Making a Knife From a Circular Saw Blade

[Music] hey guys welcome back to the outer craftsmanship my name is Dustin and today we're back in the shop and we're going to be making a knife out of an old circular saw blade this is just a really fun project and it's a great way to start making knives this is the way I started when I first started about 10 or 15 years ago making knives I would either take an old circular saw blade cut out the shape of a knife put a handle on it sharpen it up with a file and the nice thing about this is that these are already pre hardened and tempered so you don't have to worry about doing any of the temping in the heat treating process they're not the greatest knives in the world they don't hold an edge forever but they do sharpen up really easily and they're just fun to make so we're gonna start one of these today and I'm gonna do a little bit just a little bit of different design I'm gonna put a bottle opener on the back of the blade on the spine just to try something new so we're gonna do that the first thing I want to do though is do a little bit of design work come up with a good blade shape and style [Music] was just kind of thinking about some of the ideas and some of my drawings here that I was doing and when I kind of got to this last one this used the French curve to draw the belly of the blade here and once I kind of got it shaped it started to remind me of what kind of a utility kitchen knife would might look like which I thought would actually be a really good versatile use for this knife having the bottle opener being kind of like a food prep knife and I you know kind of a general camp knife it would be kind of nice I think it's going to be a really good all-around knife I like the design and I like the way it turned out so we're gonna go ahead and start up go ahead with that one I'm just gonna draw out my outer edge of this blank that I'm using my blade is gonna be an inch and a quarter wide so I just got to an inch and a half sign I have plenty of material cut this out first and then we'll shape down from there [Music] [Music] [Music] the funny thing about keeping these knife drawings in the sketchbook is that I always end up having the design that I like the most missing and I can't find it so as a knife maker I should be keeping my templates and keeping the knives that I like but I have a lot of sketchbooks like this that have knife drawings and then one nice one that I really like end up cutting it out [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so I'm setting up my grinder jig to be able to shake the outside of my knives this works really well and I've used in a bunch of my other videos and it just was reminded about this great comment from Leatherface 7/11 he suggested that I should actually cut a hole in the side of the box so I can reach the owner off switch from the outside so I'm gonna cut off my fingers trying to paint this thing in and out while it's moving which i think is hilarious and what a great idea so thanks again for that comment Leatherface 7/11 [Music] [Music] with the grinder in grinder jig which works really well grind down to the outer edge of my marker line so now I'm going to move to the four by 36 to finish up and do the fine shavings to the final connections [Applause] [Applause] [Music] so the next thing we're going to do is we're going to cut the hole for the bottle opener and this hole is going to be a quarter inch wide it's going to be a half inch up from the handle and then it's going to be a quarter of an inch down from the spine which will then put an eighth of an inch of the little knob that's going to bite in when you open up the bottle opener so we just drill the hole it's a quarter of an inch and then I'll cut straight down from the spine and then add an angle from the spine as well and that will make the shape of a bottle opener [Music] [Music] [Applause] the next thing I'm gonna do is start to file in the bevels and as a knife maker now I usually will grind them in and I have jigs and all to make sure my grinds are really nice but I'm gonna show you the process that I would have done when I first started making them actually filing my bevels by hand and so the easiest way to make sure you're as accurate as possible is to mark off your actual edge with a black marker and scribe that so you know where your center line is as well as your bevels so we can do the same thing mark the edge the side of the blade with a marker and scribe it so we have a really nice clean line to follow [Music] I've clamped on just a block of wood which will act as a guide for my file when I'm doing my plunge line so we'll keep a clean plunge line here works pretty well so we're gonna give her a try see how that works should work really well oh yeah way better [Music] so I'm just finishing up the bevels now and because I'm not doing any heat treating I'm going pretty much all the way down to the edge I'm just feeling for the burr on the other side it's there I'm gonna wait until the very end to do all the finish sharpening but at this point I want to get it pretty close before I move into hand sanding and before I do the hands hand and I am going to file the toil and right at the edge of the blade between the blade and my plunge lines to give you that kind of that spot that will make it a little easier to file so you owe us a file all the way up or sharpen the blade all the way up to the plunge lines [Music] I just finished taking this side up to 600 grit sanding it's smooth trying to straighten line up all my sand my standing line so I'm gonna go and flip over now to the other side which I finished up with 220 grit but now I'm going to take that up to the 320 and then the 600 to finish it off as well [Music] I need four and a half inches for my handle mark that first and then I need to split this piece down the middle for my scale so this is 7/8 so half of that is three and a half eight and then I'll set that on my marking gauge and run that line all the way down [Music] [Applause] so I'm just going to use some sandpaper now and I tape this down to a stone tile this is a really cheap tile but it works as a surface plate it's not like a really nice surfacing plate but this works really well it's flat and it's smooth so it works well for sanding this handle scales I'm just gonna make some marks so I have four and a half which is here this is the general shape of the front of my handle scale and then two and a quarter is halfway up the handle so that'll be my center pin and I want to go about a half an inch or so from each end so I'll mark here and then a half an inch from the end here so as I'm looking at this I'm kind of just thinking about this how they're gonna turn out and right now with a half inch the two end ones the middle ones fine because the palms fall in the middle is wider but the end ones are a little closer down to where your fingers are wrap around rather than up to the spine so I don't really like the way they look so I'm gonna have to make a just little adjustments to them I'll move them up just a smidge try to get them closer to the center and probably bring this one up a little bit too so that way all three of them are still in line [Music] [Music] [Music] I just drilled all three of my holes these are my main holes that I'll be using for my brass pins and these are all 1/8 inch thick I'm gonna switch through an eleven thirty thirteen 64th spit now and actually go back and drill a bunch more