Here is a quick pic of my first try at making a knife. I read enough to get a basic idea of what and how to do it, ordered some steel and jumped in. Sometimes you can spend too much time researching and I learn best by trial and error. The basic profile I saw in a picture and it was captioned as a "Roach Belly". I knew I wanted a smaller knife that was easy to handle so the blade is 2.5" and the OAL is 6". I ordered some .090" thick 1095 because I read it was easy to work with and I could heat treat it myself. So with basic tools I already had and a bunch of wet/dry sand paper I ended up with this. I heated the blade in a grille with charcoal until it was non-magnetic and quenched it in canola oil then annealed it for an hour at 400 degrees. I hand sanded/polished it out to 1200 grit and then hit it on a buffing wheel. The scales came to me from my father-in-law's stash and I believe are burl walnut. I gave them 5 coats of tung oil thinned with mineral spirits. I learned a quite a bit and next time I will spend more time paying attention to my polishing. There are a couple scratches I didn't get out before moving to the next grit but I am gonna blame this on poor lighting. I need to make a grinding fixture to keep my plunge line true or maybe cut it with a file? Any way as basic and primitive as it is, this is it.
Robb
Robb
