Home Made Knife

After I saw this video from John Heisz, I knew I had to make a knife.

First I drew the shape of the blade on a piece of plywood.  It's amazing that you never stop to think about how the shape of a knife blade looks like until you have to make one, then it's not so obvious.

This cut off serves as a template as well as to get a feel of the knife in my hand.  I decided I had to add more length to the handle.

I used a table saw blade that I don't use for this,

Cut it off with an angle grinder,

Then I used the grinder to grind the blade to start to sharpen it.  I dipped it in crushed ice every once in a while to try to keep it from losing its temper,

The handles are made of a scrap of walnut,

I glued it using construction adhesive,

Then I used the belt sander and a file to shape the handle.  I don't have a picture of the final product, but after this I added a coat of linseed oil and bee's wax, and sharpened the blade with diamond stones and a japanese water stone so it's razor sharp.  I also used wet dry sand paper to polish the blade and finally, i stropped it with a piece of leather rubbed with chromium oxide.