My Home-made EDC

A

appa609

Joined
Sep 1, 2014
Messages
4
So a week ago, I didn't have any folding knives. Well, maybe if you count swiss army multitools, but it was a cheap Chinese one from a souvenir shop with no cutting ability. I didn't really want to spend any money on it, and all the folders I could find for cheap were crap anyways, so I decided to make my own.

I decided I needed something very small, discrete, and comfortable, since I actually wanted to carry this thing everywhere. I also wanted the blade to be thin and sharp so that I could easily tear through envelopes, packaging, and food. Besides that, I mostly want to sharpen pencils, trim loose skin on my fingernails, and stuff like that.

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The blade comes from a plain carbon steel utility blade cut down to the shape shown. The base of the blade was heated over a torch to temper it enough to drill the pivot hole through with my wood-drill-bits (though they hardly made it through). The handle/scales are 2 inches long and made of a sawed slice of bamboo cutting board. The two pins through it are sections of nails I peened with a hammer. Two broken off bits of utility blade act as spacers, and one also stops the blade. The whole thing is held together by gorilla glue.

Anyways, it's my first folder, and I'm pretty happy with it. It is a knife I will truly carry with me every day.
Cheers.
 
That looks pretty cool man. I probably don't have the skill even to do that.

I would add there are plenty of really cheap folders that aren't crap at all... don't know if you were just looking only in sparse brick and mortar stores or what.

But again, cool feat of engineering that I couldn't pull off myself.
 
That's very cool for two reasons. One, you made it yourself from stuff you had around. Then the fact that it works. A small friction folder is the minimalist approach to cutting, and they do work. Many cultures where the working peasant who really is doing the over used term "hard use" they do use a cheap friction folder to get it done. The Opinel before they put the locking ring on in 1955, the taramundi of Spain, the resolza of Sardinia, the higonakami of Japan, and the penny knives of many places.

Very cool little knife! :thumbup:
 
Some time with a dremel or even some sandpaper could really slim/smooth it out. I have considered trying to make my own knife out of existing steel/materials. Like you I dont have access to metal smithing gear so I would have to cannibalize an old file or hatchet or something for the steel.
 
If it suits your needs, that's all it takes. However, even without too many tools, I truly think that you could have done way better. Contour the handles a little bit to prevent hot spots, add a lanyard hole (probably needed to hold onto such a short handle), etc.

I think that with limited resources, it is much safer to go with a fixed knife than a folder.

Anyway, great job on your first knife!
 
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