Does anybody else come across these amateur home-made knives out of files?

First, let me address the sasquatch article mention. That was very well written, and even punctuated properly. I thought it an......interesting........addition to this issue. :)

Second, scrteened porch, I have to respectfully disagree with you. Steel is so little the cost of a handmade knife, saving a few pennies using a file that "might be w2, or some other steel" just isn't worth my time, energy, or abrasives. 1084 is so cheap, files aren't worth the time and chance that the ht won't be spot on. My opinion only, take it for what it's worth.

The only thing I can see using a file knife for is as one of the "this was daddy's file, handled with wood from grandad's homestead" type of knives. Given my interests, likes and dislikes in similar areas, I do find it odd that I don't like knives made from old saw blades or files. I can appreciate the look and idea, just not my thing I guess.
 
Backwoodsman is the best, even with the Sasquatch stories ;). I am not a believer, but I still like cryptozoology and the stories people come up with. Listen to Coast to Coast AM for some good whoppers. My father knew THE Maryland/Pennsylvania Bigfoot hunter. Heckuva nice guy, great environmentalist and conservationalist. My father took turtles he rescued off the highway to him. This guy was THE Bigfoot hunter in MD. He even has a blurb written about him in the book Weird Maryland.

As far as theater knives go, I couldn't begin to tell you prices. I think Loveless got his start making knives on the Merchant Marines ship, and then started selling them to Abercrombie and Fitch (back when they were actually a sporting goods store, not a tweener store).

I can't for the life of me remember which Blind Horse knives pattern had the 4140 saw blade steel. Might've been the Bushcrafter.
 
Medicevans, I'll respectfully disagree with you too. The files I'll buy at garage sales are much cheaper than the 1095 or 1075 I can get from the e- supplier that comes to mind, and it's no big deal to angle-grind the teeth off. I think these old files are usually 1095, but it doesn't matter. I temper by eye, I never expect to sell a knife, and if I ever do I'll advise my buyer to do what I do and have a real knife for backup.

Silent Hunter, I don't know theater knife prices either. If I find it at the flea market, it's unlikely to have the provenance to tell me it's a theater knife rather than a suburban hobby knife anyway.
 
Heh, the dreaded knife-from-file thread has migrated over here. :-)

It can be a lot of work to turn a file into a pretty knife. I've seen very few out in the wild, but several on knifemakers' benches. 1084 is SO cheap (in the US from Aldo) that despite files being available at scrap prices, I'd rather have flat, annealed 1084 with a known heat-treat schedule. Sometimes, tho, the file is very close to the knife you want to make already and therefore little profiling is needed, which reduces tool requirements. And it can be fun.

I've been guilty of a couple, but this is the only one I'll show you ;).
Usually I anneal in the wood stove, but now that I've got a proper small forge I'll do that in the future.

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I wondered when it would migrate, and I apologize for the migration to the op, as I didn't mean to start a side discussion that became a secondary main focus.
 
medicevans said:
That is interesting Jack. I wonder if England's steel history combined with long history of settlement has anything to do with you guys not having over there.
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scrteened porch said:
And here is an alleged Civil War file knife. BLR can probably tell us why it isn't, but in the meantime-
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liamstrain said:
found an article Bernard Levine put together on the subject. Liked below:

http://www.knife-expert.com/filestory.htm
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Jack left out the good part...

From the Bernard Levine article:
In the 1840s, with a considerable effort of heating, hammering and grinding, a person could have converted an old file into a knife blade. And with a similar effort of heating, hammering, and grinding, a person could have converted a silver teapot into a doorstop. The question is: why would anyone back then have done such a wasteful and impractical thing?

A persistent popular legend, one that possibly dates back more than a hundred years, maintains that in "the old days," people made knives from old files. The strength of this legend has prompted many an amateur knifemaker to attempt making knives from old files, with varying degrees of success. It has prompted novelists, journalists, romantic knife fanciers, and other fiction writers to invent historical scenes of famous old knives, such as the bowie knife, being forged from old files. It even prompted an entrepreneur in Havana, Illinois, in 1906 to name his butcher knife firm the "Old File Cutlery Company;" this successful firm continued in business for six decades -- not once in all those years actually selling a knife made from a file.

For, if you look at the history of files, and look at the history of knives, it is quickly apparent that prior to this century, files were considerably more scarce, and considerably more valuable than plain working knives. And much like old knives, but unlike modern files, old files were routinely re-sharpened for use, until they were nearly worn away.
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I'm not going to argue with BLR, but I'd like to see for myself that secesh knife I posted earlier. The Civil War might have been a period when a father would have been willing to sacrifice an old file for an extra strong fighting knife to send off with his boy to war. Not quite the same thing as a "plain working knife".

Anyway, thanks again to everyone for your contributions. I think we got those later hobby knives pretty well covered.
 
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