How did you get started making knives

I guess its always something I wanted to do. I have always liked knives and took up carving as soon as was old enough to be trusted with a knife. I was always seeing how sharp I could get my tools and then I got to modifying them to make them work better. Eventually I found some prehardened blade blanks for sale in a catalog I bought carving tools from (woodcraft). I made my first knife from one of them and it was a real bear to get finished. The tang was too hard to drill holes in, I had to cut slots with a dremel for the pins to go through and make it a hidden tang. I didn't know about epoxy at the time. Gave it a scandi grind using a 6" bench grinder and then convexed it by hand with a sandingblock cause it was the only way to cean up my horrible grind.
After that I found BFC and got some info on kit knives and ordered a couple of those. Made a few folders and the next time I tried to order the ones I wanted were out of stock. I got tired of waiting so I just ordered the stuff to make a knife from scratch. Did a few hunters in ATS34 and had TKS heat treat them. Then I branched out into O1 and doing my own heat treating and eventually worked up to where I'm at now.
 
I really wanted a good skinning knife but could not afford what I wanted. While searching for an appropriate kit version I stumbled onto 'Shop Talk', where we are now talking. Still Here and writing this 36 knives later and have not yet found that kit.

RL
 
I've been an outdoorsman all of my life, and have used knives from an early age. About 5 years ago I read about a blacksmith making knives out of old crosscut saw blades in one of the Foxfire books. I had an old, broken crosscut saw and made a few small blades from that, through trial and error (mostly error). Some friends hooked me up with a local stock removal maker who gave me a copy of David Boye's book and a couple of old saw blades. I was also getting into blacksmithing and ornamental iron work at the time and joined the Mississippi Forge Council, where I met Randall Minton, who is probably the best blacksmith in the state. Randall taught me to forge blades and to forge weld, and I've been at it ever since.

Todd
 
I started out taking factory knives apart to see how they were put together and then putting different handle material on them. Yeah I screwed up several knives, but that was part of learning. I read everthing I could about knives and making them for several years. I purchased finished blades to learn how to put handles, guards and other things on them. I asked Glenn Smit, a friend and fellow maker to help me with grinding and heat treating. I think the best way to learn is hands on training. If you can get together with an experienced maker to teach you, it will move you along quicker.
Scott
 
Back in 1960,at age 10 I wanted to make a sword (what kid didn't),I had lots of wooden ones,but I wanted the real thing. The train tracks were near my house,so I hauled a couple of wagon loads of the free stuff on the track sides home and built a coal fire in the back field.I took a piece of rebar and went at it with a claw hammer,working on a granite rock.My grandfather came and told me I needed to get more oxygen into the fire,so I put the fire in an old hibachi and stuck a piece of stove pipe under it.Put a fan at the other end.HOOBOY,did that ever worked! I was wailing away at the red hot steel when Mr. Jones came over (he was most likely checking to see if I was going to burn his house down).He saw what I was doing and came back in a few minutes with a bucket of hammers and tongs from his blacksmith days on the farm.He told me the steel needed "carbin"(exact spelling),and that tire irons and other things had lots of carbin in them.He gave me some other basic instructions and left me to play.I "liberated" some tire irons from a nearby junk yard (they seemed to have a lot of them laying around).Spiked a four foot piece of RR track to a pair of tree stumps,and started making knives and swords.Pretty soon I had every kid in the neighborhood armed to the teeth - The Moms all hated me! Luckily the arms were not very good- few accidents,lots of fun.
 
I got interested in handmade knives back in the early 70s, when makers like Buster Warenski and Lloyd Hale were young bucks and wearing jeans, and Steve Johnson was a guy standing in the background of Loveless' shop photos. Lloyd Hale has been my hero ever since I first put hands on a knife book. I wanted a custom knife so bad I could feel it in my hands, but I was barely out of high school and hadn't a pot to piss in. $60 for a knife back then might as well have been a Cadilac. I think Randall Model 1s were about $35.

