Knife Making 101: How To Make Your First Knife

alrighty guys so the goal of today's video  is to provide a reference for those who are   looking to make their first knife i will be using  multiple different tools and techniques for each   operation so that you have options when tackling  this project along with links to useful tools and   supplies i will be putting a link to the pdf  plans for this knife in the description below   the first and likely the most crucial step for  this project will be picking out the steel that   you will be using to make this knife i highly  recommend using 1084 to make your first knife   since it is very forgiving in the home heat  treat i recommend ordering a piece of steel   that is an inch and a half wide by an eighth  of an inch thick the first step is going to be   to get your design traced out onto the piece of  steel and then cut it out you can use a hacksaw   to do much of this cutting or you can apply a  couple different techniques a technique that   i used when i first started making knives was  to drill holes around the profile of the knife   and then cut in between those holes with either  the hacksaw or a cut off wheel on the dremel tool   the ridges that are left behind can then be hand  filed down so that they are flush with the profile   of your design while this method will work if  all you have is a drill a hacksaw on the file   i would highly recommend getting your hands on a  four and a half inch angle grinder to speed up the   process not only will you be able to cut out your  blank faster but you'll see later on the video   that this four and a half inch angle grinder is  extremely versatile to provide contrast i will   be showing the air quotes pro methods for some  of these tasks here you can see the pro method   is cutting out the profile of the knife on the  bandsaw this is obviously a step up from the   drilling method however many people still prefer  the angle grinder over the bandsaw for cutting out   their blanks once we have the rough shape cut out  the next step is refining the profile of the knife   the angle grinder steps in as the cost efficient  option here however you need to be careful when   using it because you can take off too much  material too fast when using the angle grinder   i will angle grind down to close to my line  and then use the hand file to get the rest of   the dimension while the angle grinder is nice to  have in order to take off the bulk of the material   it is not necessary to refine the profile of  your knife hand files can be employed alone   to get your knife down to its target dimension  this will obviously take a bunch more time and   a bunch of patience however it is truly possible  to do all of these tasks with just the hand files   radiuses on the profile of your knife can be  especially challenging in this case i'm using   a half round file to get into the finger choil  area another option would be to wrap a piece of   sandpaper around something round in this case i'm  using a wood dowel to wrap a piece of sandpaper   around and then putting that dowel into my drill  this will help you get into some tight spots   and you can vary the size of the dowels that  you're using to wrap sandpaper around while i did   not show it here another option would be to use  the drum sander attachment for a dremel tool to   get into some of these tight spaces the pro option  of course is to use a belt sander and a table so   you can grind the profile down to your target  dimensions if you're looking to get into the game   even a 1 by 30 belt sander can speed up your  process significantly using a sharpie as marking   fluid and some cheap dial indicators i scribe  some lines along the center of my knife handle   this will be where i will be drilling my holes  i'm going to eyeball the front and rear holes   these are going to be the holes that i'll actually  put pins through and i will drill those holes with   an eighth of an inch drill bit if you happen  to have access to numbered bits i would advise   drilling a number 30 hole instead of an eighth of  an inch hole so you have a little more clearance   for putting the pins in these holes can easily  be drilled with a steady hand and a hand drill   however if you have access to a cheap drill press  that is a superior option once we have these holes   drilled we'll be drilling some additional  holes that are larger so that our epoxy has   some space to move in between the handle scales  and to provide a little bit of weight reduction   this is a checkering file that i'll be using  to apply the jimping on the spine of the knife   while this is not necessary i do like the way that  it looks aesthetically and it has a nice tactile   feel on the thumb when using the knife if you're  interested in picking up one of these checkering   files i'll make sure to put a product link down  below the next step will be filing in our bevels   to do this i mark where i want the bevels  to line up on both sides of the knife   with a triangular file and then i get started  on one side i start off by using that triangular   file and then move on to a very small  needle file to get my groove started   then i realized that before i get