Hello everyone, in this video I'm going to show you how to make a knife using only very
basic, everyday tools.
So if you're someone who wants to get into knifemaking but you don't have the forge or
anvil or grinder or anything like that, I just wanted to show you that it can be done
using only minimal tools.
So here are the materials we're going to use for our knife.
This is a bar of 1080 steel, 1/8 inch thick by 1 1/4 inch wide.
If you want to use something like O1 or 5160 that's just as good, 1080 is easy to heat
treat so it's very simple.
For the handle I have a piece of walnut I had laying around.
And some 1/8 inch brass rod for the pins.
And I'll also be showing you how to make a knife sheath, so get some vegetable tanned
leather for that.
So these are all the tools we're going to use to make the knife.
First of these are some files for shaping the metal and wood.
The most important of these is probably going to be this flat bastard file for shaping steel.
And a word of advice, make sure your file is sharp, if you use a dull file to shape
your metal you're going to spend hours and hours filing and in the end your product is
going to look worse because you can't get as accurate of a cut.
So if you haven't already, treat yourself to a good file before you start.
Secondly are some saws, a wood saw and a hacksaw for cutting metal, and again make sure make
sure you have sharp blades, otherwise you'll spend hours.
We'll also need some clamps for clamping the material down while we work with it.
I just have some C-clamps here.
Also a vise is very handy if you have one, but not strictly necessary.
A cordless drill for drilling holes, and a sharpening stone.
And if you're going to make a sheath you'll need some needles for sewing it together.
You'll also need some sandpaper of various grits, 2-part epoxy for gluing the knife together,
some vegetable oil for hardening the knife, and heat treating it.
And some boiled linseed oil or other wood finish for finishing the handle.
So we have the basic shape cut out, and now we'll just file the rest of it to shape.
Now we have to mark out where we want to grind the steel.
So I want my grind to be about here, and about here.
And we also want to scribe a center line down here so our bevel is straight.
So a trick to do that is to color in the edge with a Sharpie.
Or use layout dye, if you're fancy and you have layout dye.
And just take a drill bit.
This is 1/8 inch steel so 1/8 inch drill bit, lay it on its side and-
And I don't know if this drill bit is centered so I'll flip it over halfway and mark another
one.
Then we have a nice little center line that we can file to.
And now we're just going to file the bevel in.
There are jigs for this where it keeps the file at a certain angle but I'm just going
to give it a shot by hand.
It shouldn't be too bad as long as you keep the file straight and even as you file.
Alright, so I'm going to lay out where I want the pins to be in my handle.
I'm going to center punch these holes prior to drilling them.
If you have a center punch I'd highly recommend doing this.
But if you don't, just try to be accurate.
Okay, so here I'm going to drill the holes.
Notice how I have it on a pretty low surface so I can bear down on the drill and sight
to make sure I have the drill straight.
You don't want the pins to be at an angle.
So here's our knife blank, you can see it has all the holes drilled in it.
You can see there I drilled the hole in the wrong spot so we're going to use that one.
So now we need to heat treat it.
And in order to do that we need to heat it up to critical temperature, which is a bright
red heat, and quench it in oil in order to harden it.
So if you have some method of heating it up, if you have a propane torch or an oxy-acetylene
torch that would be great, but if you don't, let me show you: how to make your own forge
with this one simple trick!
We'll want to normalize the metal, which means heat it up to critical temperature like this,
and then let it cool off slowly in the air.
This will reduce the stress in the metal so it won't crack or have any deformities when
we heat treat it.
So while the knife is cooling off I'm just going to heat up this piece of rod and quench
it in the oil to preheat it.
Alright, so you can actually see how hot this is, this is like forge welding temperature.
So you could actually use this forge for pretty much anything.
It gets really hot, and this actually pretty similar to iron age forges, like would be
used in the Middle Ages or by the Vikings.
So we're just going to warm the oil up a little bit.
A good way to check for critical temperature in these steels is by using a magnet.
In 1080 and steels like that, by the time it gets to critical temperature it will no
longer stick to a magnet.
So you can use that to confirm your temperature.
We want to check for any warping after we harden it.
This steel looks pretty straight, so I think we're good.
Alright, so I've just tempered the knife, and you can see it's got the entire thing
to kind of this straw color.
And I've just hit the back with a blowtorch, just to soften the spine of it a little bit.
Again, if you don't have a blowtorch this shouldn't be a problem.
So now I'm going to clean the knife up by giving it a good wire brush, and then putting
it in here with a bit of vinegar to dissolve the scale off of it.
Bit of vinegar, leave it for about an hour, should be cleaned up nicely.
I'm just going again with the 150 grit until we get a sharp edge on it, then I'll go to
220 and probably 400.
I've rounded slightly the edge which is going to go on here.
Just because it will be hard to finish this area when it's clamped together.
It's just going to go together like that, and like that.
Knife sandwich.
Now we'll cut some pieces of brass rod for the pins in the handle.
