Knife Making - Make A Knife With An Angle Grinder And Basic Hand Tools

[Music] [Music] what's going on guys with a Lex here so today I'm going to be attempting to make a knife using only 2 major power tools one of them being an angle grinder the second one being a drill now a drill is only going to be totally necessary if you plan on putting pind scales on your knife other than that you can pretty much do this entire knife with nothing but an angle grinder so let me bring in here real quick and I'll show you the design that I have drawn up because this design is gonna play a relatively important part in how well your knife is going to turn out so let me show you the key element that I think your knife should have if you plan on using nothing but an angle grinder now the key design element here is actually the fact that this knife has zero plunge lines now a plunge line is the area where the bevel meets the ricasso area now if you notice this grind line here comes all the way down and kind of terminates here at the handle there's no plunge line here whatsoever that means that we can use pretty much whatever means necessary to grind this bevel in which is perfect for an angle grinder now feel free to pause the video here and copy this design if you like although I will warn you that at the end of this video this design the finished product may change a little bit due to what I like to call grinder wander or basically user error so keep that in mind that my finished product may not look exactly like this now let's talk steel now 1080 is the type of steel it's a high carbon steel it holds an edge well it does a lot of things really well but the reason that I like 1080 is because it's the easiest steel to heat treat the heat treating is super simple with 1080 you basically just heat the steel up to cherry-red and quench it in canola oil and you're gonna get a hardened blue the humble four and a half inch angle grinder an angle grinder is probably the first power tool we should buy when it comes to knife making grinders are cheap how about my brand new for $59 and it's what most people would call contractor grade you can buy cheaper grinders on Amazon for around 25 bucks and also check your local thrift stores and classifieds I've seen them as low as ten dollars used and as you'll see on this video you can literally use them to make an entire knife so let's get to the build first thing you're gonna want to do is transfer your design onto the steel I'm just using spray tag to stick my paper template to the steel and they'll also use a sharpie to trace around the outside of the template in case the template decides to come off in the middle of grinding then I just clamp the steel in place and start grinding out my design now the nice thing about grinders is there's a lot of different grinding discs available for different applications the disc I'm using is a simple 1/16 inch cutoff disc if you have to cut out tight areas or go around curves it's best to make a bunch of smaller straight cuts first then cut out each piece and grind it flush to the line the straight grinder wheel won't go around curves once I get kind of the rough shape cut out I'll switch to a 1/4 inch disc the 1/4 inch disc is nice for finishing up any rough spots you couldn't get with a thinner desk I'll also use this disc to grind in my bevels now typically when you use a grinder you always want the front of the grinding disc rotating down and throwing the sparks one to the ground not only with this prevent kickback and this should go without saying but it also keeps the sparks out of your face now I'm not going to go into a whole safety spiel but please do your own research on grinder safety these are some powerful little things in a my opinion one of the most dangerous tools so please BC so after I get the rough shape cut out I'm just gonna reinforce my grind lines with a sharpie and go back to the grinder with a 1/4 inch disk this time to grind out my bevel just take your time and go slow the key here is to try and get both bevels to meet up exactly in the center of the blade and also keep the bevels even on both sides if all you're using is a grinder like in this video don't stress if everything isn't perfectly even I mean we're making a knife with a grinder here once I have the bevel is mostly ground out I'll switch to a sanding flap disc to finish the flap disc isn't super necessary you can pretty much heat treat this blade right now and get a totally usable knife but if you want a more finished look a flat disc will help save time when it comes to getting out all those grinder lines these flap discs are very common I bought these from Home Depot but you can find them pretty much at any hardware store I believe I used a 40 grit and an 80 grit here but if you only want to get one I'd recommend the 80 grit it's more than capable of sanding out all the grinder lines I'm gonna do a paracord wrapped handle on this knife so I'm also using a flat fist around over any sharp corners on the handle now one thing I'm not gonna do is round over the corners on the blade this is because I want to be able to strike a Ferro ride with this knife in a rounded over spine won't make sparks on a Ferro rod now at this point you really want to make the decision on how well you want to finish the knife the knife is still in a softened State so any hand sanding should be done now yes you can hand sand after heat treatment but it's much more difficult now you'll still have to do some sanding after heat treatment regardless but now it's the time to remove any deep scratches from the sanding disc and grinder if there's any deep scratches remaining after heat treatment they might as well be permanent because they can literally take days to hand sand their scratches out when this knife I wanted a mirror polish on the bevel so I really took my time here hand sanding I used 150 - twenty-three twenty-four hundred six hundred and fifteen hundred grit sandpaper before heat treatment that way I made sure any deep scratches were