MatesLaurentiu on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/mateslaurentiu/art/Making-a-knife-357244592MatesLaurentiu

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Making a knife

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Description

This is in no way a knife making tutorial. Actually, its just kind of bragging, more like a "Look what I did" thing. But if anybody finds any information here useful, its welcome to test it in his or her own try. There is no text description on the images but I'll describe here step by step what I did.
1. One day I decided to try making some knifes. So I took a piece of mild steel and started shaping it and I ended up with two blades: a knife and what it was trying to be a throwing knife. The mechanical pencil is there for size reference.
2. Quite a long time after I did the blades, one sunny day when I was bored, I decided to try my new engraver and went for it. I used the Tolkien elvish alphabet, named the blade and made a design with a marker. I baptized it Tinco Hwesta: The Iron Breeze.
3. A simple display of the final engraving.
4. It took a while until I decided to give a try for the handle making. I want to thank Ray Mears for his documentaries exploring the subject. The difficult part was to find some bone. It was harder than you might think but I am lucky to have friends who will indulge my madness. I used a band grinder to make some plates out of the bone.
5. For the wood I went for a piece of fire wood I had lying around, a beech piece which I straightened with an electrical planer. The wood unveiled a beautiful texture and strong core.
6. Just an overview of the blade and the piece which were to compose the handle. Also, I made a guard for the blade.
7. I drilled holes in bone place and wood blocks then cut holes so they can be fitted on the tang.
8. Just a pose of the whole thing again, minus some missing pieces of leather and metal I added later. Coffee and a beautiful day are always great companions.
9. I used dual parts epoxy to glue the whole thing. You now can see the pieces of black leather I added, a little piece of copper and a bit piece of steel on the end so I can rivet the tang for better stability in the handle.
10. Doesn't take to long to rivet the thing in place. The tricky thing is to not hit the metal too hard, angle you're hammer a bit and use a bit of wood so you don't spoil the blade.
11....which I obviously did. Truth be told, the mild steel I chose was very poor and I have no experience with annealing and tempering but since the goal was just to experiment, it was fine. I fixed the blade and went on with finishing the handle.
12, 13, 14. Different states of handle polishing and shaping. Initially I wasn't sure how the epoxy will handle the vibrations but it held beautifully.
15, 16. Some more riveting and an overview of the whole knife.
17. Almost the final result. At this stage I wanted to lacquer the handle and it ended up looking really bad. So I polished it again to the 16 image look. I am very proud of it considering this is the first knife I ever made. For the next one I should try finding some better steel and learn some metallurgy in the process. :D
Image size
2480x8268px 2.99 MB
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Comments30
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this is awesome! how long did it take?