Jun. 9, 2008 - Knifemaking
First off, apologies to all my fans for my mysterious absence.
Now for blogging:
I’ve been making a knife out of an old lawn mower blade, using an angle grinder and a belt sander. The blade has been molded after a Japanese Tanto, and has been detempered along the bone in the Japanese method. I have researched the Texas Penal Act, and the blade is approximately 5 inches long. The overall length is 10 inches. All perfectly legal.
Here’s a quick runthrough on the process: I cut the knife out of the blade with an angle grinder, smooth it out with a belt sander, grind some more to give it the best shape, sharpen it on the sander, dip in epoxy and give it a handle.
I’ve taken several pictures through the process, and here they are.
The knife has been cut out of the blade.
I’m smoothing with the sander, and my sister Anna is keeping the metal cool with a spray bottle.
It’s been ground some, but as you can see the tang is wider than the blade. I need to grind it some more.
Now I’ve leveled the tang with the blade and evened up the guards. The pitting looks worse than it really is, since I haven’t yet figured out how to turn the flash off on this camera.
I’m waiting on more sandpaper to smooth out the rust pits and put an edge on. After that, I’m going to give it a black epoxy treatment and wrap the handle in black-dyed military surplus seven-strand core para cord. I’ll post more photos when I do.
There’s five wrong ways of doing every job, and a guy ought to try every one of them, every time—John R. Erikson.
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