PsyKnives

I kinda feel repeating myself: Havent been around for a while. I have started a local Knife in The Hat (K.I.T.H.)  event here, and this is my knife to be offered. Enjoy. My next finished knife after  the customers one is this fellow here: Bill of materials: O1 tool steel 3mm Loveless stainless screws Carbon laminate handle  A few pics of the process: Template credit goes to Dan @ DCKnives.com this was originally his DS1 template, redrawn by a fellow knifemaker. Cheers mate for the cool templates! DS1 on the right, and the re-shaped one on the left. Contoured, ready for beveling: As a rookie knifemaker, I had some issues making the bevel symmetrical on my litllte grinder, that runs 37m/s. But nailed it! The carbon laminate, tested for looks Here it goes. The one with the holes in the tang is this one. The one without holes is his sibling, made from 1.4116 stainless steel. Have to admit, I love this shape: Current O1 ...

Recently I was approached by a customer to make a knife for her father. I drew a drop point knife, as she liked one of my previous designs ( the 3rd one, with the gut-hook ). Since her father has big hands, I have stretched the handle to 13cm, and have re-drawn the blade without the gut hook, and erased the extra grip in the front of the handle. (I am actually making the original design currently too, it is almost finished, only needs buffing, sharpening and a sheath. Will post link here too, as soon it is ready) Drop point knife making It might not look similar, but the one in the middle was the basis for the one below, that has been made here :) The second knife is the basis, and the third one is the end-result. I have followed the curve of the hook, and brought it to the spine. Handle has been stretched to 13cm too. Also erased the extra finger groove. I started documenting the process on video, yet -as usually- at some point I forgot to take my GoPro with me. :( H...

On Good Friday I invited a friend over. He has been hepling me with his expertise building my kiln, and other projects, so we decided it was time, to start his knife. He came up with his own tanto design, he drew based on several existing knives. Unfortunately for us, we forgot to film/photo his work, so I have only a few moments as evidence. We pretty much forgot to film the drawing and cutting part, but hey.. we have some footage from grinding it :) Material: O1 tool steel 40x3 mm stock Grinding the shape of the tanto He cut the shape with a zip disc, and started shaping the knife with the double grinder. Squaring the edges with Dremel Trio Here is the final shape. Clean design, that features a very solid grip. He squared the edges with a Dremel Trio up. You can see the Dremel Trio upside down. Filing with the jig. Easy peasy Beveling the knife with a filing jig. It was a nice experience to file a straigh...

On Wednesday I had a few hours for my hobby :) And I had a GoPro too. The result? Please find below... Please note, this is my first video documentation of my progress. The knife currently is beveled on both sides, and that is where we are for now. Hope to find some time on this weekend to continue. Blade material: O-1 tool steel  (1.2510 in the EU) 50mm wide, 3mm thick Heat treatment: My little gas forge Hardness: ~62 HRC Handle: Tropical hardwood Pins: 2mm brass rod Lanyard hole: 10mm bore Enjoy 5 At last, I had a few hours to work on the knife again. I have sanded it with p180 emery cloth and sanded the spine too. Here I had to do a short touch up with a file. I hope my video skills are getting better too :)   (Part1) Enjoy 5  Unfortunately the handle material tends to break, so I had to cut it shorter. I have treated the wood with Ballistol oil, several layers. The edge is 20degrees, super sharp, cuts even the Yellow-Pages typ...

As a rookie knife maker, I have started out with O-1 tool steel. Why? ( because Walter Sorrels told so :D:D)  Joke by side, here are my reasons: O-1 tool steel stock is pretty easy to find anywhere in the world, in Europe you can find it by the name 1.2510 steel. You will most likely find any thickness (2mm, 3mm, 4mm, 5mm), any width (40mm, 50mm), so you can do almost any project with it. Since it is a high carbon steel, it is easy to temper with home tools, like my trash can forge_ You do not need very sophisticated tools for heat treatment, all you need is to heat (~850C, no fancy measurements needed) it up untill the magnet does not stick to it, and dip it in any type of pre-heated oil (~50C). Literally any type of oil will do: used engine oil, sunflower seed oil, transmission oil, etc). You can easily achieve 60-61 HRC with it. In its annealed steate, it is easy to work with, a regular bastard file eats it like a charm, and you can cut it with a hack saw. As now I...

As being in the progress of learning, I found, that making a knife for my brother would be an interesting challange, where I'd make a knife from the very beginning to the finished product. Unfortunately I did not have the idea of writing this blog back then, so I don't have too many pictures on file. :( I for sure will document my future knives (both photo and video). The finished gut hook knife, wih Kirinite Lava handle 2.2x40mm O-1 steel The steel is O-1 tool steel (1.2510 in Europe) 2.2x40 mm, total length of blade is 23cm. Slightly modifyed  GH1 Gut Hook Hunter (DC Knives) I have drawn the shape of the knife on the steel bar. ( knife pattern is from DC Knives, thank you Dan for your work with all this knife patterns ) After cutting out the rough shape with the angle grinder, I have filed out te final shape of the knife, drilled a way too big hole (10mm), way too deep for the gut hook :), drilled a hole for the ricasso. I have modif...

After months of preparation, I finally got here... My very first knife. I made it. It was an amazing jurney. The feeling to be capable of doing something useful with -almost only- your bare hands. Patina is forming on the blade: this is how high-carbon steels act when contacting acids. (tomato, oranges, etc.) Although this knife is not a direct copy of Dan Comeau's DH52 knife pattern , I did use his pattern to free-hand draw my own design. This is what turned out. Bill of materials: 3x40mm O-1 tool steel (here in Europe: 1.2510 (100MnCrW4 ) a set of 10x40x120mm sandalwood scales Balsin Bright Stock Oil, treated w 4 coats Gorilla Glue epoxy (I don't recommend using it) Lot of elbow grease :)  It was extremely easy to work with the soft O-1 steel. For this knife I went with the 3x40mm flat bar   After cutting out the rough shape of the knife with an angle grinder, I used one double bastard file to smooth out all edges. It was all...