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

Taking the thread about what was your first knife a little further, surely there are those here who are not professional knife makers, but you are like me, you have tried your hand at making knives. I made my first one from a large circular saw mill blade that was 01 high speed tool steel. It is easy to work with and makes a dang good knife.

I always wanted a Bob Loveless knife, but couldn't afford it. I saw a photo of one of his knives in a magazine and decided to make one like it. So I did, but it was 20 years later that I saw a real Loveless Crooked Skinner knife and realized that the one I made was bigger that his. No matter, it has worked fine for many years.



This is the only one left of the four saw blades that I had like this.



This is my big fat version of a Loveless Crooked Skinnwer. Don't laugh!!!! It works just fine thank you.




I also did the leather work on the scabbard.

Looks like one heck of a start up job. Nice.
And then you just walked away from the fever??????
Tim

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.

Bob
Nice post, and a lot of good experience and common sense observations. But be careful treading on such sacred ground by letting the cat out of the bag.
ie: "Making knives is not rocket science.." ---OH, NO!!!

I believe in function first also, but will not hesitate to take money from a guy who likes a knife just because it is "pretty".

Question. Do those old saw mill blades need to be drawn back in Rc to work with and then re hardened? Are they hardened throughout the whole circular blade, or softer in the middle?? Just curious as I have one. I usually buy sheet stock to start, but am thinking about doing something with that circular saw mill blade.
Tim

Tim

I do not know about the unform hardness on those saw blades. I took two of them to the foundry and they cut them up into smaller, more useable sizes on their big shear/break. I had a friend who was a machinist, tool and die maker that had a shop right next to the foundry. He had a paragon oven to harden things. I always annealed those saw blade blanks before I started working with them. It just made things a lot simpler. Once I got the blade shaped and ground the way I wanted it, I took it back to his shop and hardened it according to the metal charts and then tempered/stress relieved it according to how hard I wanted it to be. Even though you can make a certain steel go really hard, you don't always want that in a blade.



Here is what I came home and made after killing my first elk and trying to skin, gut, and butcher it with a 3 1/2 inch blade knife that all the gun writers were using back then. Never listen to gun writers about your knife because they let their guides do all of that business. I did not have a hatchet with me to split the carcass or break the pelvic bone and you dang sho can't do it with a little knife. I call this one the "Bear Skinner." It has enough weight and heft to do the job of a knife and hatchet. Don't laugh at the bevel I put on that blade. I was learning.

Thanks Bob
Is that sun burst pattern around one of the pins something you normally do, or just for yourself. Looks cool.

Yeah, a lot of guys tout the 3"-3 1/2" blade. You can do a lot with that, but personally I do not like to be under knifed in the field.

But as you said, it is a learning curve for what works and what does not and that is as varied as users are. For makers, you work with what you got and end up where your thoughts and the steel takes you.

Tim

I only do that pin pattern on my personal knives and then only on micarta or smooth horn handle materials because it is too much trouble to do on stag. But I like stag because it is a traditional hunters knife material. It is on my favorite knife and the one I use most often.

I have never sold a knife and never will. I made many for my hunting friends and their sons and gave away those I made that I was not satisfied with the way they worked. It takes me so long to make a knife that if I charged minimum wage, it would be cost prohibitive. It is a labor of love far as I am concerned. I want it as good as I can posssibly make it and if it does not meet that standard, I don't keep it around. I guess if I did it for a living and had a shop all set up to do it I would get better at it and do it faster, but it's just something I got interested in as a hunter who owns his own camp and kills more game than the average Joe out there. And I usually end up having to skin, gut, and butcher game for friends who come to camp because they don't know how or are not prepared to do it. I am amazed at how many guys come to deer camp and don't even bring a knife with them. WTF??? I was not happy with the Buck knives (not to pick on them because I have a Buck Stockman) or most of the other mass produced knives that are available with the exception of Puma's made in Germany. I have and use two big Puma folders. They will take and hold an edge. I couldn't afford a Randall or Loveless, so I had to resort to making my own. As they say: Necessity is the mother of invention.

I am not sure if what I do is right, but it works. Other than what my friend with the machine shop taught me about different steels and their properties and how to harden them, I have not had any instruction. I took a series of photo's building my last knife. (I say it is my last knife. Maybe that is right and maybe not. ) If you are interested, I'll post a few and you can comment on how I did it and maybe help speed up how I do things. Or not. Right now, the itch to grind steel is not upon me, but it is always out there ready to jump on me when I am not looking.

I am sure some in process pics would be enjoyed and appreciated here and some others are sure to chime in. I have said enough for now.
Thanks
Tim

Well since you and I are the only two people on the Camp Fire that has any interest in making knives, and you already know how to do it, maybe this is not the place for that. Most of these guys seem to be collectors with little interest in knives that will get blood on them. Knife collecting is a neat hobby and I attend the big knife show every year down in Atlanta. I see some of the most beautiful stuff down there and it obviously was never intended to be used. And smart collectors are making money on some knives. I am not smart enough to do that. I just make'm and use'm or give'm away.

