How to Make Knives?

Making a knife is a well rewarded effort - once you make a knife yourself, you have a human connection & experience in making Ancient Man's First Tool.

MAKING DAMASCUS - Lots of hard work to produce a lot of steel for knives

             

MAKING DAMASCUS - UPDATE; Further work done on my own damascus. HARD Work! I had to HAND Forge the last part of the billets because the power hammer was broken AND the forge place made me wear a STUPID Mask the whole time... But it turned out nicely.

HANDLE MAKING TUTORIAL - Attaching Scales

I believe, all knives that require them, should have a “durable” and “comfortable” handle. In this tutorial I speak about making and attaching handle scales to a full-tang knife. The following is just one way to make them durable, strong and long lasting. Although equally important, “comfortable” is a subject for another day. With that said, there are infinite ways to make knife handles and if you ask 10 knifemakers, you may get 10 different explanations – all possibly valid. The system I use system was learned through trial and error, advice from mentors and a long time developing a technique. Although explained in a concise format I hope it may be of some help to readers and knifemakers.

First ‘rough out’ the scales by cutting the material close to the finished tang size, in this case I’m using Ebony wood with a red liner already glued in place. 

I do this by temporarily clamping the scales to the tang and use a marker to trace the outside of the tang onto the INSIDE of the handle scale and then cut/grind to the line.

Once the scales are cut to the right profile, leaving a little extra over-hang, it’s time to think about the front-end bolster area of the wood scale. Shape, sand and polish completely this front end back about ¼” or more to a finished state! Finishing the front end of the scale before installation is critical, because after the scale is attached, you won’t have easy access to the bolster/ricasso area for polishing later… Dry fit both scales aligned on the tang and be sure all the ends match up well on both sides of the knife.  

Next, I draw another reference line about ¼” from the scale edge as a boundary line to keep the next steps performed “inside the tang perimeter” – any scratches or marks past that line could show up on the finished knife as voids or holes when looking at the spine or tang of the knife, so keep it inside the lines. Next; “rough up” or texture the handle scales and the steel knife tang in order to create a strong purchase/hold for the epoxy glue. I use a drill press on the scales, and a small cut-off wheel for the already hardened steel tang. Don’t put divots/holes/texture where the handle pins will go thru – these holes will be drilled in later steps. Go slow, take your time and stay ‘in the lines’, not too deep either! Make sure everything is still flat after ‘texturing’ all pieces, flat sand again if necessary and clean.

I prefer to glue up one side of the handle at a time instead of both at once. First, mix the epoxy and glue up 1^st side. Get plenty of glue into all the little divots and holes on the scale and the tang. Line it up and clamp it lightly and wait until dry. Clean the epoxy off the very front of your finished and polished scale end and ricasso area of the blade, before epoxy dries; I use lacquer thinner. (Gluing up knives is a separate tutorial for another day.)

When dry, drill through the knife tang pin hole and out through the newly attached handle scale. Use proper clamping and a ‘sacrificial’ piece of wood under the scale while drilling through. This prevents the hole ‘chipping out’ – of some good and bad drilling.

              

Now it’s time for the 2^nd handle side. Glue up, line it all up and clamp lightly until dry. As before, clean the epoxy off the very front of your finished and polished scale end and ricasso before epoxy dries.

Once cured, clamp the new knife side without drilled holes down in drill press, and using the already existing holes (up) as a guide, drill down and through the handle completely. *Note from experience; This particular knife pictured has a tapered tang. If your knife has one too, take this taper in consideration when drilling straight holes. Make sure you are LEVEL, not just flat, otherwise your pins will not be straight and perpendicular through the knife.

Pins can be both peened AND Glued into the handle. C A Glue (super glue) will take a polish better than epoxy, but you have to work fast and it can be risky. Epoxy works fine too and with less rush.

At this point, you should have handle scales securely attached, with tight supporting pins to make what I call a “Durable” handle – that should last a lifetime. Next steps would be shaping and finishing the handle to completion. Stay Sharp! -Kelly Lane www.kellylaneknives.com

TIPS ON MAKING KNIFE GUARDS

The guard on a knife has a primary purpose of keeping ones hand from slipping down the handle and touching the sharpened blade. Knife guards come in a plethora of shapes, sizes, styles and can be made of just about any kind of material you can think of. Most guards in knifemaking are made from Brass, Nickel Silver, Stainless Steel, Wrought Iron, Damascus and sometimes Micarta. They can be single guard, double guard and even 'guard-less' guards which I incorporate into some of my knives.

