What makes a good knife? The simplest high-quality knife with your own hands. The simplest homemade knives

If you want to make a simple but high-quality knife with your own hands, you can take a closer look at these instructions. The knife reviewed has a simple and elegant appearance, it’s easy to assemble if you compare this homemade product with others. During the manufacturing process, the blade is hardened, which makes the knife not dull for a long time and sharpens well.

For ease of manufacture, a belt sander is required; without it, the process of forming bevels and grinding will be lengthy and tedious. To make this knife you will need steel with high content carbon, it can be 1095 or 1070. The author chose 1070 steel.

Materials and tools for making a knife:
- steel 1095 or 1070;
- paper, felt-tip pen (or a ready-made knife template);
- wood, deer antler (or other material for making a handle);
- pins made of copper or brass for attaching the handle;
- tape grinding machine;
- a drill with drills (or better yet, a drilling machine);
- a furnace or other heat source for hardening steel;
- files, sandpaper of different grain sizes, WD-40, etc.;
- linseed oil for impregnating the handle;
- band cutting machine (in the worst case scenario, a grinder and a lot of patience).

Knife making process:

Step one. Blank
When making any knife, it all starts with a template. You can download the template ready-made and simply print it on a printer. Or you can develop your own. Next, the template needs to be cut out and then glued to the sheet of metal from which the workpiece will be made. Or you can simply trace the template, but it’s easier to work with paper.

Next comes the most difficult part: you need to cut out the main profile of the knife. If you don't have a tape cutting machine, like the author, this process will be more difficult and lengthy. Theoretically, the work can be done with an ordinary grinder.

Step two. Drilling holes
At the next stage, the author drills holes for the pins that will hold the handle. At a minimum, there should be two such pins. But you can make more of them for beauty. It is convenient to drill holes on drilling machine. Select the diameter depending on the thickness of your pins.

Step three. Sanding the workpiece
Before sanding our workpiece, you will first need to work a little with a file. Using it, you will need to remove the burrs that formed after drilling. Also, if there are too rough edges on the knife, you can carefully grind them off with a grinder. Well, then a belt sander comes to the rescue. We carefully process the profile on it so that the shape becomes the same as it was originally intended.

When working on a draw frame, you must use a respirator and it is advisable to wear safety glasses, as a lot of metal dust is generated. Although our blade will undergo hardening, there is no need to allow the metal to overheat excessively.

Step four. Forming bevels
The next stage is the formation of bevels and this activity can be considered the most responsible. The sharpening angle determines the cutting characteristics of the knife and how easy it will be to sharpen in the future. For a knife to cut well, the blade must be thin, and for a knife to cut well and be durable, the blade must be made thicker.

It is also important to remember that if the metal blade is too thin before hardening, it will overheat too much and the hardening will not be of good quality, or will not work at all. So it’s better to first form the main profile of the bevels, and then modify it on a tape grinding machine, or better yet, manually.

To form the bevels correctly, you first need to draw a line on the workpiece and only then, focusing on this line, grind the metal. In general, here you will need some skills in working with a grinder.

Step five. Tempering the blade
Now we need to harden the steel, so it will become elastic, and the metal will not bend when cutting hard objects, in addition, the knife will hold hardening well. The hardening temperature is selected depending on the type of steel. If we talk about steel with a high carbon content, then it is usually heated to a temperature of up to 800 o C.

To understand what temperature to heat the metal to, if you don’t know what kind of steel it is, you can use permanent magnet. As soon as the magnet stops being attracted to it as the steel heats up, the steel can be cooled.

You can also determine the desired heating temperature using a special color scale.

The metal is usually cooled in oil; in rare cases, steel is hardened between two plates, in water or in air.

After hardening the steel, there is one more technique - tempering the steel. If the steel is not released, the blade may break into small pieces when it falls, since the metal will be too brittle. To make it more resistant to mechanical stress, we place the blade in an oven with a temperature of about 200 o C. Here our knife should warm up for an hour, and then cool down along with the oven. As a result, metal release will occur.

In conclusion, I would like to remind you that the quenching oil should not be cold, otherwise it may be too thick. If the oil is thick, you may need to heat it up.

Step six. Blade cleaning
After quenching in oil and heating, there will be a lot of dirt on the metal. How to deal with them is up to everyone to decide for themselves. You can lightly sand the steel with a belt sander and then finish the metal by hand. Or, armed with sandpaper and WD-40, you can clean the metal by hand.
The author set himself the task of polishing the steel to a mirror shine. Here he needed a polishing wheel with paste.

Step seven. Handle installation
The author makes the handle from wood, but you can choose the material to your taste. First you will need to take two pieces, tighten them with clamps and then drill two holes, at the beginning and at the end. These holes should line up with the holes in the metal part. It is advisable to drive holes in the steel with a drill in order to clean them. Well, then epoxy glue comes to the rescue. It needs to be applied over the entire area to the two halves, and then tightly tighten them with clamps or clamp them in a vice. At the same stage, you need to remember to hammer the pins into the handles.

