I made my first knife
A while ago I mentioned I was going to attempt making a knife for the first time. Well, I did.
Apologies in advance for there not being many photos of the process - steel is really messy to work with so I mostly kept my phone safely out of the way. I'll try to get more pictures next time, although there are plenty of videos and picture tutorials around if people are super interested in the process. I shall endeavour to describe what I did in text, however.
I started out with a bar of 01 tool steel (wiki) which I cut into a rough knife blank. This I then hit with a ball hammer a load of times to get some texture. Then I used a belt grinder to put a bevel on the edge side, although only enough to thin the knife down to roughly the right shape, not actually sharp. Once that and a few other minor shaping tasks were done, it was time to heat treat it.
Heat treating changes the structure of the metal to make it harder. Hard steel will hold an edge longer, but it does make it much more difficult to work, hence doing most of the shaping before heat treating. To harden steel you need to heat it to a particular temperature, which depends on the exact alloy being used but 'bright orange' is close enough. Fun fact - when steel gets to it's 'critical' temperature, it stops being magnetic, so that's another way you can test it. The steel is then quenched, this one in oil, which makes it hard.
Hardened steel is very brittle so it's usually tempered after hardening. For 01 steel that means putting it in an oven at 160-200C for a couple of hours. You lose some hardness but you gain back some toughness and flexibility.
After tempering, cleaning, polishing, polishing and so much polishing. Steel is so dirty and difficult to work with compared to the silver, gold and copper I'm more used to. But eventually, and after glueing and bolting a sycamore wood handle on, then giving it a final sharpen on my wetstone, I had a knife.
It is a Japanese-style Nakiri knife. Usually used for cutting vegetables, it's really nice to use. Lightweight and agile, the balance is nice and it's comfortable in my hand. It's not perfect and there are a few things I'd do differently but I can see myself using this on a daily basis. More pictures
I have already laid out and started shaping my next knife, which will be a slightly more complicated bunka knife
Any questions, please just ask and I'll do my best to answer.
I have always been fascinated with blacksmithing (hint as to why), but never actually done any myself, so this is easily the coolest and most inspiring project I have seen so far on ~creative!
What inspired you to do this? What kind of equipment did it require? Any guides you can recommend?
p.s. I also follow a bunch of blacksmithing youtube channels that you might get a kick out of:
Tod's Workshop
michaelcthulhu
AWE me (Man At Arms, Reforged, etc.)
That Works
I've always fancied making a knife, and I wondered if I could do it to a standard I would consider acceptable, and possibly even sell-able. Turns out both are true, even though I'm only about 90% happy with how this one came out - I posted this to Facebook and immediately several people offered me money. Proper money as befits an 8-10 hour fabrication job, not "material costs + a bit". One of my current day jobs is that of a silver/gold smith so I have some background in metalwork, but there's honestly not a great deal of crossover, although I think a general familiarity with how to move metal around is probably helpful. But I do think most people could do something similar fairly easily, given the chance.
For making this I used a hacksaw for cutting; a hammer for whacking; a vice with the world's tiniest anvil for workholding and anvil duties; a belt sander that is really supposed to be for wood but with the right belts is just about OK for steel; some excessively over spec jeweller's files by Vallorbe (don't cheap out on files, cheap ones are worthless but expensive ones are superb); a shedload of abrasive paper; my oxy-propane torch which just has enough power to heat up this mass of steel and finally my King wetstone for finishing up the edge. The Loveless bolts which help hold the handle on were a special purchase, although they are optional, you can just glue them on, and I had the sycamore lying around already. It's not actually that much stuff, and you can do without the powered grinder if you need to, but you'll be doing a lot of file/sandpaper work by hand.
I watch a couple of the channels you've mentioned (Ilya Alekseyev from Man At Arms is totally my metalsmith crush, he is so good), will check out the others, thanks! There's no one guide I'd specifically recommend but probably only because I've seen so many over the years I'd already assimilated most of what I needed to know. My favourite youtube blacksmith is Alec Steele, but whenever I'm thinking about cutting a corner or making a bodge, I think to myself "What Would Clickspring Do?" and the answer is always to do more, and do it better (aside: it's long, but watch Chris's clockmaking video series because holy crap that guy is good). Oh and my tiny internet claim to fame is that I met Alec Steele a couple of times, he's originally from my hometown and I visited his forge once or twice and even appeared briefly on one his videos, before he was youtube famous. He is as genuinely nice as he appears to be.
Thanks for writing all that out. I thought for sure it would take a bunch of specialized tools, but that actually seems surprisingly doable.
And I can definitely see why someone would offer you money for your knife. It's a lovely piece of work, and I could definitely see knifemaking taking off as a career for you if you kept pursuing it. I know a lot of professional chefs in particular that spend an absolute fortune on custom blades.
p.s. I haven't heard of Alex Steele before, but I am subbed now. Thanks for the recommendation. And yeah, Clickspring is great... I have been a Patreon of his for years now, and his Antikythera Mechanism reproduction series is absolutely amazing!
Thanks, I'm hoping to be able to make a bit of cash one day. Every little helps and all that. But even if not, it's fun and fairly cheap to do and I can give my friends knives for christmas and birthday gifts for a while.
I reckon the bare minimum you'd need is a hacksaw, a stack of sandpaper, some means of clamping or even taping the blank in place, a blowtorch and a shedload of time and elbow grease. You wouldn't get the hammered finish and the scales wouldn't be pinned on, but you'd be able to take a piece of bar steel and make a knife from it.
Looks nice! What was the reason for hitting it with the ball hammer, was that just for aesthetics or did it do something to the structure of the steel?
Thanks! The texture is there to break up the surface of the blade so that food doesn't stick to it, a totally flat edge would accumulate food in use, especially thin slices of vegetables. It's common in nakiri style blades, whereas santoku knives tend to go for scalloping instead. On the bunka you can see I've marked out lines for scalloping.
The hammered finish made for far more work than simply taking the dead-flat stock I started with and making a knife, I spent a lot of time trying to straighten out all the bends and kinks I'd hammered into the blank.
The forge scale (the grey/black on the blade) is left entirely for aesthetics though.
Thank you for the detailed answer!