Wanted to have a kitchen knife I didn’t care about beating up to take camping and such. My wife grabbed a junk kitchen knife from a thrift store and I went to town on it.
I cut the whole thing down in order to have a proper tang. I made scales and a sheath out of poplar which I then finished with Tried and True (polymerized linseed oil with beeswax).
Did the majority of the work with an angle grinder, hand saws, and a bench top belt sander. Was going to hand chisel the inside of the sheath, but I got lazy and did it with a router.
Overall I’m happy with how it turned out. This is my first time doing any sort of “knife making” and I like how it looks. I definitely do not expect it to hold an edge well at all.
In the end the project was a failure because now I DO care about this knife because of the time I put into it.
Here’s the full gallery: https://pixelfed.social/p/jaybird/597265855612303197
P.S. please let me know if there’s a proper way to link a pixelfed post on Lemmy
I was going to ask how you did the sheath. Even with a router, that’s super impressive!
It’s actually surprisingly easy! I’ve done it a few times for my other knives because my wife is morally opposed to having a knife block on the counter. So our knives go in the drawer each with a custom sheath to protect the blade.
All you need is two pieces of wood, each with at least one good flat face. You trace the knife on both sides of one of the pieces of wood. One tracing will be the inside of the sheath (the flat face if you’re not using s4s), the other tracing will be on the outside which you’ll use as a reference to shape the sheath. You then chisel or route where the knife will go, place the knife in it to make sure it fits properly. Glue the flattest face of the other board to the side you just routed. Once the glue is cured, use a belt sander to give the sheath the general shape you want, then orbital or hand sand to get it nice and smooth. Apply finish of choice, then you’re good to go.
Omg. I imagined you with a tiny router bit, digging into a solid sheath. I’m a moron. Lol Thank you for the great instruction.
That’s great and thanks for sharing, my wife has the same moral stance, I’m gonna be using this!
I love the tone of the wood!
Edit: just saw how small it is on pixelfed- its adorable! Seems like a nice versatile size. Easy to clean and handle, and good for a lot of basic tasks
Oh is it little!? Definitely needs a banana for scale lol
The post on pixelfed has it next to his hand, and says its a 5.5 inch blade. Without visual context I assumed it was like an 8 inch standard chefs knife
Yeah it’s just a little guy! The original knife I started with had a 10" blade and was terribly unbalanced. It also didn’t have a full tang so it would easily flex where the handle met the blade. So I essentially shortened the knife so that I could cut a proper tang out of a portion of the original blade.
I always hated how small paring knives are, so I really like this size for doing a lot of things I would normally use a paring knife for while still feeling nice to hold and being a bit more versatile.