Step eight. The final stage of knife assembly
When the epoxy glue is completely dry, the clamps can be removed and now the knife is sent back for grinding. This time, using a grinder, you need to set the profile of the handle. Well, this parameter corresponds to the profile of the blade, where wooden handle attached. So we just align the wood with the metal. A rough profile can be set with a rasp.

You will also need to remove all burrs, irregularities, and so on. Finally, you need to bring the handle to a perfectly smooth state. This is done by reducing the grit on a belt sander. It is also advisable to sand the handle by hand with fine sandpaper.

When hearing the word knife, a person imagines two pictures. Housewife chopping kitchen tool vegetables for salad, and a hunter making his way through the thicket, with the handle of a bladed weapon sticking out of his belt in his sheath. Edged weapons have always been of interest to men. The designer knives of the production masters fascinate with their appearance and attract with a silent force that is felt in every bend of the steel.

The price of weapons ranges from 7 to 22 thousand rubles. Below we will tell you how to make a knife at home.

History of development from stone to modern

Man first began to use a knife immediately after he stopped walking on all fours and began to get food with improvised means. The tools that people began to use for hunting and farming were fragments of bones or stones. The first ones were much easier to make, due to the fragility of the animal’s bones, but such products dulled unusually quickly, and not all components of the skeleton were suitable for the role of a sharp instrument.

To make a knife from stone, primitive man had to put in a lot of effort. However, the laboriousness of the process paid off relative strength, the ability to sharpen the edge of a stone blade. Another advantage of a stone knife over a bone one was the durability of the tool. Bone weapons were fragile and often broke during hunting, so this type gradually became economic use and construction.

At the time of human mastery of metalworking, edged weapons began to be made from bronze and copper. They were significantly superior to stone samples in terms of durability. The blades were made from a single piece of metal. Swords, daggers, and knives of those times became indispensable weapons for the soldiers of the Roman Empire, with the help of which troops conquered new territories.

The Iron Age is a century of experiments and new technologies. Knives acquired different shapes and lengths; at this time, sickle-shaped and wave-shaped blades were invented. In Rus' at that time, edged weapons were included in the paraphernalia of the nobility and merchants. The Vikings used wood to make sword hilts so that the steel, frozen in the cold, would not burn the hand.

In the Middle Ages, people began to use steel - an alloy of iron and carbon - in the production of swords. These times were considered bloody; history knows many large-scale wars and battles. As a result, the emphasis in forges was not on quality, but on quantity. And in comparison with ancient times, the characteristics of the samples of edged weapons of the Middle Ages were much inferior to the ancient prototypes.

Although historians cite the example of the daggers of medieval Arabs. Some of the daggers of Arab sheikhs that have survived to our times have been preserved cutting properties, despite the passing centuries.

During the Renaissance, the experience of blacksmiths, passed down from generation to generation, along with new technologies of that time, resulted in steel cutting products that were quite high quality. But just at this time, firearms began to be used in battles, and interest in blades began to gradually fade away.

During the Industrial Revolution, the production of bladed weapons became widespread, moving from handicraft to factory production.

In factories, the manufacturability of the process reduces costs, which means the product becomes cheaper and is available to almost everyone. Soon folding knives and world-famous centers for their manufacturing - Russian Zlatoust, English Sheffield, German Solingen and Swedish Eksilstun.

Components

At first glance, everything is quite simple, however, the knife includes many elements. The handle and blade are the two main components. The tip, or toe of the blade is called its front point. The blade (cutting edge) is considered to be the sharpened side; it is made smooth, sometimes closer to the handle with a sawtooth shape.

There are knives where the sawtooth component is on the butt. The butt is the opposite side of the blade. Slopes are called planes that taper towards the sharpened part of the blade. The part that is attached to the handle and not sharpened is the heel of the blade.

The handle is that part of it that a person clasps with his hand when handling. A partition, or any other barrier, is built into the front of the handle, designed to protect the hand from slipping onto the sharpened part of the blade. The handle is attached to the tail of the blade.
For production use different materials.

The easiest way is to take scraps of stainless steel. It doesn’t matter what this fragment was before, a pan, a pipe or furniture.

Anything will do. However, do not expect that such a blade will retain its cutting properties for a long time; most likely, you will have to sharpen it after any work.

High-speed steel, which is used in the production of hacksaws and saws, gives the blade good cutting properties, for a long time while maintaining an edge. However, a significant disadvantage of this raw material is fragility and susceptibility to rust.

A good product can be made from plane blades. The material is first heated to a hot temperature, and after cooling in air, it is shaped with a hacksaw and ground with a file, or abrasive wheels. At the end of manufacturing, edged weapons are hardened in water or oil. The disadvantage is the same - they rust very quickly.

But after each job, it’s enough to wipe it well, lubricate it with a special lubricant, and it will serve you faithfully for decades, keeping both its qualities and its appearance unchanged.

Making a cutting product from an ordinary file is simple; it does not require the use of complex tools. The file is heated, cooled in air, and the workpiece is processed with another file. Sandpaper or other abrasive is used to remove excess elements from the surface.