taken out before the blade was hardened and they drill one hole in the back of the handle for my paracord wrap really this hole isn't necessary for a paracord wrap or in general so if you don't have a drill you don't need to drill it now it's time for the heat treatment for this I'm using my mini full now don't freak out if you don't have a mini Ford you can build these for around 25 bucks I have a video on how I made mine and I'll link it below now you don't need a mini Forge for heat treating you can use any regular propane torch if your blade is small enough I've even used a camping stove to do my heat treatment also a forced-air campfire works just as well there's tons of ways to heat a knife for heat treating all you need is some way to heat the steel to 1,400 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit typically what I do is turn the lights off in my shop so I can see the color of the steel I'll also use a magnet to test the temperature the steel as it becomes non-magnetic at around fourteen hundred and twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit once the steel becomes non-magnetic I put it back into the heat for a minute or so just to get that little bit of extra heat into the blade then I quench in canola oil that's been heated to around 130 degrees Fahrenheit for 1080 steel you can really use any oil but I wouldn't recommend using motor oil or anything like that as a temporary will be done inside your home oven canola oil or vegetable oil works best in this scenario if you don't want toxic fumes in your house to preheat your oil you can use a torch or heat a piece of scrap steel and drop it in the oil or like I'm doing here and simply using a DIY alcohol stove whatever you use you want the oil around a hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit this thins out the oil and actually helps cool the blade faster during the quench 1080 needs to be caught at a very fast rate in order for it to harden now you technically can use water to quench 1080 but water is a very violent quench it can cool the steel too fast and cause a crack which is not good for knives now I'm not saying water can't be used without cracking but the risk is much later than with oil now we have hardened the blade but at this point the blade is too hard and can crack or shatter if you went ahead and tried the baton through a piece of wood or even dropped it onto the ground so in order to bring the hardness down we need to temper the knife in a home oven I usually temper 1080 for two cycles at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours each allowing the knife to cool to the touch between cycles tempering will bring the hardness down and increase the toughness of the blade which I'll demonstrate at the end now it's time to finish the blade now since I did most of my finishing work before heat treatment this part goes pretty quick I'll just hand sand with the grit I finished with pre heat treatment and I'm practically done but in this case I wanted more of a mere polish on the bevel so I just used a piece of leather and some polishing compound and spent the next several hours polishing the knife is still a blank canvas at this point and can be finished as much or as little as you want none of the finishing work really impacts how well the knife will cut it's mostly just for looks at this point now because I used a grinder with a flat disk for the bevels this knife has what's called a convex grind and just through the hand sanding slash finishing part will end up being sharpened basically the bevel ends up being curved all the way down to the apex meaning there's no secondary bevel on this blade now I could go into a whole video on sharpening the convex blade but for the sake of time I'm just gonna have to leave it at that you're basically just working the edge with sandpaper until you form an apex I'd advise against going back to the grinder for sharpening as the grinder may introduce too much heat into the steel and ruin your temper in which case you'll have to start all over again with the heat treatment so after getting to a point where you're happy with a finish you can leave the knife as is and you're done or you can go do a simple paracord wrap like I'm gonna do here now again I could make a whole separate video on how to do a paracord wrap but since I'm not super good at it and just kind of winging it here I'm not going to do a super good job at explaining it if you want a more detailed explanation there's already hundreds of videos showing how it's done there's also a lot of different wrapping techniques you can use but oh I know it's really a pretty easy to do now as far as I'm concerned at this point the knife is finished it's a little rough around the edges but keep in mind it's made with an angle grinder if you start in the morning and then in the evening there's no reason you can't make this in a day with an angle grinder and some basic tools so now let's see what it can do [Music] so this ending shot of me shaving my arm was done after hacking through a 2x4 cutting up a bunch of cardboard which I recorded out of frame and literally hammered the blade through a bunch of oak so edge retention is pretty good hopefully this goes to show you the power of simple high carbon steel a convex grind and some elbow grease as always I hope this video is helpful thinking guys for watching and I'll see you in the next video [Music] [Music]

Channel: OUTDOORS55

Views: 1,162,184

Keywords: Knife making, knife making with basic tools, knife making with an angle grinder, knife making easy, knife making cheap, knife making with an angle grinder and basic tools, knife making for beginners, beginning knife making, cheap knife making, knife making, angle grinder knife making, how to make a knife, how to make a knife with a grinder, how to make a knife with basic tools, knife making tutorial, knives, knife, how to sharpen a knife, knife making diy

Id: NwFGXDPEv24

Length: 12min 24sec (744 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 23 2018