started i  need to mark my center line there are three   options i'll give you here to marking your center  line you can make a nice sweet jig like this that   uses the sides of the knife as a guide you  can use a drill bit of the same diameter of   the thickness of stock that you're using or  you can use a height scribe like this one to   mark your center lines all three of these methods  will provide you with a center line in your stock   having the center line marked during the filing  process will be crucial because you want the   edge of your knife to end up in the center of the  blade now i think the first time i ever saw anyone   do this was on a walter sorrows video on making  a knife with hand files and this method is very   effective in getting your plunge lines symmetrical  when hand filing in your bevels we're using a 3   16 of an inch chainsaw file to file in the plunge  lines on both sides of the knife and then we will   not touch these plunge lines with the straight  files once we start filing the rest of the bevels   i found that it makes the blending process easier  when going to the straight files if you don't go   all the way up to where you want your bevels to  be with the round file so maybe a sixteenth to an   eighth of an inch shy is your target even if you  do have a cheap belt grinder this filing technique   is a good option to get your plunge lines lined  up and then you can use the belt sander along   the flats to remove the bulk of the material i  found that when i was just starting out i was   not good enough to have symmetrical grinds off  of my grinder so i would file in my plunge lines   and then remove the bulk of the material with the  grinder after that i would sure it up with a set   of files if hand files are your only option this  process will probably take you around three to   four hours to file in your bevels on a reasonably  sized knife your first method of attack should be   to file in an aggressive angle down to your center  line this angle should be around a 45 degree angle   after you have both sides filed down to the center  line and your edge is in the center of the knife   then you can start working that bevel back towards  the spine you will do this by gradually lessening   your angle and then filing a new facet onto your  bevel once this facet meets up with your edge   you can lessen your angle again until you hit the  target height of your bevels you can see here that   i am halfway through this facet and i still  have a ways to go before that facet meets up   with the edge of the knife so like i said this is  a very time consuming process if you have an angle   grinder you can use it here to very carefully  remove some material and then sure it up with the   files you can also use a contraption called a file  guide which i used in one of my previous videos   which will not only speed up the process but also  increase your level of precision with your files   when you're getting close to your final height i  like putting a piece of 120 grit sandpaper around   my file to start blending in the plunge line area  with the flats of the bevel the pro option when   beveling is to use a grinder with a flat platen  or a wheel however using the files and sandpaper   can give you the same results if you have time and  patience i'll mention here that your target edge   thickness should be around 20 to 25 thousandths  of an inch pre-heat treat so you don't have any   significant warps during the heat treat but also  so that you don't have so much material that it   will take a long time to sand down lastly i will  file in a sharpening coil with the chainsaw file   in my last cheap tool knife build i used a torch  alone to heat treat the knife and while it worked   i felt like the heat treatment was lacking so this  time around i'll be building a two brick forage to   do our heat treat in these bricks are only about  30 bucks and they're extremely easy to work with   to make this forage the general design for this  forge came from outdoors 55 so if you're going to   be building one of these i highly recommend  you checking out his channel on our little   forge here we're going to be having a chamber that  measures around two and a quarter inch in diameter   like i mentioned that this material is extremely  easy to work with in reality you can do all this   work with a rasp or a file i found that using the  saws sped up the process greatly my process on   this chamber was to use the long saw to cut out  the bulk of the material then i had this little   i think this is a dry wall saw that i used for  some of the fine work in between the big gashes   and finally i would use just a normal file to  smooth out the chamber so that it has a nice   smooth surface the whole process  of making this little forage   took me around 45 minutes to an hour to complete  so there's not really a big time commitment and   a little bit of a spoiler alert  it makes the heat treat way better   once we have our two halves created we will  then be marking out our burner hole location   i want the burner to be a little bit towards the  front of the forge and pointed slightly backwards   into the forged body i'm going to be pointing it  