In order to obtain a high-quality knife at the end, proper temperature treatment and turning are necessary. Then it needs to be hardened again. You can not harden the entire knife, but only its cutting edge, but this is somewhat more complicated, of course.

If you need a small (penknife) knife, a fragment will do hacksaw blade, you just need to sharpen it and make a handle, some just wrap it with electrical tape. It’s not very aesthetically pleasing, but it’s quick and doesn’t hurt if it’s lost.

How comfortable it is to use a knife depends on the design of the handle, and therefore this element is not inferior in importance to the blade. If the product is a souvenir, the handle is decorative. Wrapping a cord around the tail section is a simple way to make a handle. This type of winding is used mainly on tactical and throwing knives.

Other manufacturers use bones and animal horns or wood to create knife handles. For this, pear, oak, walnut, ash, maple and apple are used. Another good resource is birch bark. After processing, the handle becomes grooved and pleasant to touch. And when used, it sits securely in the palm of your hand without slipping, even if the handle is stained with animal blood or fish scales.

Leather sheaths are universal and reliable because the knife is held in them by friction, which allows you not to be afraid of losing the weapon even during active physical activity. Sheaths woven from thick cord are also widely used.

But they are more suitable for throwing ones, they are heavy, and usually blunt, except for the toe, of course. The lace cannot provide sufficient friction force, and their use for weapons with a thinner blade than tactical ones is not recommended.

Knife making process

Making a knife at home does not require special skills or expensive equipment. You should start by preparing a product template. The Internet is replete with a variety of stencils, download the one you like and print it. If you wish, you can use your imagination and draw a sketch of the sample yourself. When the design is ready, cut it out and glue it onto a piece of metal. Or simply trace along the outline with a waterproof marker.

The most difficult thing is to cut out a sample of the future knife. Perfect for comfortable work band saw for cutting metal. If there is none, then use a hacksaw, but then get ready for a very labor-intensive process and be patient.

Drill holes in the tail of the workpiece; they are intended for the pins that will hold the handle structure. For beauty, some craftsmen drill several holes, each of which corresponds to the thickness of the selected pins. In order for the handle to fit firmly to the shank, you need to drill at least two holes.

After working with a file, remove unevenness and roughness from the workpiece after the drill, and also sand rough edges. Using a grinding machine, you can bring the workpiece to perfect condition. Do not allow the future knife to overheat excessively. And do not forget to wear a respirator and safety glasses when performing work that will protect against metal dust.

Take a responsible approach to the formation of bevels. Because the cutting quality and future ease of sharpening depend on the angle at which sharpening will be done. If you want the workpiece to cut well, make the blade thin. If this product is for chopping (a machete, for example), then a thick one is more suitable. Don't go overboard with subtlety.

Otherwise, when heated, the blade will overheat, and hardening may not work. It is better to form the bevels manually. To do this correctly, first draw a line of bevels, and then, focusing on it, start grinding the metal with a grinder.

Heating steel will make it elastic. Depending on the type of steel, its hardening temperature is selected. Use a magnet to help you know when to stop heating. When it stops being attracted to the metal, it means the workpiece has heated up enough and should be cooled.

Usually cooled in oil, rarely in air or water. It all depends on the grade of steel you used for your product. But this is your knife, you can experiment if the brand is unknown.

After the steel has cooled, place the product in an oven preheated to 200 degrees and leave to warm up for one hour. The knife should cool down with it; you cannot pull it out ahead of time. Polish the metal of the product to a mirror shine, having previously cleared away multiple contaminants that will appear after quenching the steel in oil.

Drill holes in the handle halves prepared in advance that are the same size as the holes in the shank. Install them, clamp them in a vice, and drive in the pins. Head to the sander again. This time the work will happen with the handle. Set the shape that will be comfortable for use.

After the machine, go over the handle with sandpaper to remove burrs and small irregularities.

The method of making a knife is given for theoretical reference. Article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation No. 223, part 3 prohibits the creation and use of homemade products falling under the term "edged weapons". This could result in a prison sentence of up to two years. It is advisable to read this article, because not all knives are punishable.

As you can see, it is not so difficult to make a knife with your own hands at home. You will have a useful time and try yourself in the role of a master in the production of edged weapons or just a household item.

Especially if you have the opportunity to use good equipment when creating a product. Perhaps you will discover a talent for this art.

But do not forget about criminal liability and use only within the framework of Russian legislation. A little patience, attentiveness and pedantry will help in the production of a high-quality knife that will last for many years.

Video

A knife can be made from anything

Today, I would like to continue the topic dedicated to accessible material, from which you can quickly and easily good characteristics. Many people are interested in the question of what can be made from without resorting to complex technologies. This is written about in some detail in. Here we will try to further highlight some of the details of suitable material for knives. The easiest thing is to use old broken stainless steel kitchen knives. Knives should preferably be Soviet-made, and not Chinese consumer goods. From such a fragment you can make a good knife with excellent cutting characteristics.

Also, good knives can be made from high-speed steel, which is used in the production of hacksaw blades for power saws. The disadvantage of this material is that it is quite fragile and tends to rust. But it holds an edge well.