I PREFER to use a strong material that is easy to work with (not too hard) that matches well with the blade and handle to create 'FLOW' from tip to tail. When designing a guard, ask yourself; How will the knife be used? And, How will the guard be 'fitted' onto the knife. A common guard has a slot milled in the center where the knife tang passes through and into the handle cavity. Some guards have pins, some are soldered, some are fitted with joints onto the blade or tang.

ALL Guards;

* Protect the fingers and are comfortable

* Are a transition from blade to handle

* Are an important visual piece of a knife

I should say: ALL Guards SHOULD be like that...because unfortunately I have seen guards that are useless, get in the way, uncomfortable and poorly designed.

Have a question??  Call Me, I will be happy to try and help! -Kelly Lane

Broken Knives but not Broken Dreams -Kelly Lane

Knife making is both an Art and a Science. To create a knife is to produce a tool that is required for daily life today - just as it has been for more than 2.5 Million years! The ‘ARTISTIC’ component of knife making varies from maker to maker - and from time to time. Some make beautiful 'Art Knives' and some make very functional and maybe sometimes ‘ugly' knives. I make both myself but tend to prefer the more artistic path. The ‘SCIENCE’ is pretty much the same in both cases - create a sharp, durable long-lasting knife out of modern man's favorite blade material; Steel and sometimes stone!

There are about a million different processes and techniques to 'make' a knife. AND sometimes a process can go very wrong. The feeling that touches your heart that instant of a moment you break or screw up a knife that you are making is not pleasant. I have a collection of “Failed Knives” stacking up in my shop that grows in relation to my time in the knife making business. (Early years there are more failures, later years still some failures, but less.) I feel anger, confusion, sometimes rage and then...a sad grief. A wise man will study his failed attempts. A very wise knife maker will learn from his mistakes to improve his future endeavors. A lesser man will give up – women knife makers are the same.

A broken blade's steel end grain structure is important look at closely. It can provide good information to a sharp maker. Steel type, forging temperature, hardness, quenching medium, ambient temperature, steel quality, grain structure, heat treatment, physical stress, structural stress, faulty equipment, “operator error” and just plain Bad Luck can all cause a knife making failure. 

Below (NEARBY) are some photos of some of my 'dark moments' in knife making - the ruins of knives that did not turn out as I had intended. When I bring broken shards of steel to show my knife friend & mentor Mike; handfuls of steel pieces that I had spent lots of time, blood, sweat and now tears to make - he somehow easily quips to me; “If you break it, learn from your mistake and go make another”. Broken knives can teach many lessons - #1 - how NOT to break another in the same manner. Learn from your mistake and 'go make another' he encourages me.

That just sounds so easy to say and do, but for me, it takes some time to heal the wounds to my pride (and sometimes hands!) and to say goodbye to a friend (made in steel or stone) that I spent many days and hours with.  But in another one goes – relegated to the “Failed & Scrapped Knife Pile”. My latest failure came last week when inlaying some turquoise into the handle of an obsidian knife, sigh...But I move forward and start the next project.

Don't get me wrong - I get mad as heck (@&#%!) when I mess-up a knife!! But as time goes by, each time a knife fails, I get a little less upset and I even begin to look forward to 'determining' the reason for failure, and I learn.

        Happy Knife Making & Less Breaking!

               -www.KellyLaneKnives.com                 

  I guess I was 'persuading a bit too much'. Dang it was nice!

Some types of steel forge weld together easily and others do not.

Heat Treating Oven

Freshly Quenched Blades

         

Making a guard is challenging. A guard is the mid-point between the blade and the handle, and the looks of the guard is important to the over-all look, feel and 'flow' of the knife. There are single guards, double guards, integral guards and more and can be made of many different materials. BUT they all have one primary purpose; To keep the fingers from hitting the blade!

Here are a few different guards that I have been working on;