PsyKnives

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...

Hi there, havent been around for a while, have been psychologizing a lot, not leaving any time for my dear hobby. Since I managed to get away for a few hours only, I forgot to make enough pics. My bad, I'm sorry. But... here we go. A knife for a friend: In the last days of 2016, I have started a new knife, based on my own design. You may have seen it in this article. And now, in 2017 I have continued working on it. I guess we can say, im working on this knife for a year now :D:D The idea behind this knife was to make a  uncommon all-around knife. Since it is made from a 3mm thick material, it should take abuse (wood chopping/splitting, camping use, etc.) pretty easy. I know, lot of people in the US enjoy thicker blades, like 5mm+ (0.196 inches), but I believe, for a regular use, 3mm should be just fine. Blade material: O-1 tool steel  (1.2510 in the EU) 50mm wide, 3mm thick Heat treatment: My little gas forge Hardness: ~60 HRC (2x230 C cycles) Handle: Kirinit...

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...

In the last few weeks I have been experimenting with some 15mm thick wood.  A beautyful, heavy, but very brittle, partially treated exotic hardwood, originally made for wooden floor. Won this GITD powder just today. Cant wait to have it in my hands. I dont know, if I mentioned it before, but this wood I have is hmmm... VERY brittle. Every and each time I try shaping it to a knife handle, it just cracks, and snaps. I have already ruined a 12x50cm board. So I got pretty much fed up with it by now. Some say I should steam it, to make it softer, but then I'm afraid, that the glue would not stick to it. I have this idea for a few weeks now, to make a GITD knife handle. But not the easy, "Buy a pair of Kirinite GITD knife scales!" way. I am rather thinking of making a canvas micarta, where I'd put some (A LOT:) glow in the dark (GITD) powder in the laminting resin. Today I won an auction of some -allegedly- powerful GITD powder, Id like to use for the process. Of...

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...

I have been thinking yesterday about an easy-to-do knife pattern, where no handle is needed. Basically these are two sceleton knife designs. I might put on a paracord wrap, or just leave it plain. I'll be making it from 3mm thick O-1 tool steel stock. The hook of the second one needs some tweaking, I am not very happy with it's shape yet. I'll start tomorrow with the smaller one, after creating a nice, evenly curved spine for it on the stock. Cheers 5

I have browsed the web for knives I like, checking out their shape. I have found several interesting patterns. At the end of the search, I have free-hand drawn four knife patterns. None of them is copyed, they are more the synthesis of several knives I liked. Four knives, two of them drawn on a 40mm paper sheet, two of them drawn on a 50mm sheet  I decided to start out with the 3rd one, the gut hook tye. Got hook knife, nice curved This is how it turned out after shaping and sanding. I have a 3x50mm O-1 steel flat bar, I used for this project. To be honest, I am a bit concerned about the gut hook, it might be a bit too close to the edge. Hope the edge of it will not owerlap too much with bevel of the knife. If it will, it might create a weak spot, that can affect the heat treating process - it might bend. I still need to buy some slim round files for this project, since the hole for the gut hook is only 5mm in diameter. At this point I only had an angle gr...

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...