An excellent material is knives for a wood planer. This metal is very well processed and polished. The planing knife gets burned blowtorch red hot and then cools. After annealing, the metal can be easily sawed with a hacksaw, shaped, or sharpened with a file. After the knife is given its final shape, it needs to be either in oil or water. But, unfortunately, knives made of this metal also rust.

The next metal we'll look at is a regular file. It is very easy to make a knife from a file, without any special machines. Take a file, heat it well, again with a blowtorch until red-hot, and let it cool. After this, it is very well processed with another file, sawed with a hacksaw to give it the desired shape. Next, hardening is carried out again in oil or water. The main thing is to get good knife from this metal, you need . There is no need to unforge this metal. We simply burn, sharpen, file, remove excess metal hand tools or on sandpaper. And we get a pretty good knife.

You can also make it from an ordinary hacksaw for wood. It is also very easy to process, very elastic steel. Can be adapted, for example, for making kitchen knife, which will cut well and hold an edge well.

A car spring is also well suited for manufacturing. The only bad thing about a spring is that it needs to be unchained and properly heat treated. This is quite a time-consuming task. But if you build homemade horn on your site, you can make a good knife from a piece of spring. Or just take it to the blacksmith, who will forge anything for you for a bottle of vodka.You can make a knife from a car valve. It turns out good too stainless steel. The valve is heated to high temperature and hammered on an anvil. Then you need to shape the blade and harden it.

Very good knives are made from large drills. Clamp the drill in a vice, heat it until soft, take the gas keys and begin to slowly unscrew it. After this, heat it up again and begin to unforge the resulting part, giving the required form. The drill will not be sharpened with a file. All work must be done on sandpaper.

The knife can be made of spring steel. There is no need to anneal this metal. You can immediately make a knife blade from the workpiece. With a regular drill This steel cannot be drilled. It is necessary to use a pobedit drill.

Now let's talk about rust, which is present in most metals. If you want to prevent your knife from rusting, you can treat it with sulfuric acid or phosphoric acid.

The article uses material from a video on YouTube

A hunting knife is essential for every hunter. First of all, it is used for finishing and butchering prey, but besides this it remains faithful assistant in the most different situations on the hunt. Nowadays you can find a huge number of different models and modifications of blades on sale. But despite this, the need to make your own knife may arise. This usually happens due to the inability to buy the blade you need, either to replace a lost or broken one you love, or one you saw from friends and liked, or the knife you need is not on sale.

Making a knife from a 9HF saw

In this article we will not focus on the shape and design of the blade, the type and width of the sharpening, etc. We believe that finished project or we already have a sample and will focus on the production itself.

In order for a homemade hunting knife to meet the basic requirements for such blades, it is recommended to make it from high-carbon alloy steels. For example:

9HF– tool alloy steel, used for the manufacture of frame, band and circular saws, punches, trimming dies and a number of other tools. Usually saw blades are used as blanks;
R6M5– high-speed alloy steel of high strength. It is used to make many types cutting tool, drills, saw blades, the latter can be used to make a workpiece;
65G– spring steel, with high wear resistance, can be blued and blackened. They make springs, springs, gears, etc. For blanks, in addition to sheets, rear springs are used trucks. Considered one of the cheapest knife materials;
X12, R3M3F2 and a number of others are also suitable.

The material for the workpiece can be taken from the above products, although now on the Internet you can order a plate for the workpiece from almost any steel. As a recommendation, take a pendulum saw blade for metal, the usual dimensions are 400x30 mm, thickness 2 mm, rough surface, color black or gray.
If you want to make a homemade knife at home, in addition to the material for the workpiece, we will need:

Corner grinder(Bulgarian)
Wheels for it, cutting wheels for alloy steel, for example inox A54S BF, sharpening and grinding.
Drill or drilling machine
Vise
Pobedite and other special drills
Files and diamond file
Emery machine (very desirable).

The knife making process will be as follows:

The handle of the knife can be wound using paracord or made of wood; in the latter case, we drill holes in the handle according to a template, according to a sample or drawing. Drill holes special drills with accompanying cooling using oil. It is more convenient to do this on a drilling machine.

To simplify the process, holes are drilled first with small diameter drills and then gradually drilled out to the desired size.

Handle

Knives are decorated with different handles. The choice of material for their manufacture depends on the purposes for which the knife is intended, ease of use and personal preferences of the owner. Below are two ways to make a knife handle at home.

Wrapping the handle with paracord in a few minutes

Using a paracord cord as a knife handle is not only easier and faster, but also more practical. You will always have a couple of meters of cord with you, which can be used for a variety of purposes when surviving in extreme situations.

For the winding we need:

cord, 2 – 2.5 m;
thick adhesive tape or electrical tape;
lighter or matches;
scissors;
gloves;
screwdriver.

Before you start winding the cord, decide whether you need a lanyard loop and if so, where it will be, on the side of the blade near the stop or at the end of the handle. If it is available, in addition to the ability to hang a knife, in the first case you can thread it thumb, to make it more convenient and reliable to hold the knife, in the second, you can use it to remove the knife from the sheath, etc.

