Knife Making: Making a Generational Knife from a File

on today's episode of wengel's workshop we'll be taking this old rusty file that belonged to my grandfather and will be turning it into a knife that can last in my family for generations i'll start off by annealing this file or heating it up to its critical point where it's non-magnetic and then letting it sit in the air it'll soften the metal and make it easier to work with it's my understanding that some files can be turned into a knife without a heat treatment but i don't own any files like that all the files that i own are far too hard and brittle to make a knife they would have a hard strong edge but any sideways pressure would cause them to break so i need to redo the heat treatment totally to make sure that the temper is proper and that the knife can have some flex to it so now after annealing the file it's at its soft point you see now my other file that's still hard will cut it easily and this allows for it to be easy to work with and actually gives it back some of that flexibility so i don't break it while i'm making the knife here i'm tracing out my template and then i'm going to cut it to shape using an angle grinder if you're enjoying this video so far please consider giving it a like and subscribing to the channel i would really appreciate it and you have no idea how much it helps the channel grow when you do that now use my 2 by 72 to grind off the file texture and finish profiling the knife if you're familiar with my channel then you'll know that this 2x72 grinder is new to the workshop i'm super excited about it and i purchased it from a guy locally who built it using the revolution design that brian from housework made it's really been a fantastic upgrade especially coming from the 4x36 grinder that i'm used to using for making knives and this is the first knife that i made start to finish on it it came with a 1.5 horsepower variable speed motor and it also goes in reverse and the whole thing turns horizontal as well it kind of checked all the marks that i was looking for and it came at a fair price here's the knife after removing all the texture and finishing the profile now i need to thin out the tang to make it easier for the fit up i don't have a proper file guide so i'm going to use like a makeshift piece of wood file guide which is definitely not the way to go because sandpaper will remove the wood so you have to be very careful in doing this so here's what that looks like i still need to remove those bottom corners but it makes it a whole lot easier when fitting up the guard in case the slot is slightly oversized now i'm going to use that horizontal feature that i was talking about and i'll use this to grind the spine and the front edge of the knife parallel to the length of the knife in this way when i go to mark out my lines it's a lot easier to mark them and see them now i'll apply this layout fluid to the edges and use a drill bit to mark out my grind lines now keeping my elbows tight to my body i'll start my grinds with an aggressive angle bringing the bevel up to the marked out apex line and then i will start bringing it towards the spine after i finished my first bevel i was having a terrible time trying to get the second bevel even and i figured out that the platen wasn't pushed up against the left side of the belt so it was kind of creating like a slack belt thing going on on the left side once i made some minor adjustments it fixed this and it smoothed out the whole process it's important to really look at your bevels closely and assess them so you can see all the spots where your grinds aren't perfectly flat and where they're uneven in some spots we can address all this after the heat treat i don't want to remove too much material now now we're on to the false bevels i decided to go with a file for these but i actually ended up only doing one of the false bevels with a file and then decided to go ahead and finish that one and do the other one on the 2x72 now it's time to heat treat the knife this forge is also new to the shop i purchased it off amazon it's a two burner propane forge for about two hundred and thirty dollars i think i'll reserve reviewing it for now because issues that i have could potentially be user errors still i also didn't have the right tongs to do the heat treatment and tried to go ahead with it anyways but then i ended up using vise grips and channel locks to give myself the proper distance from the forge for the heat treatment the assumption of this file is that it's made from a pretty standard high carbon steel so i should be able to heat it to its critical point when it's non-magnetic and quickened oil and then follow that up with two temper cycles of two hours at 400 degrees and the heat treatment actually came out quite well this is the handle material that i'll be using it's iron wood with g10 spacers and some micarta spacers as well and then for the guard i'll be using 0.18 1084 high carbon steel here i'm marking out where i need to make the slot in the guard and then i will center punch where i'm going to drill the holes i don't have a milling machine so i'll just have to use my drill press and a drill bit as well as some files to make the slot with the guard fit up i will make a slot in the handle material this one doesn't have to be so like perfect like the guard does um it can have a little bit more play because it'll be filled with epoxy but i may have taken that a little bit too far on this one you'll see why later once i'm done on the drill press i will finish out the slot using a drill bit and a drill and then using some files and then once that's done i will grind down the guard and cut down the handle material so there's not so much to remove once the knife is glued up especially with the guard you don't want to leave the guard too big because when you're grinding it down it just creates so much heat that you actually have to worry about the epoxy melting in the handle with all that done it's time to do the glue up i will be using west systems epoxy and if you noticed i hadn't drilled the pinhole yet and that's because when i did the tang i left a little bit too much space in the handle so there was like movement of the tank so i wanted to glue that in place before i drilled that pinhole to set up this glue up i will clamp the knife in a vise and then i will slide the guard and the handle material on and use a clamp and just make sure that everything is as straight as possible and as flush together as possible and then i'll use acetone to clean up any excess spill out especially all around the guard i want to get that all cleaned up because the finish on the guard is already done once that dries i will go ahead and drill the pin hole and put the pin in place i did this at night to give myself a good start on the next day so the footage is kind of grainy and not great i'm also realizing right now that i didn't discuss the finish of the blade or the guard um and that's because i didn't have to do any hand sanding i actually sanded it up to 400 grit and then used combat abrasive surface conditioning belts to finish the knife off in a satin finish it looks great and it's another huge benefit to having a 2x72 so now i'll be shaping the handle i decided to go with a pretty standard coke bottle shaped handle and this wheel is your friend it's a great way to round over the corners and remove a lot of material but the biggest thing is that you have to keep the knife moving up and down across it so you don't burn into any specific spot too much now i'll finish out with some hand sanding making sure that everything's rounded over and worked in evenly and then i'll follow that up by heading over to the buffing wheel for the finish on the handle i'll be using the white buffing compound with the course wheel and then the green buffing compound with a softer wheel i'm super happy with this knife and it really came out great but here's the mistake that i was talking about i actually bored out the hole for the tang way too wide and what ended up happening is when i shaped the handle i ground into that and you can see it here but luckily it was filled with epoxy because i did it right it's almost kind of a cool thing because it's like a window into the tang but it's obviously a huge mistake and i am a little upset about it however i don't think that it'll affect the structural integrity of the knife as the epoxy would probably be stronger than the wood itself so overall if you don't pay too much attention to it it kind of just looks like the grain in the handle but obviously that's something that i need to not do in the future now i'm pressing out a kydex sheath so that i have a way to carry it here's how the sheath turned out i've really been digging this taco style sheath lately and as far as the clip goes i basically just cut it to shape and mold it myself and then screw it on like hardware now for a little sharpness slash like edge retention test i know that this isn't like a super scientific or you know rigorous way to do it but this is just kind of a quick example and this piece of wood it's actually a very very hard piece of wood much more difficult to cut than pine so i kind of like to use it to really test the blade a little bit i'm really excited about this knife and i hope to keep it in my family for years to come like i said it was made from a file that was owned by my grandpa so i thought it'd be pretty cool to have something to pass down in the family as always if you enjoyed this video please consider liking it and subscribing to the channel and if you want to be notified when i upload new videos hit that notification bell thanks for watching

Channel: Wengels Workshop

Views: 219,398

Keywords: knife, Knifemaking, hiddentang, fileknife, metalwork, craftsman, diy, howtoo, fixedblade, customknife

Id: TQ3aqG936vA

Length: 13min 20sec (800 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 08 2021