Newbie working on 1st and 2nd knives

[CraneWing]

Hello all, I've been wanting to try my hand at making a knife for years and finally decided to give it a shot. There's this knife/sword I saw in some fan art for Dungeons and Dragons (don't laugh), and I knew someday I needed a knife like it. At first I looked into having someone make it for me, but I like to DIY anything I can and it would mean more to me if I made this myself. It's going pretty well already so I thought I'd show you guys what I've been working on. I didn't want to ruin a big piece of steel right away so started by making a small thrower to get experience cutting metal and grinding, I've never shaped metal before in my life. I ordered tools and steel from NJ Steel Baron. The steel for the thrower is 0.156" thick and 1" wide 1084. After looking around I found this tutorial on making a filing jig, and I made one. It's worked pretty well. One big issue was the plunge line, a low spot would develop one file width from the guide bolt. That took some attention to keep flat. I'm also not 100% happy with the consistency of the grind from side to side. Near the tip, the curve of the grind seems a bit bulgier on one half of the blade than on the other half. Maybe that's not the jig's fault and it was caused by not having the shape of the tip perfectly symmetrical, I did grind it to shape by hand. Or because my steel had a slight bend. I noticed it halfway through and bent it straight.

Here's that thrower, it's balancing right at the end of the handle. I'm thinking I'll have to drill out some material since the wood handle will add some weight yet.

Ugly plunge.

Fairly straight.

Grind a lil wonky.

Doesn't have to be pretty, just has to work

 

[CraneWing]

And now for the "special" knife.
This is the original artwork. To whoever made it, thanks for the great knife idea!

This is where I'm at with the knife so far.

For the sake of making the knife not so, fantastical, I made a few changes. The constriction at the choil is a lot wider, the overall knife is smaller, and I used 0.187" thick 1084. For aesthetic reasons I wanted to do a convex grind so the blade would look smooth and silky. I was a bit nervous about it since the flat filing with my jig didn't work as well as I'd hoped. But I figured I didn't have anything to lose except a few bucks worth of steel. I roughed out the grind with a 4" angle grinder and a grinding wheel. Then smoothed it out with a file. I'm actually very pleased with the way it turned out

I cut the basic shape out with a cutting wheel on the angle grinder. Took like two hours!

Cleaned up and shaped with file.

To make a gradual transition from the edge to the spine I started off by grinding about a third of the blade closest to the edge while holding the grinder at an angle that felt right.

Then I changed to a shallower angle and ground the next third or so.

Grinding on the point wasn't really a good idea, and I made a boo boo. Fell off the end and knicked a bit of the tip off.

It was only about 1/16th an inch so I just filed the edge up to the new point.
I then smoothed the blade from the spine all the way into the edge. The third of the blade closest to the spine didn't have much material taken away, I basically just removed the mill scale from that area.

When I did as much as I could with the grinder I switched to a flat file and smoothed everything out. The grinding left an oxide layer that was pretty hard to get off with the file, but made it really easy to see the low spots

After getting the blade roughed in I moved to the gut hook area (is that what you'd call that?) and ground down the parts I could reach. I switched to a round file and finished working the edge down there. The bevel on the gut hook area is a lot beefier.

Couple more pics to come after they finish uploading.

 

[CraneWing]

The grind looks nice and even so far, I tapered down the end a bit by hand after this.

I'm not sure how to attach the guard... I cut little notches in the top and bottom thinking I could butt the guard up to those and solder it on. Not sure if that would work.

What other ways would work? Well don't have to figure that out for a little bit yet, need to get a piece of steel to make the guard out of still. As for the handle I want something dark, looked for walnut knife scales on ebay but didn't find any good looking pieces that were long enough.

 

[JG Custom Metal Works]

Not really the types of knives you want to start out with. Double edged daggers a tough, even for very experienced makers.

When you start out with designs like this you're kind of setting yourself up for failure. I'm not trying to be a nay-sayer or pessimist, just realistic.

My advice to you would be to try a couple more tried and true, simple designs. Learn the basics on those.

 

[Hengelo_77]

you go !!

 

[gredpe3]

I think you are doing great, the only way to learn is by doing.And most important/Have Fun and be safe.

 

[Patrickknives]

Looks pretty good, it looks like the area for your guard is slightly larger than the handles, can you slot the guard and push on past the handle, if not the handle is pretty big may be able to reduce just a bit to slide the guard on.

Check out woodworking shops, like woodcraft, they have a lot of wood for projects in 3/8 thickness and long enough for your handles. Lots of cool wood to choose from.

http://www.woodcraft.com/category/SU114/wood-and-project-materials.aspx?Length=24%22