Paracord is wound in the following order:

We wet the cord, and it stretches better, and when it dries, it will sit more solidly on the knife.
We seal the knife blade with tape or tape to avoid accidental cuts or cutting the cord. It is better to perform all operations with gloves.
We press one end of the cord on the head of the handle so that 10 cm remains free.
We form a loop from the cord, laid along the handle so that the top of the loop protrudes a couple of centimeters beyond the cord winding area.
Then, holding the knife in your left hand and pressing both ends of the loop with your thumb, with your right hand we begin to wind the cord around the handle, starting from its head.
We make the winding tight, turn to turn, do not tighten it too much, keep in mind that the cord will still shrink after drying.
Having brought the winding all the way to the blade, we thread the remaining end of the cord into the protruding part of the loop.
We cut off the excess cord, leaving about 3–5 cm, and burn the end of the cord.
After this, pulling the free end of the cord from the side of the handle head, we pull the loop under the winding until the end threaded into it is hidden under the winding. Avoid pulling the loop completely out, otherwise the entire winding will unravel.

Winding is complete. With this option of winding, we will not have a loop for a lanyard. If we want to form it, the winding is somewhat more complicated. Initially, two loops are placed on the handle on both sides of the knife.

To form a loop for a lanyard on the head of a knife, the end of the cord is pressed onto the head of the handle and one loop is pulled to the blade, then the cord is thrown over the head and a second loop is placed on the other side. The winding starts from the head of the knife. Having finished the winding, the remaining end is threaded through both loops near the blade and pulled under the winding by the loop in the headband, thereby forming it.

So that the loop is near the stop, we do the same thing, but on the contrary, we start laying and winding from the stop, and pull the loop there to tighten the clamped end under the winding.

Making an overhead handle as an alternative to paracord

If you are a classicist and want to make a regular handle, use wood for this purpose. It is more accessible, easier to work with, the wooden handle is more pleasant to the touch, does not get cold, slips less in the hand, and if processed correctly, does not absorb moisture. The handle of a knife can be made of oak, beech, maple, birch, walnut or mahogany. In order not to waste time and effort on preparing and drying wood, there are two simple ways get her. The first is parquet, you can buy it in a special store, where, by the way, expensive varieties are sold individually. Second - old furniture, in the attic, in the garage, at the dacha, with friends, you can always find unnecessary household rubbish and use it.
For the handle you need two dies if you have a hand standard size, then 10 - 15 mm thick, this is with a margin for processing, so that the thickness of the future handle is about 20 mm. The length of the workpieces is 150 - 200 mm, so that there is room for fixing them during initial processing.

In addition to the tree, we will need:

dowels made of aluminum, copper, brass, iron according to the number of holes and the corresponding diameter;
drill with drills or drilling machine;
drills according to the number of holes in the handle of the same diameter;
a sharpening or grinding machine, it can be replaced by a wood file and a lot, a lot of time;
jigsaw or manual jigsaw, or see the previous paragraph;
an engraving machine or a file with a needle file;
sandpaper of different numbers down to the finest;
epoxy based adhesive;
linseed oil;
thick adhesive tape or electrical tape;
vice, clamp.

We make the handle as follows:

Before starting work, wrap the knife blade with tape or tape to avoid accidental cuts.
The first step is drilling. We place the knife blank on a wooden block, press it with a clamp or, at worst, wrap it with tape and drill holes. To make the hole neat, first drill with a thin drill, and then drill out to the desired diameter. After the first hole has been drilled, we insert a key or a drill of the same diameter into it, this is done to fix it so that the die does not move. Let's move on to the next hole.
We drill the second die in the same way.
After drilling, we assemble the dies on a knife, using keys or drills, to make sure that all the holes match.
Then, attaching the dies one by one to the knife using dowels or drills and a clamp, we outline the contour of the handle along the contour of the knife. It is advisable to mark the handle with a slight indentation, 1 - 2 mm, for subsequent processing.
After marking, we cut out the handle with a jigsaw or grind it on a grinding wheel; in extreme cases, the file is in your hands.
Preparing the dowels. To make the homemade knife look aesthetically pleasing, we will not rivet the dowels, but glue them in. To do this, use an engraving machine or a file to make chaotic cuts on the keys, in which the glue will harden and set. At the ends of the keys we remove an inclined chamfer at 450.
Since after gluing it will be inconvenient to process the cheeks of the stop, we finally process and polish them using sandpaper.
We carefully sand the handle halves from the inside so that they fit tightly when gluing to the plane of the knife shank.
Before gluing, we make a final test assembly.
We carry out the gluing itself according to the instructions for the glue. The assembly procedure is as follows: lubricate inner side one half, insert dowels greased with glue into it, put a knife on them, and then the greased second half.
We clamp the assembled handle in a vice and remove the excess squeezed out glue. Leave the clamped handle for a day.
After the glue has hardened, using files, emery, a grinding wheel, and so on, we finally shape, grind and sand the handle of the knife.
When the handle is completely polished, it is time to soak. The best way to saturate wood is linseed oil. You can buy it in a store for artists, they breed it oil paints.
The handle is kept in oil for three days to a week. The process can be speeded up by boiling the handle in oil for a couple of hours, but you must strictly monitor the temperature, otherwise the glue may leak.
Then the handle should dry at natural temperature for about a month, during which time the oil will polymerize and the wood will harden and become impervious to moisture.
After drying, the handle is finally polished with a soft cloth.

