I am not a knife snob

tony -when did you say your moving to athens. where are you going to live. do you have an adress yet? i would be happy to show you what i know but be warned im about 2 years into this and after alot of blood sweat and tears i still have auniverse more to learn. one thing i can say is im getting more comfortable with myself,my mistakes, and my failures-its all a part of it and this forum was there for me through thick and thin. as far as materials i can offer you some basic wood. let me know your address and il see what i can do-or if you will be here soon ill giive it too you myself-thanks-marekz
 
And it doesn't matter what steel or wood you start with. I started with sawblade steel, it's good stuff (most of it).
 
Patrice Lemée;7012511 said:
Don, 100 knives! :eek:

I am all for taking the time to do this right but 100 knives! :eek:

:(

Patrice
Click to expand...

Patrice, but don't you think after 100, you'd be pretty good at it?

Key word here is simple. Small would be good also. I used to make between 4 and 8 of these per day. It gets easy after awhile.
 
Ok there is my problem. 4-8 per day. :eek:

I will still keep this advice in mind. Thanks.

Patrice

PS: Sorry for hijacking the thread.
 
my sister lives in ogelthorpe county, i plan on staying with her until i find something cloer to campus..Ill be moving in about 2 weeks. what i disliked about my knives was I could never get the hole straight for the stick tang. i would start tring to shape a handle and out would poke out the tang.My handles also always come out to square looking.the blade seems crooked when im almost done and i cant fix it. i cant make a guard too save my life. Marekz thanks for the offer, what kind of wood do you use and Deker thanks for the offer -what kind of steel do you use. I think my sister uses a po box ill need to check with her-i dont know if the allow steel in po boxes--thank you all-BR TONY
 
Drilling the hole for a stick tang is what keeps me to doing full tang knives. I find it easier to make a piece of wood flat on one side for glue and pins than drill a long hole straight. Although they do make broaches that supposedly make the hole cutting easier. Your handles are still too square? There is no reason why you cannot get out one of those rasps you have not started shaping yet and go to town till the handle feels and looks good. Who cares if you are still using old files for blade steel? I for one like the look of a blade ground out with remnants of the file teeth still on the ricasso.
 
Opposing opinion.

Geeze, there has to be room for all of us. I sing because I love to sing. Kids love my singing. The showerhead applauds wildly. Does knifemaking have to be any different?

Seek excellence if you wish. Seek personal satisfaction if you wish.

I suspect if Lucianno Pavorotti were able to return to our midst and hear me singing "White Christmas" to my kids, he would slap me on the back, smile, and maybe even join in.

Is there any good reason we can't do this as makers? :)

Rob!
 
One way around the drilling issue is to make a mortised-tang with two scales for the handle. Grind the narrow tang to the shape you prefer, then carve a slot to match it in each scale, half the depth of the tang thickness. When done carefully the scales will "sandwich" around the tang. I made my first one with a pocket knife and a file. Using a router would naturally be much quicker. Putting a liner between the scales can look quite nice.

Another way is to build a multi-piece handle. Say a 1" long piece of maple, a 1" piece of walnut, then a 3" piece of maple, stacked together on the tang. It's easier to drill and shape the holes in smaller pieces like that, and some people really like the look.

I like file knives too; in fact I have one on the bench right now. The first knife I sold was made from a Nicholson file and the customer is still very happy with it. Incidentally it has a stacked handle like I just described, except it's birdseye maple, walnut and hickory with a thin black liner between the pieces. Held together with epoxy and one pin.
 
I was teaching a class the other weekend on making a very simple utility knife. One of the students has taken my class before....halfway into the second day she turned to me and said "This is hard"...........I said "Yes it is...if it was easy everyone would be doing it!"

Tony, Take your time....work on one knife at a time...try and plan it out before you start and work toward your plan.
Mace

Patrice, I have heard the same thing Don said...., but it was 300 knives!:eek:
 
I just read the first page of this thread. I do not post much but I do gather a lot of information and ideas from this website. I just make knives as a hobby with a few sells here and there. I have a regular job that is fun ( most of the time).I would love to be a better knife maker and anything that I can learn or that helps is great. No matter how serious it gets I would not do it if it wasn't fun.
 
I have to get in on this.

I'm an old dog and I'm trying to learn new tricks.

If it weren't for the help and encouragement from the folks on this forum I would never have made a couple of knives from files. Yeah, they weren't perfect but no one gigged me about my crappy little knives.

A couple of local makers have personally assisted in my knife making education and I can't begin to thank them enough. I don't expect I'll ever be a world class knife maker but I think I might be able to produce some acceptable blades one day.

