My first foray into knifemaking

[Bismarck22]

This little knife is nothing compared to the works of art on this forum. But, it's my first knife, I'm proud of it, and my girlfriend is not showing the enthusiasm I hoped for .

I've been planning on getting into knifemaking and grossly overthinking it for months. Then, two weeks ago, I visited our local metalworkers' guild, was handed a long truck axle pounded into a hardened bar over half an inch thick, and told to start grinding. I spent close to 10 hours thinning the blade down to .1", and thought it would be cool to use the extra stock for an integral handle. This little scalpel is the result.

I have some 1/8" 1084 from Aldo (really nice guy) on the way, and have been drawing out wharncliffe shapes for my next blade. I expect the next one to be a lot better with more time planning and known steel.

Thanks for looking.

-Alex

 

[javand]

Hey Alex, good first effort, and I can only imagine you learned a lot about grinding in that time spent whittling this down.

Overthinking things can be a problem for some of us, and I'm only just now starting to be able to spend more time doing than contemplating, a couple years in. I'm finding it's usually better to just start and screw up than thinking longer than it takes to consider each step of a process. You'll never fathom all of the potential pitfalls, and you can't reason out techniques that are developed through pure feel, like most grinding or hammering, until you've already got the basics down.

So you planning to continue with stock removal or start forging?

 

[Bismarck22]

Hey Alex, good first effort, and I can only imagine you learned a lot about grinding in that time spent whittling this down.

Overthinking things can be a problem for some of us, and I'm only just now starting to be able to spend more time doing than contemplating, a couple years in. I'm finding it's usually better to just start and screw up than thinking longer than it takes to consider each step of a process. You'll never fathom all of the potential pitfalls, and you can't reason out techniques that are developed through pure feel, like most grinding or hammering, until you've already got the basics down.

So you planning to continue with stock removal or start forging?

Thanks for the good comments and encouragement.

This project made something in my mind go "yes, you can make a knife right now," and I will do my best to keep within that mindset.

I would like to forge, as I have a romanticized image of myself as a blacksmith pounding metal into shape. However, the shop investment for forging seems considerably higher than for stock removal. Additionally, I would eventually like to work with complex steels, and forging doesn't seem to be a good choice there.

So, I'll probably stick to stock removal now and learn to forge as resources allow.