Sharpening for beginners

Before we talk about sharpening hunting knife, it must be recalled that homemade knives made from the metals recommended in the article are very difficult and take a long time to sharpen, since the alloy steels used have high hardness. This must be remembered when using a knife for other purposes.

Now about the sharpening itself. IN living conditions knives are sharpened on special sharpening stones. Such stones are ceramic (the cheapest and most common), diamond, natural and Japanese sea stones. The principle of sharpening on them is approximately the same, so in the future, by default, we will talk about the most common ceramic sharpening stone.
To sharpen a knife efficiently, it is advisable to have either two sharpening stones of different grain sizes, or, what happens more often, grindstone the sides of which have different grain sizes. For ease of sharpening, the size, or rather the length, of the stone should be greater than the length of the knife blade.

It is advisable to sharpen a knife with both hands, so it is advisable to place the sharpening stone on a separate board, securing it either in a hole specially cut for this purpose, or using six nails driven into the sides.
Sharpening the knife begins on the roughest stone. At this stage, the whetstone does not need to be wetted. We place the stone on the table arbitrarily, the main thing is that it is convenient for you to sharpen on it.

The entire sharpening process consists of giving the edge of the blade an acute angular shape. When doing this, you need to remember a few basic rules:

you need to choose the optimal knife sharpening angle and stick to it throughout the entire process;
The knife is driven across the stone with the blade forward, as if cutting off a thin layer from it;
in one movement you need to sweep the entire edge of the blade for uniform sharpening;
the edge of the blade should always be perpendicular to the direction of movement;
each next time the blade must be turned over and held with the other side so as not to displace the center of the blade chamfer;
movements should be smooth, without pressure;
It is better to sharpen both sides with a unidirectional movement, either towards yourself or away from yourself, since moving the hand away from you is always worse and weaker than moving it towards yourself.

Now regarding the sharpening angle. It can be from 450 to 300, in the first case the knife will hold an edge longer, in the second it will be sharper. It is better to sharpen a hunting knife exactly at 300, this is not difficult to achieve, just when sharpening, move the knife as if you were cutting a thin slice of butter or cheese.

After you have turned the initial sharpness and brought out the angle of the blade edge, you can move on to a stone of lesser dispersion. It is advisable to periodically moisten it with water so that the edge of the blade glides better and metal dust does not clog the pores.
Finally sharpen the blade to a mirror shine and razor sharp, you can straighten it on an old leather belt with GOI paste. The main feature of straightening with GOI paste is that the knife is guided in the opposite direction to the blade, i.e. butt forward.

Making a sheath (case) from leather

One of necessary accessories The sheath is the hunting knife. They are needed to protect the blade from dulling, and everything around from cuts and damage to things.

You can make a homemade sheath yourself at home, from a small piece of leather about 3 mm thick.

To do this, in addition to the skin, you will need:

scissors;
sheet thick paper for template;
pen;
an awl (a sharpened nail or nails can replace it);
small nails and a hammer;
universal glue;
fork;
paraffin candle;
fine sandpaper or grinder;
nylon thread and one or two large needles;
pliers;
snap clasp;
wax or cream.

The procedure for making the cover will be as follows:

Making a template. Applying the knife blade to a sheet of paper, trace it along the contour.
Then around this contour with a centimeter indent we draw another contour, it will be the main one. Cut out the template along the outer contour. Separately, we cut out a T-shaped part for the fastener, the width of the harness is about 20 mm, and we measure the length of the harness along the handle of the knife.
Mark the details on the skin. Having attached the template to the leather, we outline the part for one side of the sheath, then, moving the template to the side by 5 - 8 mm, we outline only one side to get a part for half of the insert.
Then, turning the template over, we repeat the steps, outlining the second side and the second half of the insert. We apply and outline the T-shaped part of the fastener.
We take scissors and carefully cut out all the details from the leather.
Applying it to the knife, we try on all the details to see if they match.
We rub the ends of the insert on the clasp with paraffin candles, and then sand them using sandpaper.
We apply the fastener to one half, and using an awl and nails we mark and punch holes for the thread, in two rows.
We sew the fastener; the thread can be pre-lubricated with paraffin.
For ease of subsequent stitching, we glue the parts together. We cut out a part from the template along the contour of the blade itself. We place this part on the half of the sheath and coat it with glue so that the glue does not come out beyond the inserts. Glue according to the instructions on the tube. Lubricate and glue the inserts.
At the tip of the sheath, between the inserts, we cut a groove for ventilation.
Glue the other half. We place the sheath under the press for a while for high-quality gluing.
We check how the knife fits and sits.
Sand the edges of the sheath using sandpaper.
Using a fork, running two prongs along the edge of the sheath, outline the outline for stitching. Use a fork to mark the holes for the thread.
If you want, you can get fancy by cutting a thread groove into the face of the scabbard so that it is flush with the leather. In this case, it will then need to be polished with wax or cream in the same color as the scabbard.
Punch holes for the thread with an awl.
We sew the cover. You can sew with one thread, or with two threads, threading them through the holes one at a time.
Attach the button clasp.
We finally grind and polish the scabbard with wax or cream.

