Home Forums Gear Knives and Blades Jantz Knife kit quality

I am thinking about ordering a kit to make a knife for my 11 year old daughter. Are their blanks any good?

Their USA made ones look good. The #31 (I think) is the one I like. MOF I am going to buy another soon........

Jantz has some really nice kits, and are really easy to work with. I started several years ago with a few kits. The pattern 31 you are looking at is not one of the japan blades that they buy. They now have a water jet cut their own blades. Flat grind by CNC machine and send them to Peters for cryo heat treat. Most of them have different steel choices and should make a good blade.olive about 50 miles from Jantz and I'm in there at least once a month. They Are great people and easy to deal with. The only thing to watch out for is a few of the kits require the guards to be soldiered on, if you have no experience with this it can be a disaster. Good luck and have fun.

Guess I should have read a bit better, or answered a little clearer.

I've never bought a kit, only blade blanks. Not sure if the kit knives are USA made blanks like Dale speaks of. IIRC their kit knives used to come with "dymondwood" scales, which I would have zero interest in.

My advice would be to buy a USA made blank of choice, and get your own (better) scales/pins separately........

True, 2muchgun, that is the way it was. Since Jantz started making their own blades they have come up with many more kit options. You can buy just the blade, a semi fitted guard with pins, and several handle material option such as semi ftited and textured G10 and even leather sheath (not good quality) and some you can get a Kydex sheath. Jantz updates their catalog about twice a year now. They try to keep up with the trends and if your request material they don't carry they will try to get it for you.with my last order I received the newest catalog #50. FYI the blades they buy in have names like Comanche Skinner or Muskrat the blades they make in house are called PATTERN #31 ECT. once again the people at Jantz are great at customer service and are really informative about their products. One day they took into the shop and let me watch the water jet cut blanks, I ALMOST GOT A WOODY.

Yeah, a waterjet would be the $hit for sure.

Being it's for a kid, I would probably opt for something like 154CM, just because it's stainless/low maintenance........

Well, I placed an order for this: http://www.knifemaking.com/product-p/ss874k.htm
I use this for practice and if it turns out I will order one of the Pattern blades.

Good choice, I'll give you a little tip for safety. These blades are already sharp. Use 3-4 layers of easy peel masking tape around the blade. For your protection and to protect the Finnish on the blade.