backwards around 20 degrees i also want the burner   to be pointed slightly up so that it can hit the  wall at a tangent and create a nice swirl inside   of the forged chamber i once again use the saws to  knock out the bulk of the material and then a file   to clean up my hole until the burner nozzle fits  in order for the top piece and the bottom piece   to line up i will take the top piece and put  it on the bottom piece and use an x-acto knife   to scribe the lines that i'll use as targets for  my burner tube hole on the top piece i'll then use   my small saw to take out the bulk material and  the files to get it to the final dimension once   we're there i'll do a brief test fit and then  we'll get ready for the heat treating process   i took the forge and put it up on two blocks i  put a weight on top to make sure the two pieces   stay together and i took some old fire brick i  had to block off the back of the forge you can   see that the benzomatic map gas burner is pointed  into the forge at a very slight angle so this is   the initial startup i was actually quite impressed  on how little time it took for this little forage   to heat up i used another fire brick a hard fire  brick in the front just to allow it to heat up a   little faster and then i removed it so i can fit  the knife into the chamber to stick with the cheap   nature of this knife build i just used a pair  of pliers to hold on to the tang of the knife   i'll get the knife up to a non-magnetic heat and  then target around 100 to 200 degrees higher than   that non-magnetic temperature before quenching it  in oil you can use canola oil but in this case i   use parks 50. i then took two pieces of angle iron  in my vise and clamped the knife down after a four   to five second quench this ensures that the knife  cools in a straight orientation to verify that i   have a hard blade i will file test it to see if  the file skates across the blade or digs into it   if the file digs into the steel that means that  the steel is softer than the file and something   went wrong during your heat treatment this blade  skated to file easily so we will be clamping   it between two pieces of angle iron to hold it  straight and putting it into an oven for tempering   i will be tempering at 410 degrees fahrenheit  which is 210 degrees celsius for two two hour   cycles this can be done inside of a home range  oven however if you're going to be doing this in   your home oven make sure that your preheat cycle  does not have the knife in the oven because home   appliances generally overshoot the temperature  that you set them at on their first cycle   once we're done tempering the next step will be  to make sure that the handle section of our knife   is nice and flat this will ensure that we  have a very good epoxy bond when we put our   handle scales onto the knife the best way to do  this without a fancy grinder or surface grinder   is to find something flat and put a piece of  sandpaper on top of it in this case i'm using   a sink cut out which is a piece of granite but you  can also use a piece of glass for this operation   after we finish the flats on the handle portion  of our blank we will then finish sanding the rest   of the blade if you want a nice straight crisp  line use a hard file behind your sandpaper and   if you want to wash out your lines and smooth  everything over you can use a rubber backing   on your sandpaper i found that the smoother softer  backing is good once you get into the higher grits   and when you're in the lower grits to use the  hard backing to keep everything nice and crisp   it is at this point in the build that you have  a plethora of options on how you want to finish   out your knife for the sake of this demonstration  i only brought this blade up to a 120 grit finish   however a 600 grit finish is a good standard for  a nice hand sanded satin finish if i'm going to   be etching a damascus blade i'll bring it up to  a 600 to 1000 grit finish before etching a lot   of my stonewashed finish knives i'll bring up to a  220 or a 320 grit j flex belt and then i'll hit it   with a scotch brite belt to make everything nice  and smooth before etching it and stone washing   it if you really enjoy torturing yourself you can  bring your blade up to around a 3000 grit finish   hit it with a light buff and then have yourself a  mirror finish my point here is that you have a lot   of options and you should play around with the  different finishes that you like on your knives   i mentioned it before but i did not show it so  i'll be showing it here this is my soft backing   sanding block it is basically just a piece of wood  with a very thin piece of rubber glued onto it   this will soften out your grind lines if that  is the desired finish that you're shooting for   once we have the blade up to our desired  finish we will pick out our handle scales   to make the amount of material that we have to  remove as minimum as possible we will be using   quarter inch thick handle scales for this build  i had three materials here and since this video   was being filmed in october i feel like the green  material was appropriate for the halloween season   as far as good handle materials