The scabbard is ready.

The selection of knives in stores is quite large. Kitchen, shoe, hunting, pocket - the list can be continued for a very long time. But there are situations when there is no cutting object at hand, but you desperately need it. For example, travel is always full of surprises; any thing can end up at the bottom of an abyss or lake. Or maybe you need a cutting tool for some special work? In short, there are not so few situations when such a homemade product may be needed. What is the best way to make a knife? We will now talk about this, as well as how best to do it in this or that case.

Where will you do it?

The need to make a cutting tool can arise anywhere:

Houses:
at the dacha;
on a hike.

At home, as a rule, they make knives for some special work, as well as for gifts or collections. If you don’t do this professionally, then you don’t have any special equipment yet. But there may be a lot of suitable ones in the tool cabinet.

There will probably be a lot of useful things at the dacha. Most likely, there is almost everything there - a broken hacksaw, old file etc. If you are left without a knife on a hike, you will have to think and carefully look around. Oddly enough, the answer to the question of how to forge and make a good knife or blade from start to finish with your own hands may be right in front of you.

What makes a good knife?

What can a knife be made from? The material for making a knife must be hard enough and hold an edge well. Suitable for this:

metals;
stone;
glass;
mollusk shells;
animal bones;
tree.

Metal

Not just any metal is suitable. So what metal is best to make a knife from?

It’s unlikely that you’ll think of messing around with aluminum - with such a knife you’ll get more pain than you can work with.
The most suitable material is steel, preferably stainless.
Ideal option– hardened, but it depends on your luck.

Important! At home you can do the heat treatment yourself, but on a hike it’s unlikely.

Stone, glass, shells

On a hike, you will certainly find stones that can cause sharp chips:

obsidian;
slate;
quartzite.

Important! These are layered materials, and the chips when separating the layers are quite sharp.

In the places you visit, it’s not difficult to find a suitable shard of glass - here’s a simple solution for what to make a knife out of. On the banks of rivers there are shells of mollusks - for example, toothless. When they delaminate, they also give sharp chips, which makes it possible to make a good, albeit small, blade.

In case of urgent need, even a tree will do - though wooden knife Suitable for small kitchen work only.

Bone blade

Bone is an ancient material for making knives. In many regions of our planet such tools are still used. To make a blade in the absence of sandpaper, stencils and other useful things, you only need a few stones. One of them should be rough enough to sharpen the edge of the bone. The other two are necessary to give the workpiece a more or less suitable shape.

What is the handle made of?

The handle is an important part of any tool. Convenience and safety depend on it. It can be made from different materials:

plastic;
wood;
ropes;
wire.

Plastic

At home perfect material for the handle of a metal or glass knife - epoxy. However, hardware and construction stores now sell a variety of compounds that, when hardened, turn into beautiful and durable plastic. It is quite possible that you have some left over after renovating your apartment or building a summer house.

Tree

Wooden overlays are a traditional way to design a handle. The handle can be given any shape, it is comfortable, does not heat up and is easy to attach.

Important! Many nations have knives with wicker handles. You can braid with cord or coated wire.

Homemade rope

It is possible that a traveler who finds himself without a knife on a desert island or even just on a long hike has lost his rope. There's nothing you can do, you'll have to get out of the situation. A rope can be made, for example, from nettles. It has fairly long fibers:

Remove the skin from the stem.
Collect the fibers and dry them (for example, by a fire or just in the sun).
Remember fiber.
Then all that remains is to weave a rope from the “threads” - you don’t need much for a knife, half a meter will be enough - the shank is braided with a ready-made rope.

What metal is best to make a knife from?

Despite the abundance suitable materials, best knives They are still made from metal. This was understood in ancient times, when they learned to process iron. And now the vast majority of cutting tools are made of steel. Suitable for a homemade knife:

blade from a hacksaw for metal;
broken saw;
old file (preferably Soviet);

Important! The ideal option is a hacksaw blade for metal. This is the simplest material, which, moreover, does not require hardening and tempering.

Good DIY knife

To make a small knife with your own hands that does not need hardening, in addition to a hacksaw blade, you will need:

sketch;
marker;
epoxy or other material for the handle;
rivets;
hammer;
emery wheel;
center punch;
drill.

Sketch

Any work begins with an idea. A homemade knife in this sense is no exception. First you need to make a sketch. You can simply draw it, but it is much easier to find a suitable picture (so that the blade is no wider than the hacksaw blade) and print it on paper with a self-adhesive layer.

Important! The method of transferring it to the blade depends on the material on which your sketch is made.

Option 1:

Place the cut-out image of the blade with the shank on the hacksaw blade.
Circle with a marker.
Grind along the contour using sandpaper - on at this stage It is not necessary to maintain extreme precision; processing can be quite rough.

