Well, the time finally came for me to start making my own knives as I have bought, sold and traded numerous knives. I have a particular appreciation for outdoorsy, hiking, camping and fishing type cutlery and took the plunge to make my own brand. Thus far I have made 4 knives and sold my first one on 1/6/2009 to Andy of Andysleatherhouse.com using my favorite forum the Jerzeedevil.
I called this model the ergo hiker, it’s lightweight and has a decent blade lengths to handle most aspects of outdoor use. I made this one using the stock removal method (taking away material from a flat bar of steel), rather than forging it from round or square stock. It was made from 1095 (high carbon steel) purchased from Jantz supply.
I started out with a hand drawn image and traced it onto the steel. Using a dremel tool with a metal disk cutter I cut out shape as close as I could and then finished up the profile on a bench grinder. Once the blade took shape, I drilled out my holes in the handles for the ¼ inch brass tubing and ground the bevels on my crappy 1×30 grinder (belt sander in non knife terms). After removing enough material to start to look like a knife, I cleaned up the bevels by hand with files and sanded everything by hand up to 220 grit, I also added in the thumb groove to improve on the grip. It was time for heat treating the blade. I use a two brick forge and a welding torch to bring the metal past a non magnetic state and then quench it into warm vegetable oil. After the quench the blade heads into my toaster oven for the tempering process, which is 2 one hour, fifteen minute cycles at 425 degrees. Once the temper is finished its back to the grinder to clean off the scale and then back to hand sanding to try and get a nice finish. I used curly maple wood for the handle material which is adhered by 2 ton epoxy and then shaped on the grinder and finished by hand gradually going from 120 grit to 400 grit, until I felt the finish was suitable.
The overall Specs of the knife are:
1095 steel with a minor hardening line
Grind – flat
OAL – 7 3/8ths
Blade tip to slab – 3 3/8ths
Cutting edge – 3 1/16 th
Blade thickness – 1/8th
Blade width – 1 1/4
Weight – 4.1 oz
Weight with sheath – 5.2 oz
Curly maple slabs
Thumb grooves
1/4 brass tubes
light weight tooled leather (JerzeeDevil colors)
I made the leather sheath with lightweight leather and put a decent design into it. I stained it almost black and using red stitching to finish it off. Over all this turned out to be a nice piece and I was really happy with it. From start to finish I estimate that I spent a total of 11 hours on the project and from the price that I sold it for, I was really working for peanuts. My goal was to sell it for enough money to buy more materials to make and hopefully sell some more.
Thanks for looking
Rob