The Knife

My friend Mr. Oka makes many things, boats, houses, delicious Thai curry and knives. He offered to show me how to make one and over the last 4 months I've been working on my first hand made knife.

I had a lot of fun sketching interesting designs. This was my favorite.

After drawing the outline on a piece of steal I drilled out holes to make cutting out the shape with a hack saw easier.



I further refined the shape with various files. I also used a belt sander for some of the larger areas.



After filing it into shape and then sanding it into a thinner piece of steal I worked on the edge, carefully.



Once the shape was more or less perfected I used sand paper to polish it. I started at around 300 and worked all the way down to 2000 which feels smoother than notebook paper.



I made the handle out of ebony, cut it into shape and screwed it into place. From here I used a hacksaw to cut off the metal bits, a file to get the shape and a belt sander to get a smooth surface.




This is the final product except for a few tweaks here and there. I still need to put the edge on and sand down the wood in a few places. It turned out pretty nicely for my first and possibly only hand made knife. If I ever do make another I've got lots of new ideas.