and individual items, you almost have to know the man you are making it for. You need to know how he uses it and he needs to be involved with the design and construction of it. That way, he gets a useful knife. But if all you want is a pretty knife that you can brag about who made it and how much it cost while you show it off, then none of that matters. What matters in that case is how well it is polished out. But what the heck?? If that makes you happy, then you have a good knife and it is it's doing what you want it to do. I just don't make those kinds of knives because I don't use them like that. To each his own . But I have never been able to get over some guys coming to camp with a fancy knife and bragging about it and the next day when a buck is hanging on the skinning rack, they hide because they don't want to get blood on their knife. I just don't get that part.





I made both knives used in the upper photo.

When you are elbow deep in skinning/gutting/butchering a buck/hog/elk, that AIN'T the time to discover your knife blade is too long, too short, too wide, does not have enough belly, has too much belly, will not hold an edge, or the guard is getting in the way. But don't ask me how I know.