First Knife Design

B

blindrobert

Joined
Jan 15, 2014
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Okay - this is a drawing I did in AutoCAD for the first knife I want to try to build - thoughts? Thinking of using 0.0937 thick 52100 steel (outsourcing the HT). No scale on this drawing - knife is about 8-3/4" long the blade is 4-5/8" long. Thinking of this as a general purpose kitchen knife. I will cut it out of cardboard at home tonight and see what I think, in the mean time I'd welcome your comments.

12073444326_314309da47_c.jpg
[/url] Knife1 by Blind Robert, on Flickr[/IMG]
 
Yeah - that's a good point/suggestion. I wasn't sure how to show that in a drawing - I'm having trouble visualizing how a flat grind would resolve at the intersection of the scales and the blade.
 
Too pointy. Unless you are first planning to stab your food to death before you cut it up I would blunt the nose. I think I could break the tip off just by concentrating real hard.
 
strider214 said:
Too pointy. Unless you are first planning to stab your food to death before you cut it up I would blunt the nose. I think I could break the tip off just by concentrating real hard.
Click to expand...

Precisely my thought. Looks prone to point breakage. And +1 on the full flat grind.
 
I'm not exactly sure what you want out of a "general purpose" kitchen knife. Decide exactly what you want to use it for and how you want to use it, then make your design accordingly. The shape and dimensions of your design fairly resemble a petty or a funayuki, which are both great knives and could fall under the "general use" category.
Petty:
petiteats.jpg

Funayuki:
chroma-haiku-kurouchi-b-04-tosa-funayuki-15-cm-1211_0.jpg

I think the handle of your knife may restrict your ability to hold it the ways you want. If you look at the handles on high-end, custom kitchen knives, they tend to be very simple. Consider these two handles from Master Smith Murray Carter, who is a very highly-regarded maker of kitchen knives:
33.jpg

Or these from MS Bob Kramer:
9_slide.png

I like the lines on your knives from an aesthetic standpoint, but I think you can do better from a design standpoint.
That said, kitchen knives are not the easiest knives to make, so you may want to go in a different direction for your first knife. If you curved the blade a little bit more, I think your design would be a great hunter or utility knife and would be a fine choice for your first go at it.

- Chris
 
unless you are going to be defending agains zombie nazis attacking your house, you might not want to go with such a sharp tip.

btw which kitchen knives are chisel ground??
 
Hesparus said:
I'm not exactly sure what you want out of a "general purpose" kitchen knife. Decide exactly what you want to use it for and how you want to use it, then make your design accordingly. The shape and dimensions of your design fairly resemble a petty or a funayuki, which are both great knives and could fall under the "general use" category.
Petty:
petiteats.jpg

Funayuki:
chroma-haiku-kurouchi-b-04-tosa-funayuki-15-cm-1211_0.jpg

I think the handle of your knife may restrict your ability to hold it the ways you want. If you look at the handles on high-end, custom kitchen knives, they tend to be very simple. Consider these two handles from Master Smith Murray Carter, who is a very highly-regarded maker of kitchen knives:
33.jpg

Or these from MS Bob Kramer:
9_slide.png

I like the lines on your knives from an aesthetic standpoint, but I think you can do better from a design standpoint.
That said, kitchen knives are not the easiest knives to make, so you may want to go in a different direction for your first knife. If you curved the blade a little bit more, I think your design would be a great hunter or utility knife and would be a fine choice for your first go at it.

- Chris
Click to expand...

Great critique and commentary Chris, thank you. Those knives you posted make me want to rethink the handle. My architecture and luthiery work are all about simplifying and removing whatever doesn't need to be there, so I'm more than happy to be steered in that direction for knives as well. How would one describe the blade grind on that Funayuki?

I am also new to drawing knives - I like to think I would have made the point less - well...pointy - in execution but it's good to have that flaw pointed out...by everyone!
 
chemistguy said:
unless you are going to be defending agains zombie nazis attacking your house, you might not want to go with such a sharp tip.

btw which kitchen knives are chisel ground??
Click to expand...


LOL. Alright, smartypants...but when the zombies attack, don't come looking to borrow my knife.
 
Blindrobert: I'm not exactly sure how the grind was done on the first funayuki I posted. You can't go wrong with a full flat grind. If you decide to go in that direction, take the edge down to less than 0.005" before you sharpen it. I don't know what tools you have to work with. If you're interested in making kitchen knives, I'd recommend getting Murray Carter's books. His most recent one gives many patterns that you can use. Even if you don't want to use them as they are, it's a great resource for studying knife design.

Larry: 0.0937" is 3/32". For a small kitchen knife he could even go thinner.

- Chris
 
I find that I have a harder time grinding the thin metals. I made 2 kitchen knives from 3/32 1095, much easier for me to do FFG on 1/8
 
I found just the opposite. As terrible as my grinding skills are, I found working with a light touch on thin stock was much more enjoyable than hogging away vast quantities of metal from a thick bar. I guess it's a matter of taste, style and experience.
 
The first thing that sticks out to me is the location of the finger groove. The high point of the groove as it is right now would probably get in the way of your middle finger. This would either cause you to hold the knife too far back, or too far forward and close to the cutting edge.
 
Okay, I made a few modifications to the designs based on comments. I pushed the finger notch forward to improve middle finger ergonomics on one version, and went to a flat handle (and different overall design) on the other version. On both I have made the knife less pointy.

Have a look a the attached drawings and cutout shots. Comments/observations/criticisms and awkward jokes are welcome.

(Pardon the awkward position I'm in for the handheld shots)







 
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Blindrobert, from your photos your hands appear to be sized similar to mine in the average to maybe slightly smaller than average. In my opinion, in both of the revised patterns the handles are too small for you, let alone a bigger guy. From the photos your knives appear to have a 4 to 4 1/2" blade. In my limited experience, both of those knife styles are considerably larger in blade size, likely even twice the size you have them. The scale you have them drawn to doesn't look too bad, maybe try increasing the overall size by 50% and see what you think of them then.

+1 on getting the advice you are beforehand. The first few knives I made, looked good on paper, felt good in the hand when I cut the pattern out, but were a full inch short in the handle when I put the handle scales on.

Good luck,
Chris
 
Thanks for the feedback, Salolan. My hands are actually quite large - that is, they are very long with average thickness fingers. I wear a size 12-13 ring on my ring finger if that tells you anything.

Yes, what I determined from the cutouts is that the handles need to be at least a half inch longer. I'm going for a smaller version of a knife I already own (made by Global). The idea is similar function in a smaller footprint. I oftent cook for one or two, my kitchen is small and I often work on small cutting boards and the bigger/longer knives aren't well suited to that.
 
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