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I found this forum the other day while looking for ways to improve my multi-tool grinder attachment and decided I should stick around for a while since you all seem to be a knowledgeable group with a great collection of skills. First picture is of the knife that inspired my design. I actually made a knife for my wife that very closely resembles the drawing I made based on this knife. I then traced hers after I got it roughed out because I liked it so much and made a slightly larger version for myself. I intended for it to be a more exact copy but ended up leaving more material on it all the way around. As with my first round of knives I made most of these were intended to be Christmas gifts so I was a little limited on time which is why I'm just now getting back to working on mine 9 months later. You can see I loosely based the shape of the handle around the inspiration but I changed up the blade shape a fair bit (IMO). I really like the way that the scales projected into the oversized choil and ran with that as the focal point of the overall design. I like how it affords a good forward grip on the knife for choking up on the blade. Overall I was pretty happy with how hers came out other than the handle needs some improvement/ refinement. (I'll try and remember to get some pictures of hers to add to this thread for reference. It didn't come out bad but it would have been better if xmas wasn't fast approaching when I was finishing it.) Below you can see the group of knives I heat treated in that batch, all O1 steel that I bought precision ground. I had a good mix in there, everything from a pry tool bottle opener thing to hunters and a kiridashi like blade. A keen eye will note that in my haste I forgot to file the jimping into my hunter although my wife's is jimped. I've been using WD-40 when hand sanding the blades and it seems to help the paper last a little longer. Strange stuff happens with suspended metal particles in oil on a magnetized blade. Do blades often become magnetized like this? Scale cleaned up after heat treat. Polished (I've since sanded the blade again, I think it looks better than the polish did. Possibly because the polish was less than perfect.) This is some prelim design work for the handle. I've decided not to attempt to copy the carving on the scales but I was playing with the idea in the below sketch. IIRC the scale material I picked out for this knife is Gaboon Ebony I got from Bell Forrest. Up until this point those are all pretty old photos from either late 2018 to early this year. From this point forward you're seeing what I've done in the last week or so. I decided that the black scales on the polished blade might be a bit boring and decided to add a liner to them. I thought about just doing a layer of brass but I decided to go ahead and add a layer of red micarta between two layers of brass. (.010" brass, .030" micarta) I spent some time getting the scales flat on one face and gluing up the liners (is that the correct term?) then brought them to work to drill on the mill. I don't have a drill press at home and the last ones I hand drilled came out a little bit off. The blade now has a 600 grit finish on it but I'm not sure how far I'll end up taking it. Beginning to rough shape the scales. Where I ended up last night. This ebony is a filthy wood to work with, makes an absolute mess of me and the shop. I screwed up a little bit last night. I got a little ahead of myself and glued the scales on after I got to this point. It would all be fine and dandy if I didn't have more sanding to do on the blade. Oh well, it will just take a little more work to protect the scales and not make swirly scratches where the blade meets the scales. I doubt I'll make any progress tonight as I have some other errands planned but I'll keep you all posted as I make progress. Thanks for checking out my project let me know what you think.

Hi guys! I've finished this knife quite a while back but never got around to edit the videos I took and post the photos here. I chose to go with 440C for a more maintenance friendly knife since I was going to be using it a lot. After using it for over a year, I'm very surprised and satisfied with the steel's performance. Good edge retention, easy to sharpen, does not scracth as easily as 5160, for example and didn't get a patina so far. Here is a video with most of the process I went though: https://youtu.be/ELHezsRhMa8 Let me know what you guys think and how I can improove on the process, geometry, heat treat, etc... Before Sharpening: Kydex stealth molding: Finished Knife and Stealth:

Thought I might post some pics of my first 4 knives. They were all stock removal. They were all hand made. I was just starting out, so I purchased some 1095 from Admiral. Got some patterns from Dan Commeau. Cut out with hack saw, made a bevel jig and hand filed all the bevels. Made a coffee can forge for heat treating, tempered in the wifes oven(when she was gone), hand polished. A friend who is a bow maker gave me some scraps for handle material. Top three are Bocote and the lighter color one is Honduran Rewood. Small drop point hunter is my design for my wife, the others were Dans patterns. These 4 knives made me catch the bug of knife making. They were given to my brother and a couple of friends. After others saw them, I got 8 more orders for knives. I told them that after hunting season(last year), I would get to work on them. Unfortunetly on December 8th, I almost lost my left index and middle finger in a lathe accident at work (I am a toolmaker). I had surgery on Dec. 30th to repair the nerves that were severed. It has been a long recovery. I am fortunate that I still have my fingers, full function of my middle, but limited use of my index. The feeling has yet to return as well. So, I am hoping to return to blade work soon. I am working on my forge in my spare time, and hoping after this hunting season, I will start turning out some knives.

I broke my crappy first anvil , it was a chunk of rail way cast iron and my forge at the moment isn't up to my standard of heat out put so I have to stick with just plain stock removal at the moment which is proving to be tedious lol these are cut out if 1095 cra, I heat treated them since they are thin I I used motor oil to quench and then in the oven at 440 for an hour , I should have done two separate hours but only did the one , the mini chef knife was still so hard a new file would barely scratch the tip ! I worked out the scratches with 220 wet dry sand paper , and polished up some with wet 500 grit , next I'm going to use a wedge handle on the chef and a bocote for the mini hunter more pics to come later

I have a dagger in the works made from a a worn out flat bastard file. It's a total stock removal job. I cut the tang and the point in, but I'd like to give it a fuller, and I have no idea how to do it. I've seen the threads here on making a fuller-cutting tool, but I don't have the machinist skills or equipment to make one. I know if I try to "cut" it in with my disk grinder it'll be a disaster. Where the blade's already shaped, I don't know if I can cut it in with a hot chisel without mucking up the shape. Any suggestions? Buck