go you're  going to have a lot of opinions out there   i generally like recommend in g10 and micarta  since they are non-porous and they will not warp   or shrink down the road however if you're going to  use wood just make sure to use a nice stable wood   so we get everything clamped up here we're  going to use the knife as a drill guide to   drill all the way through both of our scales you  can either use the hand drill or the drill press   like i showed there i got this brazing rod from  our local big box store i got this from lowe's   and it's just an eighth of an inch  brazing rod they're very cheap to find   like i mentioned earlier in the build we have to  take this brass 1 8 of an inch rod down a little   bit and outside diameter so that it easily fits in  our eighth of an inch hole if you drill the number   30 hole this would not be an issue lastly i'll use  a carbide tipped scribe to go ahead and mark out   the profile of our handle scales and then i will  rough in where the front radius of the handle   scales will be to cut out our handle scales we  have a few options here you can see my first cut   i used a hacksaw while this would work if you had  some patience i found it to be pretty cumbersome   to cut the g10 with the hacksaw if you have a lot  of time you can use a file or maybe a rasp to file   down to your final dimension the best low cost  option i found was using an angle grinder with   a flap disk on it to take down the bulk of the  material if you're using my car to be extremely   careful because my cardo will burn easily i did  not find the g10 had any issues with burning   once you get the bulk of the material down  you can use a file to true up your lines   you can also try to use the drill and cut method  while this works i found it more cumbersome than   it was worth and the angle grinder once again was  a much better solution but just for demonstration   purposes i will drill some holes and cut in  between them here to show how it would work   many of y'all probably already know this but  the four and a half inch angle grinder is an   extremely versatile piece of equipment that every  home shop should have anyway so go over to amazon   or harbor freight and get one for 30 bucks and  be happy that you did and as you all guessed   it the quote-unquote pro method for doing this  operation would be to use the belt sander with   the work rest to grind down to your target lines  once you have achieved your target dimension we   will be addressing the front of the handle scales  generally i will grind these on my belt grinder   with a 45 degree angle jig however in this case  i am going to freehand it with the angle grinder   i take off the bulk of the material with the angle  grinder up to my penciled in line and then i use   files and sandpaper to clean up these bevels  on the front of my handles you want to take the   finish on the front of these handle scales up  to whatever finish you plan on putting on the   rest of the handle in this case i brought him up  to a 600 grit finish but i ended up stopping at   a 320 grit finish on the rest of the handle this  is not a big deal it's always better to aim high   than aim low on the front of these scales because  it will give you some leeway in the future lastly   before the glue up process i make sure that the  insides of the scales are nice and flat we will be   using g flex epoxy for our handle and it is known  as the gold standard for knife handle epoxies i   have tested it in two separate videos against two  different manufacturers and i feel like this epoxy   is one of the best out there for putting together  a knife you'll basically coat both scales in the   knife itself and push your eighth of an inch pins  through then clamp the entire assembly be very   careful during this step of the process especially  if using twist clamps not to over clamp your knife   handles if you over clamp the handle you will push  the epoxy out of the joint and have a bad joint so   very softly clamp the handles spring clamps are  a good option here since they will not over clamp   your knife handle once you have given the epoxy  24 hours to cure and it's time to finish out   your handle i like to wrap the blade with some  paper towels and tape so that i do not scratch   the finish that we were just working on the next  step is to cut off the pins or clip off the pins   in my case and grind them down so that they  are flush with the handle scales on both sides   i used the angle grinder and files to do this  operation but also demonstrated how you could use   a dremel tool to knock these pins down flush with  the handle scales once you have the pins flush on   both sides you want to get the handle scales flush  with the spine of the knife along the profile you   want to be a little careful here not to be too  aggressive and take big divots out of the metal   profile of your knife because it will be very  difficult to fix at this part of the process   so i used the angle grinder to take up the bulk  of the material and then when i got close i   transitioned it to some 120 grit sandpaper  to sand the scales down to the spine gently   once again the angle grinder does speed up  this process