What made you decide to make your own knife?

It was a pleasure to read your comments - and in most of them I found myself. Too proud to spend on a customized piece (just because "custom" for me it means a lot more than materials used), pissed off because the blade is not good enough for the task, trying to improve on existing or pure and simple old good challenge of doing things. Thank you gents for your answers.
I will pop up with questions if I don't find them already in here.
Regards
 
Last edited:
I always wanted to clean a deer with my own knife.. So I made one, did that this fall, and gifted it to my uncle. Now I'm approaching the slippery slope of more tools and a lot of expense. Definitely won't be saving any money.
 
So there I was sitting in an office around the meeting table a couple of guys start bragging bout there huge knife collections and there I was realizing with my love for the outdoors I had only one Wally World knife of my own. So being the cheapo that I am I thought I could make my own and two years later hear I am about to go out to my shop and make more knives


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Love hunting and the outdoors and love making things with my hands. So naturally I started knife making. Also big into archery and have made tools for setting bows up and stuff like that.
 
JoshRG said:
I had wanted, still do, a Murray Carter neck knife and couldn't afford it. Decided to give knife making a try after watching pretty much every Carter video on YouTube. Been doing it little by little ever since. I find it HUGELY rewarding.

Blessings,
Joshua
Click to expand...

you should get one now :-)
or, let's trade
 
I love knives, and making things, and I had all this free time I was wasting making useless things, or just sitting around on the computer. I find the scientific, art of knife making, satisfying, rewarding and therapeutic it's part of who I am.
 
I saw a Blacksmith demo at dollywood in Pigeon forge TN, he made a knife from a RR spike. I was a teenager and it always stuck with me as something I wanted to do, fast forward to my early to mid 30s and I finally got the chance. Two years give or take and 100+ knives later my life has been enriched beyond what I would have thought possible, and I really can't imagine my life without it. Artistic expression, practicality and usefulness.
 
I broke my femur mountain biking and was laid up in bed for 7 weeks. I had been wanting a new pocket knife and ended up on Bladeforums doing some research on what I wanted to buy when I saw a category for "makers" "People make knives?" I've been involved in sheet metal fabrication all of my life and everything just fell in place! Been at it for 4 years now and still love to learn something new every day! What an awesome rabbit hole to fall down!
 
I thought that it would be an interesting process to learn. It certainly was, along with being frustrating at times.

I also had a hard time finding the kinds of knives I really wanted, so I figured I might as well make my own.
 
I was laid up after a knee surgery, and read through the Wheeler/Lorien stuck in the metal with you thread. A buddy of mine sent me a link to an instructibles on making a kiridashi. He has some steel from the hardware store, and I told him I had a ton of steel from farm equipment that would be better. After I got mobile, we started grinding and sanding. He lost interest, but buys knives I make now. I wanted a Damascus Bowie, but didn't want to spend $2000.00 for one. I'm now $10,000 invested in equipment, maybe $15,000, and still don't have my Damascus Bowie. It'll get done this year once the press gets welded together. :thumbup:


I should have just bought a wheeler Bowie and be done with it.
 
I've always loved knives since the day my father gave me my first knife. His MK3 MOD0 he carried when he was in the Vietnam war. I still have it today, it's one of only a few items that have made it from my childhood, that and his Seiko dive watch. I had a huge collection of knives at one point until a few years after I got out of the Navy and life happened and lost 99% of them. Fast forward 20 years and I opened a part time after hours four wheeler repair business that was doing pretty well but I grew quickly tired of customers complaining how much it cost to repair them. A majority of them would act as if I were the one riding beating on it, poorly maintaining it and setting the high prices of parts. I decided to close down shop with the exception of a few friends and needed to do something with my time. Moving to a new home that had not been lived in for years the husband of the owner had died while in the middle of remolding it the property was like a jobsite but everything was just sitting out right where it was the day he got real sick. When we moved in after a few weeks of getting the house livable I started straightening out the property. Clearing over grown sections, clearing debris and what not. I had to build our dog a new house on the side of the property and while clearing some of the debris I found some old tool boxed that had been left in the edge of the wood line. Among them were old vintage rusted and pitted Nicholson files. Setting them in the shop for no apparent reason a few weeks later browsing the net I came across some images of knives made from old files. Having a love for turning otherwise useless objects into something of use again I purchased some equipment made a couple knives out of the old files and the rest is history. That was about a year and a half ago.
 
Robert Erickson said:
^^
Have you seen a Wheeler Bowie? :D
Click to expand...

Yep. Still feels better to make one than own one. I'll likely never come close to achieving his level of perfection on a knife I intend to keep for myself, but if I do, and keep it, I won't have any problem using the heck out of it either.

Where if I bought one I'd never use it because I paid money for it. I know that doesn't make sense in the grand scheme of things but I can't get over it. Same with guns. I've paid obscene prices for some high end guns, and never really felt any kind of attachment to them, and didn't use them to their full extent because of what I paid for them. So I sold them and built my own with Krieger barrels and everything else. Probably has cost me more, but it's a lot more satisfying to shoot tiny groups with something I built and ammo I loaded than with something I bought, and I am not afraid to drag them through the mud either.

I think it came down to that if I built a gun you'd have to pay $3,000 to buy an equivalent of, no one would ever pay me $3,000 for it because I'm just some schmuck with a machine shop. So knowing I could never sell it for the value I give it is why I'm not afraid to use the heck out of them.

Probably the same with the knives. I doubt I'll ever make anything someone's willing to pay north of a grand for, whether it's equivalent to other knives from other makers or not. And I wouldn't want to give it away for $200 so I'll just use the hell out of it (not that I've come close to making anything of that kind of value yet.)
 
I grew up in a household awash with knives, Mostly Moras.
So there was no "need" or "forbidden fruit" aspect to possessing a knife. If you wanted a knife, there was one within arms reach somewhere.
But making things was at least an implied requirement among the men of the family.
A family of Swedish Sames, Everybody had a Samekniv and at least some degree of traditional apparel & accessories.
Those knives are not massproduced, but a self made handycraft or produced as cottage industry.

First knife I made, probably 9-10 years old. Remember it well filing a chunk of flat stock to a knifeshape.
The making & gluing up its furniture what 'Grandad helped with.
Its long lost to time passage, But I expect just couple years later was embarrassed to its existence & discarded.
 
Robert Erickson said:
^^
Have you seen a Wheeler Bowie? :D
Click to expand...

I've seen them and they are PERFECT but I would have a problem to use and abuse them in the field. To butcher something, not a problem at all. But still I enjoy more something good made by me than perfection made by someone else. In general, that "good" is translated in "perfect for me" and the "perfection" is impersonal sometimes.
 
Last edited:
I just wanted to make or do something at first i got interested in making bows but i live in the desert where i would have to buy good wood on the internet for ridiculous prices when i came accros a thread in a bow making forum about what knives they use to make their bows. So i looked up the price of high carbon and tool steels and found bladeforums. I remember thinking knives would be much cheaper to make. lol but since then ive learned all hobbies are expensive :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top