Just measure measure it out right there like so.
And pro tip, if you have some acetone, it's useful just to- or even rubbing alcohol would
work- just de-grease and get all the dirt off of your knife and pieces of wood you're
using.
Just to make sure there's nothing getting in the way of the glue.
Okay, now we just mix this up.
This is it so far, and we'll just use a bit of linseed oil to finish the handle, seal
it from any moisture.
And now for a final step we'll just give it a quick sharpen on the sharpening stone.
Here's our knife, more or less completed.
Walnut handle, brass pins, and 1080 steel.
As you can see, it's very sharp.
Very sharp.
So, now we need to make a sheath for it.
What we'll also want to do is make a welt, which is a piece that goes inside the seam
here.
So that when we put our knife in it doesn't cut into the stitching, it cuts into the leather
welt.
I'll just trace the edge.
A
trick you can use for marking out where you want the stitching to go is to use a fork,
because we know the tines of the fork are pretty evenly spaced, so we can use the fork
to mark out on the edge where we want the stitching to be.
Alright, so we're just going to drill the holes for our stitching.
You can use an awl if you want to, to just poke the holes through, but I like to use
a 1/16 inch drill bit.
And just drill through...
So you can do it by hand just like that, drilling the welt, but if you have super glue I would
recommend gluing them together so they're not slipping around as you try to work with
it.
That will make it a bit easier to drill the holes, and you could do this before you drill
all of these holes if you want to.
That might have been a good idea.
So we'll need a belt loop on the sheath, and normally what I would do is make the knife
sheath like this with a belt loop as part of the leather and simply fold it over and
stitch it onto the back.
But with the piece of leather I used for this it was too small so I couldn't do that.
So I've cut out another piece of leather and I will just stitch it here and there, like
that.
So I have this part stitched on and now I'm just going to fold it over and make the stitching
again, right here.
Same process as before, use the fork just to mark out the holes, drill it, and stitch
it.
I'll go over how to stitch in just a minute when I'm stitching up this part.
Also important tip, stitch this part before you stitch this part, and stitch the belt
loop before you stitch this.
You'll never get the needles through here for the stitching.
You'll also have a hard time stitching this if you've already done this.
So, be careful of the order in which you do things.
Okay, so now I'll explain how I'm stitching it in a little more detail.
So firstly the needles we'll want to use, you'll want some pretty thick needles.
And secondly the thread you'll want to use, this is some waxed, I believe linen, thread.
This isn't the thread you use for stitching up your clothes, you want some pretty fat
thread.
And you'll also want to wax it.
So if you have some wax, just lubricate the thread and make it a bit stiffer.
Although the thread does come pre waxed in this case.
We want to measure out three, I don't know, four times the length, and a bit extra...
And use two needles, one on each end.
And then what you'll want to do is go through the first one.
Then put both needles through the second stitch.
Through like this, and then the first one through this hole.
Then tighten, and continue in that fashion all the way down the sheath.
This is called a saddle stitch.
Now that we've stitched all the way until the end, it stops the stitches from coming
apart if you back stitch one or two so we'll take this and put it through the next one
back.
Now we can just cut off the stitching, and there we go.
I've wet the knife (sheath) now in warm water, and you only need a minute in the water just
to soften the leather up, and I can put the knife in the sheath and start to mold the
shape of the handle like that.
This will give it a really nice fit.
So the knife (sheath) is pretty dry now and we can take our knife and just shave off the
excess material and unevenness on the edge, just to clean it up.
Now I've wet the leather again, not soaked it through like we did when we were forming
it, but just wet the surface of it.
I'll take my leather dye, and get a paper towel.
Now usually I prefer to use something like this, one of the dye applicators but just
to keep it simple we can use a paper towel.
It works okay.
Just take a clean paper towel and wipe off any excess, and let that dry.
The dye has pretty much dried, and we can see how the knife fits in it, it's pretty
good.
Not coming out.
So now we need to finish the leather to waterproof it.
Now there are waterproof leather finishes you can buy, you can pick them up at most
stores or online.
What I'm going to do is use beeswax, and a heat gun to melt the beeswax.
Now, you have to have a heat gun to do this.
If you have a hair dryer it's going to be very difficult to do, so if you don't have
a heat gun I would recommend just buying some kind of leather finish you can put on.
Just take a rag and buff the leather, get it nice and shiny, so there we go.
You can see where I was a bit hasty in applying the dye, and I was trying to dry it quickly,
because I didn't have much time to make the video this day, so the leather dye didn't
go on quite evenly.
But, I think it looks pretty good.
And now, one thing you'll want to do, and this really improves the look of your leather
work, is to burnish the edges.
First you've made sure your edges are all even with your knife, and now take something
like a block of wood with a rounded edge which is what I have here, or you could even use
some tool, you could use some screwdriver shaft or anything really, to burnish the edges
over like this.
You want to apply your finish, in this case wax, to the edge.
And then just get the corners like this, then just go over the edge.