The making of a knife ! Our way !
On this page will I try to tell you how I make my kind of knife , from the
beginning , with a bar of steel , until a finished knife , embellished with
scrimshaw from Viveca Sahlin .
She will also tell you how she makes her wonderful scrimshaw . I do not have
a digital camera so you have to be patient while I am developing the photos
and also having the time to publish them on our site .
This is Part 1 . Click here for Part 2 .
Click here for Scrimshaw.
When I try to find out what kind of knife I would like to make , I always
use my "sketch-book" . If I donīt find anything interesting at the moment
, then I make some new sketches .
Then I look at my different sorts of stainless steels , ATS-34 , RWL-34
, Damasteel , 440C etc , and decide what sort I would like to use .
Then I place the cut-out from paper on the steel and trace the lines with
a marking pen . The steel of this knife will be the "twist-pattern" from
Damasteel .
If the steel , for some reason , isnīt the same size as the sketch . I
have to make it fit , and for that purpose am I using a hack-saw .
Then I begin to grind the steel following the lines that I made on the
steel .
When the profiling is done , I drill holes in the knife blank . Bigger
holes for making the knife easier to taper and smaller holes for the rivets
to the scales .
I am using a marker pen to color the back-end of the knifetang , then
I take a scriber and mark the final size of the tang . I usually spare 1
m/m of the steel .
The first thing I grind of , is a 45 degree angle , so that I will see
how close I will come when doing the tapering .
Then am I flatgrinding the sides of the tang , from the front-end of the
bolsters to the end of the tang . That means that the tang will narrows
from the bolster to the end of the tang ( a tapered tang .).
I start the same way when I do the grinding of the blade , but this will
be a hollow ground blade , not a flat ground .
This is how it looks when I have made the blade grinding using grit 120 sanding belt .
If you have any questions , please contact Anders Johansson at anders@scrimart.u.se