Knife Kit Fixed Blades...Anyone Tried it?

N

Nalapombu

Joined
Oct 26, 2001
Messages
303
Hey all,

I was nosing around on the KnifeKits site checking out what they had. The Fixed blade knife kits don't look too bad at all. I wouldn't mind having a couple of them myself.
I have never built a knife or put one together. Each one of the kits lists a skill rating and almost all of the fixed blade knives I looked at were Skill Level II on a scale of I-IV. They must be pretty popular as some of them were sold out.

So I started thinking about how difficult it would be to put one of these fixed blade kits together and have a decent knife at the end. I wondered what Level II meant. In looking at the kits they don't appear to be complicated at all, but I'm not fooling myself I know it would be tough to get a really nice looking knife when you were done.

Well what do you all think about these KnifeKits Knives? Have you ever bought a fixed blade kit and built it? Are the parts and blades of decent quality? Anything you can add about the KnifeKits would be appreciated.

Here is a link to check them out if you haven't been there.

www.knifekits.com

Thanks for your time and advice.

Nala
 
There's an active discussion at Knifeforums.com for kit knives. The kits you are referring to are quite nice. They do take some effort to complete especially if you are working with hand files only.
 
Not sure about the ones you linked to but over here a lot of the blanks come in from Pakistan ,some are chisel ground but most are fairly easy to complete if you have a few hand tools .I didn`t like the look of one my friend wanted so I made one for her to play with.
 
I haven't put together any of KnifeKits fixed blades, but I have put together several of the folders. They were very nice and easy to put together. As avereageguy said, there's a knifekits forum that has a section devoted to kt knives. You will find a wealth of information there. KnifeKits good company that has great customer service.

ric
 
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I started out with a few knife kits from that site and then moved to just buying the blades and handles separately and putting them together, and now to making my own blades. I wanted to do a few of those kits first before I started grinding my own blades. All in all I think they are actually pretty good knives. Most of them don't take much to finish the blade and on some the blade is already finished. Just slap the handles on there and finish the handles. Of course it's always more fun designing and grinding your own blades but I think it's good to do a few of these to start out with. It will make sure you know how to put handles on so you don't end up ruining your homemade blades later. Here are some of my favorites:

http://www.texasknife.com/store/s-pages/TKS_MainframeStore.htm look under blades and stainless steel page 1

The ones at the top of this page are about the nicest kits I have seen. I would search this site thoroughly though because there are hundreds of kits available. I like the selection and prices here better than knifekits.com!
 
Depends on what kind of tools you have and weather you've ever done any wood working before. I put together a kit from Atlanta Cutlery once quite a while back and it turned out functional but not very pretty. I could probably do quite a bit better now, but at the time I was working with pretty much just a dremel and I had never done anything like that before. I've learned a few things since then. Dremel tools are great, but it's really easy to slip with one and really mess something up. Hand tools are slower but much easier to control. The biggest challenge I see in some of the kits is the shaping and finishing of the bolsters.
 
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