A Beginner's Guide To Knife Making

(Photo : Image by Telecouse from Pixabay )

Knife making is a skill perfected by experience and time. Since it requires patience and hard work, it is not everyone's cup of tea. However, if you are passionate about the job and wish to get into it, then you will be all good!

We understand how overwhelming it must be to begin your knife-making journey. Thus, we are here to help you. While we can't illustrate the detailed process of knife making since it requires practice and learning, we'll help you kickstart your journey. So, below is a beginner's guide to knife making.

Tools you will need

Whether you are working on a knife as an individual project or a professional one, you will require a toolset for the process. Thus, below we have created a list of all the tools you need, so you can get prepared for your course right away:

●      A workbench

●      Angle grinder and discs

●      A vice or bench vice

●      A forge or heat treating oven

●      A set of files

●      Hacksaw

●      Sandpaper (of varying grits)

●      A small drill press

●      Tongs

●      Wood if adding a wooden handle

●      Sanding belt kits

A brief outline of the process

To give you a gist of the procedure you will be taking to build a knife, below is a brief outline to introduce to knife making:

●      The first thing you will need to do is design your knife on paper. As your first project, go for a standard style that is achievable.

●      Then, you will have to cut out your blade for the knife. Simply use the drawing you have made of your knife as a template to mark the blade material.

●      After your blade, you will have to focus on the bevel. For this, you will have to draw a line in the middle of your blade and file it up.

●      Attach the handle to the blades by drilling them.

●      The last step is providing heat treatment to your blade and you will be all done.

Tips for your journey

As we mentioned before, knife-making is a skill crafted with time, effort, and experience. Thus, you are sure to face some problems in the beginning stage. For the same, we have combined a list of tips that can help you:

●      Make sure you are following all the safety procedures that are essential for a knife maker. Also, make sure you are wearing proper clothes for the task. Also, do not ever forget to wear your safety glasses.

●      If you are using any steel that you are not familiar with, test it out before you go all in. You can use tests, such as break test, spark test, and file test, for this purpose.

●      Learn about heat treating as it is a crucial step. Many beginners skip this step, but you should never do that. Learn about topics like normalizing, annealing, quenching oil, temperature, etc.

●      Before you jump into hammering hot steel, go for stock removal instead. Since stock removal is comparatively easier, it will prepare you for hammering.

●      Lastly, go for minimal tools and start small. Expensive tools won't make you a better knife maker, rather your skill and practice would.