Update from Santa's Workshop

I am an intermediate wood worker and craftsman, and enjoy any opportunity to make sawdust. Recently, I embarked on learning how to make a knife. Making a knife from materials you have on hand is known as cutlery. True knife makers can forge their own steel. Maybe you can even aspire to be a member of the Knife Makers' Guild. Check out their members' websites to see what every knife wishes it could be:

www.knifemakersguild.com

Getting back to reality, I got the idea that I could actually make a knife from M40's website:

www.m4040.com/Selections.html

under the Basement Bladesmithing Pages. For further interesting reading, check out the Wilderness Survival Pages at the same site.

I used a 7 1/4 inch circle saw for the task and decided to use sugar maple for the handles and brass for pins. There are techniques to make metal soft to ease the impact on your sanders and grinders; but you have to be able to re-harden the steel. I chose to keep the temper in the steel, but it wore out a sawzall blade just to cut out one knife blank. It also added considerable time to hone an edge. But, for a first time project, using the steel "as is" was one less variable.

Hopefully, this will make a nice Christmas gift for my dad. I plan to start mine next!

R