but it's easy to make mistakes   with this fast moving piece of equipment you  could accomplish this entire task with a good   set of files and rasps to get into the finger  choil area i found that the dremel tool was a   very nice solution however the sandpaper wrapped  around the dowel would also do very good for   this area on the knife like the blade finishes we  talked about earlier there are multiple different   handle shaping and sculpting techniques  and people have their personal preferences   i wanted to provide a guide here on a fairly  simple method for making a comfortable handle   the first step is like i mentioned getting the  handle scales down to the spine and then we will   be putting a 45 degree angle around the top and  the bottom of the handle scales to achieve this   we carefully use the angle grinder to take  off the bulk of the 45 degree angle material   and then we use hand files with a hard backer  to clean up both sides of these 45 degree angles   once i did the top and the bottom of the handle  scales i found that this knife actually felt   pretty good in hand with just these 45 degree  bevels on the top and bottom of the scales   so once you get the 45 degree angles cut into  the top and bottom of your handle scales you   can stop there bring the knife up to your desired  handle finish grit on the sandpaper and call it a   day i actually did this recently on my damascus  knife build that i will link in the cards above   using some sandpaper and just your fingers you can  knock down the hard edge along the very back of   the knife and i found that if you leave this edge  there it doesn't feel good in the hand so like i   said before this actually feels pretty good in the  hand and you could quit here but we are going to   use the drum sander attachment on our dremel tool  and add some creative scalping into our handle   scales i've never used this method before so i  figured this demonstration knife would be a good   opportunity for me to play with it using the drum  sander attachment i put around a 45 degree scallop   across the entire top of the handle scales and  then on the bottom set i would offset them so   that the peak of the scallop on the bottom will  match up with the middle of the scallop on the top   so that's a little hard to explain but you can  see from the video here what i'm talking about   so i'll mention it here if i was doing this method  again i would use a ruler and a pencil to mark   out the location of each one of these scallops i  found that not only were they not evenly spaced   on the same side of the knife but when  i went and did the other handle scale   i did not get the scallops lined up across the top  of the knife so if you look hard enough you can   see that they're slightly offset from each other  and i did not like that result however i really   did like the way the handle feels in the hand  after it has been scalloped so i probably will   be doing this method again in the future once the  scallops are in on both sides of the handle i will   take some sandpaper just with my hands and smooth  over all of the hard edges on each side of the   knife and that's it for the handle the next step  is to sharpen the blade everyone has their own   way they like to sharpen their knives i generally  use a wet stone sharpening system some people like   sharpening on their belt sander others use an edge  pro or a wicked edge in this case i'm just using   a normal diamond stone and then strapping it with  a piece of leather so that pretty much concludes   this guide i hope this video gave you all some  inspiration in making your first knife and also   provided you with some different techniques that  you can use to employ on your first knife build   if you enjoyed this video please hit that like  button down below and consider subscribing to   the channel if you have any questions during  your first knife build put them down below   and i'll do my best to answer them until the  next time i'll catch you all on the flip side you

Channel: Red Beard Ops

Views: 317,515

Rating: 4.942255 out of 5

Keywords: red beard ops, knifemaker, knifemaking, knife maker, knife making, how to make a knife, how to make a knife without a forge, how to make a knife with cheap amazon tools, how to make a knife with cheap tools, how to make a knife with common tools, how to make your first knife, making your first knife, making a knife, knife making for beginners, knife making tools, knife making tutorial, knife making tips, two brick forge, making a knife with basic tools, diy knife making, forge

Id: nk7vu2RYxvI

Length: 24min 18sec (1458 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/vomeronasal]

Great video!

[u/SamuraiZero]

Oh hey!

Your video "how to make a knife with cheap amazon tools" or whatever it was called is what got me started very recently. 3/4 the way through my first knife which has turned out to be hot garbage, but lots of learning!

Definitely going to give this a watch. Thanks for the content!

[u/Jimtheyeti]

I like your channel.

[u/antiquityubiquity]

Awesome! Love your videos.

[u/Aviduser09]

Well done video, don't recall if you mentioned the hazards of g10 dust. Either way I enjoyed it