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Making a carving knife (tons of PICS)

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Making a carving knife (tons of PICS)

#1

Making a carving knife (tons of PICS)

Scott Post

>My father carves caricatures and likes to use a special hook shaped knife to shape the eyes. He's too cheap to pay for his knives so he sends me sketches of what he wants and I make them.

I started out with 1/16" O1. I sprayed it with layout fluid and traced the shape with a scratch awl.


I cut the shape out on my metal cutting bandsaw, but 1/16" steel cuts like butter so it's quite easy with a hacksaw. I used a file to trim right up to my layout lines. Steel this thin bends easily so make sure it's well supported in your vise in such a way that you won't bend it during sawing and filing. I also went ahead and drilled the rivet holes.


I heat treated the blade similar to this. Since the tip of this knife is fragile I tempered to a slightly higher temperature (about 400F) to sacrifice a bit of edge retention for toughness. I thinned the blade slighly to make it taper from 1/16" on the back to about 1/32" near the cutting edge and put the bevel on the edge.

To fit the handle I double face taped two pieces of 3/8" thick wood together and taped the metal blank to that. I drilled the rivet holes and roughed out the handle on the bandsaw. I used an old blade in case I hit the metal blank - no sense ruining a good band. I used 3/16" brass rod (available at any hobby shop or home center) for the rivets. I lightly peen them to hold the knife together while I shaped the handle.





I didn't put a whole lot of effort into shaping the handle because I know my Dad will carve it to fit his hand. I rough shaped it with chisels/rasps/files then lightly re-peened the rivets to hold things in place. The reason I re-peen is because I've cut away some of the rivets while shaping the handle. I gave it a coat of shellac to keep it stable until my father reshapes it and finishes it with whatever suits him.


Here are some other knives I've made him in the past:


Re: Making a carving knife (tons of PICS)

#2

Wow. Very Nice Project. It'll Be a Future Article

Garrett in Victoria BC CA

>

Re: Making a carving knife (tons of PICS)

#3

Re: Making a carving knife (tons of PICS)

Jeremy Osner

>Nice -- how do you determine where to put the rivets? I noticed on this knife one rivet is near the bottom of the handle, whereas on your other knives both rivets are at the top. Any reason or just how it came out?

Re: Making a carving knife (tons of PICS)

#4

Re: Making a carving knife (tons of PICS)

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Very impressive, Scott. Have you just recently started making sized-to-fit-the-handle blades? Do you find that better than scooping out a little depression in the wood? Just like the decoration?

Pam

Re: Making a carving knife (tons of PICS)

#5

Re: Making a carving knife (tons of PICS)

William R. Duffield, on the Cohansey

>Hey Scott,

Great knives!

A couple of additional tips or alternative procedures. I've made some, and rehandled other knives and forks, using a very similar process.

One thing I do differently, because I am also afraid of damaging an expensive bandsaw blade, is to shape the leaves to the steel with a drum sander mounted on the drill press, instead of using an old bandsaw blade. It's just too much of a PITA to change blades.

Another thing I have done, which serves additional purposes of void filling when I'm using gnarly wood for the leaves and increasing water resistance, is to glue the leaves on with epoxy, rough shape on the sanding drum, and then countersink the leaves and cut and install and pein the rivets. I find that peining only once makes it less likely I will either split one of the leaves or end up with a weak rivet. After that, final sanding and polishing are all that is necessary for flush, round rivet heads.

Note, however that it would be inadvisable to epoxy first, and then try to drill the leaves and steel at the same time. The heat of drilling through the steel would loosen the epoxy.

You might also try punching the holes in the steel with a pin punch, instead of drilling them -- same as with saw blades, it should be cheaper and quicker, especially when the time to resharpen drill bits is added in.

Re: Making a carving knife (tons of PICS)

#6

Re: Making a carving knife (tons of PICS)

Scott Post

>I've made them both ways - some times I'll have the blade only extend partway into the handle and sometimes it'll be the same size. Making the steel the same shape/size as the handle is faster than having to hollow the handle out. I chose to do it that way this time because I'm juggling several projects and wanted to keep the time to a minimum. I was able to get both knives done in under an hour, excluding the hour the steel was in the oven being tempered.

Re: Making a carving knife (tons of PICS)

#7

Re: Making a carving knife (tons of PICS)

Don Thompson, Cutler Ridge, South of Miami FL

>How do you keep the leave holes aligned with the blade holes during the glue-up?

I want to try to re-handle a machete (the plastic handle disintegrated).

Re: Making a carving knife (tons of PICS)

#8

Re: Making a carving knife (tons of PICS)

William of the Cohansey

>I use the brass rod I'm going to make the rivets from, and just pull it out and wipe it off after I have the clamps in place.

Last year, I rehandled a machete, with teak. The rivets were firmly attached to the blade, so I just drilled oversized holes in the teak leaves, that dropped over the heads of the rivets, and completely filled them with epoxy. Not a pretty fix, but it holds well. Since the new handle was thicker than the old plastic handle, the heads of the old rivets were completely buried in the epoxy.

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