Rubbish Knife

[GWashington1732]

I made this blade a few years ago out of a rusty piece of scrap or piece of crap, whichever you prefer. Finally decided to finish it using other pieces of garbage I had lying around. I did all of the grinding and polishing work by hand, with the exception of the final buffing which I used my bench grinder, just because $6 1000 grit sandpaper= ain't got money for dat. It was heat treated and tempered using primitive techniques, a fire pit and some charcoal and a bucket of gross old motor oil.

The blade as it looked when I started last week

After ~12 hours of hand sanding starting at 60 grit a bit more work on the buffer got most of those scratches out.

I got to work on the handle and decided I needed a guard of some type was going to make it out of a washer when I found this door latch in my junk box. It was too perfect for a knife made out of garbage so I epoxied some cut washers to it and called it the guard.

Did the handle with a scrap of wood from one of my carving projects, carved a groove and glued, lots of time with a planer, which planes flesh rather well btw. The pommel is an aluminum nut from an old bicycle and the top piece is a... I'm not really sure but it's aluminum and it worked.

Stuck the whole bit together with some gorilla glue and called the operation a complete success.

100% garbage. Recycling is fun.

Gotta find a new project to play with now. Thinking about trying my hand at forging again, maybe making something that doesn't look like crap.

 

[Craig Daniel]

I like it and bet you had a lot of fun piecing it together.

 

[GWashington1732]

I was really excited when I found the door latch, I think I laughed the whole time I was fitting it over the tang.

 

[RedFury]

I like using what's lying around although i would not invest that amount of time into a completely unknown steel. Or maybe you know more of the origins of the piece than you told us???

 

[GWashington1732]

I like using what's lying around although i would not invest that amount of time into a completely unknown steel. Or maybe you know more of the origins of the piece than you told us???

Not really, it looked like hardware store bar steel that spent a few years in the rain, but that's not important to me, that's pretty much what I use anyway. Knifemaking to me is more of a, because I can, project and truth be told, I'm not all that fond of grinding out the knife itself, I prefer polishing and handling, so any old soft piece of cheap steel will do the trick. I do it just for fun.

 

[Lieblad]

I do it just for fun.

...And that all that really matters... Glad you shared your fun with us.