There are plenty of guys on here that have and I am sure will add their input.
Several on here have given me their thoughts and desires on what works best for them in various situations. I have made some knives for them and together we tweaked a few.
I only know a little, but can add my comments to most anything.

According to Waylon, Bob Wills is still the King. Any connection with your handle???

Yep. Only I don't do Western Swing. I play the blues because if it ain't BLUES, it ain't music.

Uh... no.

Okay, but there are a lot of photo's so I guess I'll just take it one thing at a time showing what I did. The knife in these photo's is the only forged knife I ever made (actually helped make) or ever will make. I have a friend who is a black smith and a pretty good one. He has been trying to get me to do blacksmithing, but I am not going to. He knew I made knives, so he said for me to come over and he would show me how to forge a blade and I had always wanted to try that anyway.

So I drew out what I wanted to make and we threw a piece of round stock 52100 in his double burner gas forge and heated it to the color he said it should be and we both took turns beating it out into a flat piece. Then we started working on shaping it with the hammer and that was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. He would have to correct all of my mistakes. So we finally got it to where he was happy with it and he asked me if I wanted his touch mark on it and I said sure, so I stamped the blade.

You forgers and black smiths all know what a touch mark is, but for those who don't, it's an identifying mark unique to each forge sort of like a trade mark. My buddy's is a buffalo skull with the initials BMF which stands for Big Medicine Forge. You'll see it in the photo's.

I did not even take my camera with me when we made the blade, but there wasn't a lot to see in that process anyway. Just imagine two guys beating on a piece of hot steel for about three hours and then using a file for the finish shaping. Then we quenched it in pre heated oil. He examined it and tested the hardness with a file and pronounced it ready.

Now I know why people use the stock removal method for knife making. That forging is hot and a lot of work and it ain't pretty and the knife blade ain't exactly flat or square like a piece of flat stock. But it is what it is, so I am going to finish it.



Everything is laid out here to begin. There is the micarta, the nickel silver metal and the nickel silver pins, heat blocker, and various sized drill bits.



Here is the blade on a piece of paper ivory micarta. My original idea was to make the handle half black and half white, and I did that but it looked like dog dung, so I took the white off and made it all black. That is the beauty of making your own. You can change your mind if you want to.



Here I am cutting the nickel silver flat stock into the proper sizes for what I am going to pin and silver solder to the tang. Nothing fancy, just a common hack saw with a new blade and careful sawing.



These are the nickel silver pieces that I am going to attach to the tang.



These pieces need to be cut pretty close and then touched up with a file.



Now clamp the nickel silver to the blade with a vice grip or something similar, and use the holes in the tang to guide the holes in the nickel silver. Be careful here because that nickel silver will climb up the drill bit then swing out and cut you if you have your hand where it can get to you. These are 1/8 inch holes for the pins. You have to drill both sides this same way.

My fancy anvil is a piece of rail road rail, but it works fine. Here I am peening the pins. Do this slowly because nickel silver is three times as hard as brass and if you rush it, you'll break it off. What you want to do here is to make the whole pin fat and make it tighten up in the hole, but BEFORE you do this, first thoroughly clean the tang and the nickel silver and apply soldering flux. I keep everything clamped tightly with a vice grip to make sure it stays in one place while I work on it.



This is what it should look like when you get finished.



Here I have re applied the flux under and around the bolster, applied Heat Stop or Block-It to the blade to keep the heat from running, and am heating the tang behind the bloster. When I apply the silver solder in front, it will run to the heat and under the bolster. Make sure you get a good solder joint becaue if there are any holidays in it, they will show up when you finish it off.



The joint should be completely filled all the way around like this. You do the other two nickel silver pieces the same way and be careful to not let the heat run back on your last solder joint or it'll melt the joint and you'll have problems. Keep a lot of Block-It in the required places and be sure to clean the joints and apply solder flux to get good joints.

Hang on, we have just got started. More to come unless you boys get bored with this. I can stop any time. Does anybody see any major errors so far or see a way it could have been done better or faster?

You mean you actually get blood on your knives?

Do tell.

That might ruin the collector value!!!!


JAPPFT,


GWB

We are going to get to this, but there are a few things to do first.



This is the same knife as you see in my hand in the buck skinning photo up above. That was my first and only use test of it.

Blood on a knife?

That's just crazy talk.

It's a lot easier to pose for and take pictures of yourself than go to all the work of getting a knife bloody. Or so it would seem...

I can't post a picture because I'm away from home. But I made a skinner knife I still use from a truck spring. I was about 14 years old. My best friend's father was a genuine anvil pounding blacksmith, and of course we loved to play around in his shop, heating pieces of scrap in the forge and pounding them out on the anvil. The only tool we were forbidden to use was the electric power hammer he had built. (It had cut off three of his fingers). I worked that knife ever chance I got till just before deer season. Then my friends father took it and tempered and hardened it for me. It's not a pretty knife and it is very heavy, but it works great and will chop through bone and still be sharp enough to skin with.
I wish all kids had the same opportunity to learn a few things about the old ways like we did.

Ain't dat da' truth. LOL