Greetings to everyone.
I retired in January of 2008 and as soon as it got warm enough to work in the garage I FINALLY tried my hand at making a knife. I'd assembled handles on pre-made blades as far back as the late 1970's and though I wanted to I never got around to attempting to make my own complete knife until 2008. The first summer I figured out how I was going to do things by working on mild steel with files. With no previous metal working experience it's been a chalenge.
Here's a picture of knives mostly from 2010.
I prefer to us 1/8" thick stock and blades 4 inches or shorter.
I moved up to a Sears 2 X 42 grinder last spring (from files). I don't think I could go back to using files now.
I'm not blessed with patience and my knives have lots of what I call "character marks". Other people would call them dings, scratches, nicks, and flaws. We learn from our errors and judging from the number of mistakes I make I must be learning a lot.
Retirement is a great life-style, but it doesn't pay very well so I try to keep expenses down with salvaged handle material and heat treating using a coffee can forge. Right or wrong, good or bad, that's what I'm doing, at least for now. I don't have grand illusions of becomes a great knife maker, I just want to enjoy myself and make "decent" knives.
Paul Meske
I retired in January of 2008 and as soon as it got warm enough to work in the garage I FINALLY tried my hand at making a knife. I'd assembled handles on pre-made blades as far back as the late 1970's and though I wanted to I never got around to attempting to make my own complete knife until 2008. The first summer I figured out how I was going to do things by working on mild steel with files. With no previous metal working experience it's been a chalenge.
Here's a picture of knives mostly from 2010.
I prefer to us 1/8" thick stock and blades 4 inches or shorter.
I moved up to a Sears 2 X 42 grinder last spring (from files). I don't think I could go back to using files now.
I'm not blessed with patience and my knives have lots of what I call "character marks". Other people would call them dings, scratches, nicks, and flaws. We learn from our errors and judging from the number of mistakes I make I must be learning a lot.
Retirement is a great life-style, but it doesn't pay very well so I try to keep expenses down with salvaged handle material and heat treating using a coffee can forge. Right or wrong, good or bad, that's what I'm doing, at least for now. I don't have grand illusions of becomes a great knife maker, I just want to enjoy myself and make "decent" knives.
Paul Meske