All because of this forum.

If you don't believe me read some of my early posts and the responses from the more experienced makers.

This is a hell of a bunch of guys here.
 
I agree with all the other posts about this being a great resource and add in that this forum is the reason I started being interested in knives in the first place.
I am glad to see this thread turned around.

I am a real newbie at this myself, working on my second. I was really pissed off when I couldn't get the right temperature when heat treating my second knife. It was kind of hardened, not really. I was about ready to give up on knife making after the effort I put in trying to get it perfect. Nice thing is about this place is that I know what perfect is, I mean some of the pieces on here are perfect (the maker not believe in anything being perfect, but I digress)
Anyway, I decided that getting it right was my form of satisfaction, so I sent it to Nick Wheeler to have a nice salt bath :D
 
Patrice Lemée;7012511 said:
Don, 100 knives! :eek:

I am all for taking the time to do this right but 100 knives! :eek:

:(

Patrice
Click to expand...

I'm with Don and his OP on this one. ;) I've just completed about 100 knives - after 20 years! They weren't all simple ones but I still have seldom used damascus because I don't have the confidence of my grinding. In fact, grinding steel is not like riding a bicycle - that skillset goes away in a hurry! I completely screwed up what would have been my 104th knife last weekend, doing the initial grind. Back to the bandsaw for yet another blank.

For me this is one of those things that requires constantly trying to be better. Not just a single aspect like grinding or drilling hidden tang handles, but every part of shop practice. More and better tools helps immensely but is not the important part IMO. The most important skill a knifemaker can hone is patience! Just my thought.

Tony you are to be commended on the turn around in your feeling about this forum. You see that the people here really do care about helping you achieve your own goals. Like Dave in Vegas, Bruce Bump and others, if it weren't for this forum I would not be able to think of myself as a knifemaker. When I came here I was making the most embarrassing objects known to man. I had a decent attitude but no sense whatsoever. With the kind and open guidance of many proficient makers, my work is - slowly - coming around. I have hope that some day I will make something I can be proud to show you all. I'm workin on it. :) Meanwhile I'll continue to show you the KLOs I'm kicking out in hopes of learning how to do everything better.

One other thing - For me all the fun is in the learning and making. When I finish a knife I suddenly find myself disinterested in it and ready to get on to the next project that's burning a hole in my brain. I guess that's why I don't have many of the knives I've made.
 
Some mentioned about the fun issue. I must admit, making is most of the time is not fun at all. You burn, grind, hit, cut your body, your back hurts, muscles ache etc. Some time a tiny scratch is tooo stubborn that you have to work hours or days to remove that bastard, and it is not fun at all...

But when you come with your best at that time and close to the perfect result (you have to admit you'll never reach there), it is fun / satisfaction to watch the finished knife, test it, and not being able to believe that you made it from scratch all by yourself. This is that ZEN moment...

This business is not for everyone. You should be very tough, full of patience and true to yourself.

And about that 300 :eek::D knives. Sorry but I will be dead if I wait that much :D:)... My average about 4 per month I should wait..... lets say 8 years to come to that point. My personal opinion is the quantity is not important at all, but the time and effort spent counts. I may made 10 knives in 2 years, but at the begining I worked on a knife for months, trying to make each step perfected with the tools I have... 10 knives and 2 years after I was confident about my methods... I'm an amateur still, but I will never get faster at all, instead I'm trying to slow down the progress in sake of quality and perfection....
 
100 knives sounds like alot,but make 50 knives and keep them all,then line them up next to each other .You will see an improvement.

I have been making knives for about 5 years...you dont see me selling knives here do you? I am still learning...every time I pick up the hammer and turn on the grinder.Humbly I bow before the Master and Journeyman smiths,in fact I think Ray Richards told me to wait 3 years before I would see an impovement in my work...still waiting...still trying.I can barley draw a knife on paper,totally lacking in the artist department..but I WANT to make knives,and I will keep trying.

Keeping a budget in mind there are tons of free if not dirt cheap ways to make great knives,look around at us cheap bastards you'll see some real creative ideas.

Custom knives get custom prices...just like custom guns and tools.You wont find someone who works on a top fuel dragster buying wrenches at walmart.
 
Glad to see you came around. Frustration can get the better of anyone but working through it and coming to a place like blade forums for advice can cut down on the learning curve.

I'm stubborn and like to 'try' things even though I know that it's not the correct process but usually it ends in defeat and I end up doing it the proper way anyway.

The way I see it is there's always room for discovering things for yourself but when it comes time to do it right, you can piggy-back on the myriad years of combined experience and knowledge to shorten your learning curve considerably.
 
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