holes in the handle which will just add more surface area and it'll give the epoxy something to go through and hold everything together when I glue it all up so it's be a stronger handle to hold a lot tighter [Music] [Music] so next thing we're gonna do is we need to drill the holes out and the scales to match the handle and the best process for doing that is kind of a process so you have to think about it in an order of operations first thing you want to do is take your handle one scale and your knife and you want to kind of clamp them together and you're gonna drill out your very first hole so one of your three holes depending on how many holes you have drill out one and then you take that scale and one of your pins is it's going to hold it together later and you run your pin through the handle and through the knife it's that way that pin is gonna stay in that place then with that pin into place you drill out your second hole through the handle that's existing hole and through the scale and you run your second pin into that hole so now you have two holes drilled through one scale and through your through your knife and you put your pins that you're gonna use through those holes that way they're not gonna move and then they're gonna match up later then with those two pins in place then you drill out your third hole and then you follow that same process with your second scale what you want to do for your second scale is you clamp it on where you want it throw your first hole then you have your first hole drilled run your pin through and then you take your first and your second scale put them together and run two pins through and you drill through the holes of your first scale down through everything that way you know that the holes in both scales are all lined up perfectly when you're actually doing your final glue up setting everything together so just the process of kind of knowing what to drill so that way everything one lines up later using as much of your existing holes as possible [Music] so just putting both scales back together with the rivets and then I can do all my shaping now on the front edge I'll trim this off and shape it the way I want it and I way I know they're gonna line up perfectly the same the way they're gonna go when I glue them back together put the pins through [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so I'm just gonna take both of these surfaces the front edge and both my tapers to 360 grit so I'm just gonna hit them with the 220 and then I'll hit them with 360 which is what I'll finish off my whole handle from I'm going to clean everything up with mineral spirits it's that way there's no dust and no oil left on from any of the processes and then we'll get ready for the glue [Music] [Music] use my two-part epoxy this is a 30 minute epoxy which gives me plenty of time to mix it up and apply it it's a hardener in a resin so just mix it one to one [Music] [Music] [Music] tape this up loosely around the handle so that way I have the way I can protect the the clamps from getting too much epoxy on them and obviously this all come off I just cleaned up all squeeze out from the front of the handle and have all my clamps on everything's ready to go so now we're just going to add and let this set up for 24 hours we'll come back and start shaping the handle all right so we're back had some time for it to sits actually been two days so let this sit for that amount of time should be nicely set up go ahead and take it apart and take a look at it looking over it looks really good I have nice squeeze out all the way around with the epoxy so I know that it's you know there are no gaps in the edges so I'm going to go ahead and trim off the excess pins and then start shaping the handle [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so I finished shaping the handle to the tang all the way around I have my general shape down now so I'm just gonna get Markoff where I want my handle shape to be and I want to make this on the coke bottle shape so it's gonna be narrow at the blade it's going to go the widest part right in the middle of the handle which is two and three sixteenths and then it'll taper down and back out to the end and that's your kind of that traditional bushcrafting coke bottle shape handle [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] alright guys so just finishing up now with the 600 grit sandpaper I started on the belt sander with an 80 grit and then moved to hand sanding with 100 220 360 and then 600 to finish it off just to get a real nice smooth finish I've also been really careful to make sure I'm standing in the same directions of the tang and the grain so that way I get even scratches as well on the tang throughout the grits of sandpaper so we're just finished up now so we're gonna go ahead and pull this out take the tape off and finish the blade [Music] [Music] I'm gonna do my final sharpening now everything's ready so they're doing my my belt grinder with a belt that's turned backwards try again this is a belt turned backwards and I just use the back of it some polishing compound works perfectly as a straw all right guys we're all finished up turned out really well sharpened up cleaned up oiled just love this I mean the handles beautiful turned out really nicely I love this wood and I just got a really nice clean glue up really happy with this so last thing we're going to do now is just give it a test make sure it works the way it's supposed to so she's nice and sharp so now I'm just gonna make sure she serves her other purpose which is opening beers up works perfectly this has been great guys we really enjoyed making this video and I really enjoyed this channel so far and putting out videos for you this year 2019 we're really trying to kind of amp up our game and do a lot more videos we're gonna try to at least care to get one once a week maybe thinking about probably Sunday afternoons putting them out if that's something you would think would work really well if there's a day the week you think works better just drop us a line in the comment we'd like to kind of find out what you guys think about that so we hope you enjoyed this video if you did go ahead and hit that subscribe button hit that like button keep sharing cuz those of you who are sharing your videos you're really helping us to build our subscribership and really get out and you know show the YouTube community what we're doing and just making stuff really having fun and you know maybe teaching a little bit and showing you guys some of the tricks that I do so please follow us on Instagram if you haven't already I'd really try to put up a lot of stuff there at the art of craftsmanship all the pictures of things that I do in the shop and also sneak peeks of our new videos so you'll be able to see kind of what's coming up have a little you know jump ahead and know what's coming up in the next week's video so we hope you guys enjoyed this and we'll see you guys in the next one [Music] you

Channel: The Art of Craftsmanship

Views: 261,206

Rating: 4.928894 out of 5

Keywords: knife making, the art of craftsmanship, circular saw blade knife, circular saw, saw blade knife, beer bottle opener, bottle opener, camp knife, camp kitchen, wenge, wenge handle, full tang knife, hand sanding, sharp knife, paper cutting, beer opener, knife maker, metal working, wood working

Id: CFdLWSUTUMU

Length: 39min 12sec (2352 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 20 2019