I worked at a natural gas pumping station and during the time no one was watching I skimmed a couple of files and started grinding them on the bench grinder. I made three, one of which years later cut me during horseplay with my brother; it's the only time I've seen my blood spurt across a room... Another I made out of a triangular file into a crude sort of medieval dagger and sent it to my sister. She doesn't remember it and I don't blame her.

Then a few years later my brother told me that if I'd make him a super-sized butterfly knife he'd buy me a 2X48 grinder from TKS. Naive as hell, I agreed. I made about 13 knives over the next two years, but never was able to make that dang butterfly knife; I made every part of it at least twice...

When I met my wife, that was the end of my short knifemaking career. Not only was I much more interested in her "charms" than in a gritty garage shop, but she was pretty close with my time. But I had this urge to make stuff, so I substituted assembling bead jewelry, making miscellaneous sculptural stuff for the mantle, etc. She still didn't like me paying attention to "stuff" more than to her but since she got some of the results it bought me some sanity.

Meanwhile I'd struck up a habit of hanging out with the better of the knife purveyors at local gun shows. He didn't seem to mind me hanging around as long as I shut up when a paying customer came by. I brought in my Randalls for him to look at and eventually had the courage to show him a couple of the knives I'd made back in my knifemaking days.

He told me if I'd make more, he'd buy em...

So eventually I convinced my wife I needed to do that (we'd been married for several years by then, much of the glitter had worn off), and after a couple of months screwing with the little grinder convinced her I needed a decent machine. So we went into debt for my BIII. Meanwhile I'd been saving all my change for a couple of years and Harbor Freight had a sale on the small lathes. I needed to make a pin for my brother's butterfly knife (he hadn't forgotten, even after eight years) and I bought it. I finished my brother's knife and made a couple of very ugly Americanized tantos that I had the gaul to show here... Fortunately, folks were kind enough to encourage me and I kept at it.

Now I work for George at Straight River Knife whenever he's here for a show, and he's my best customer. He's probably bought close to half my output over the last four years and keeps ordering stuff faster than I can make it.

And believe it or not I've had occasion to exchange forum time with my absolute hero Lloyd Hale. I would never in my life have expected to be able to get his advice or comments back when I was dreaming about his work and trying to think how I might go about imitating it. I'm so freakin lucky. Lloyd Hale!!! Cripes, it just blows me away. I used to talk about him when I was a kid until people's eyes would glaze over.

If it weren't for Shop Talk though, I'd be nowhere. It's only the generosity and openness of the members here that have let me succeed at any of this. I'm truly thankful for everything you folks have given me. And I ain't done yet!
 
ddavelarsen said:
If it weren't for Shop Talk though, I'd be nowhere. It's only the generosity and openness of the members here that have let me succeed at any of this. I'm truly thankful for everything you folks have given me. And I ain't done yet!
Click to expand...

Amen:

There is so much valuable information provided on these forums by people that are glad to give it.


I'll post this here although I posted it on "who the heck are ya"

Back in the 80s my wife and I lived in San Antonio for a few months. While wandering through a mall I happened onto a retail knife shop. I was awestruck by the workmanship (and price) of the custom knives that they had for sale. They also had a how to book collection. The first book that I bought was The Art of Knifemaking. I can't remember who wrote it and I can't find the darn book. :grumpy:

I bought a new Rockwell 1X42 belt sander and some 440C and started grinding.
I made a few knives and gave them all away. Then other things were put on the priority list above knifemaking (moving back to Missouri, kids, new job, etc, etc. My love for making knives was put aside.

Well the kids are grown, the wife works nights and I needed something to do. Knife making is the perfect outlet. I picked it back up about 8 months ago. Now it seems like that's all I want to do. If I'm not in the shop working on them I'm thinking about designs or a better way of fitting, clamping, grinding, etc.

bladsmth: This is weird I have a Uncle that lives in VA, retired Navy man.

Thanks for the replies keep them comming

Joe Foster
 
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