Option 2

In this case, the stencil is cut out, pasted onto the canvas, after which the workpiece is ground using sandpaper.

Lever

The handle needs to be made before finishing. The workpiece should be comfortable to hold.

Plastic

The easiest option is to fill it with epoxy according to the method of application indicated on the package:

Let the plastic harden.
Sand it with sandpaper.
Sand it down.

Wooden handle

The wooden handle consists of two identical plates, between which the shank is inserted. First of all you need to cut 2 wooden blanks, absolutely identical. You don’t have to do the final processing yet - it’s important that they just match exactly in shape.

The entire structure is held on by two rivets, for which you need to make holes:

Make marks for rivets on the wooden blanks and the shank - when you assemble the handle, you should have through holes.
Use a drill to drill holes.

The rivets themselves are best made from copper tube from the heat exchanger of an old refrigerator:

Cut 2 pieces of copper tube - the length is equal to the width of the intended handle (2 layers of wood + a layer of metal) with a small allowance for riveting.
Place the wooden pieces together, placing the shank in the middle.
Insert the rivet so that it protrudes slightly above the holes on both sides.
Lightly rivet the edges using a center punch to slightly widen the ends.
Rivet the ends with a hammer (on a metal plate).

Wire or rope handle

If you know how to weave, it will not be difficult for you to make a handle from wire (insulated) or rope. You can also use a leather cord.

Important! Any type of weaving is suitable, making it possible to obtain a three-dimensional object. For example, macrame.

You can also make a temporary handle, which is extremely simple. To do this, just wrap the shank with electrical tape.

Blade finishing

Once the handle is ready, you can begin the final finishing and sharpening of the blade. This is done on an emery wheel. The process continues until you are satisfied with the shape of the knife.

Homemade knife with hardening

To make such a knife with your own hands, you will need a file.

Important! It is best to take an old Soviet one - cheap Chinese models, which most often break, almost always use low-quality steel.

Base material

The file should have a width of 30-40 mm and a rectangular or diamond-shaped cross-section. The second option is preferable - the knife will be more durable.

Tools

Prepare other materials and tools. You need:

Making a knife with your own hands

Start work in the same way as when making a knife without hardening, that is, prepare a sketch, cut out the blade and tang. Then proceed like this:

Clamp the workpiece in a vice.
Pre-sharpen with a file.
Sand the surface of the workpiece with a grinder on a grinding wheel.

Hardening

An important point is hardening.

Important! This procedure is necessary because files are usually made of carbon steel, a rather brittle material.

We do the work:

Place the workpiece in a roasting pan with burning coals - the coals should completely cover it.
Leave for 20 minutes.
Remove the workpiece and let it cool completely.
Place the workpiece in the oven.
Preheat oven to maximum temperature.
Set a timer for 60 minutes.
After keeping the future knife in the oven for an hour, turn off the heat and let the entire system cool completely.
Repeat the procedure.

Hardening with heat shield

In fact, the ideal temperature for hardening is 700º. But it can only be achieved in the forge - neither gas stove, nor a Russian stove produces such heat. However, a way out can always be found. The space above the workpiece can be heated to almost the required level, if you build a heat shield. This is simply a thick metal plate larger than a file and rising 1 cm above it:

Place the file on a baking sheet.
Place several nuts around the perimeter of the workpiece.
Place a thick sheet of metal (such as a small cast iron skillet) over the nuts.

It is very convenient to heat metal in an oven with a transparent door. If you see that the metal has become an even cherry color, it means the process is going correctly. You can perform hardening without a stage with coals, just in the oven. But then you will need to keep it at maximum for at least four hours. In this case, the metal should cool down simultaneously with the oven, that is, there is no need to remove the workpiece.

Important! You can use it as an indicator table salt– as soon as it starts to melt, it will mean that you have achieved the desired temperature.

Quenching in a furnace followed by tempering

The oven is still not the best convenient device for hardening metals. This is an urban option. It is much better if you have a Russian stove. In this case, the heat shield is installed in exactly the same way as in the previous case, but the metal can not only be hardened, but also tempered, which, naturally, will improve the quality of the future product.

Important! You can use a magnet as an indicator. It naturally reacts to cold steel. As it heats up, it reacts less and less, and at one point it stops doing so altogether. Then you need to take the workpiece with pliers and lower it into a bucket with cold water. And you will have a knife made of the best steel you can think of. This material leaves scratches on the glass.

To prevent the blade from rusting

A good knife should not rust. In order to avoid corrosion, the workpiece must be treated in ferric chloride. A gray matte film is formed.

Ferric chloride is not always available, but can be substituted:

vinegar;
raw potatoes.

IN acetic acid the blade is lowered, raw potatoes are simply rubbed. The effect will be the same as when treated with ferric chloride.

Next steps

After the blade has been hardened, you can begin making the handle. It is done in exactly the same way as in the previous case. As a last resort, you should make a temporary handle so that you can safely pick up the workpiece without fear of injury:

Clean the workpiece.
Do final sanding.
Sharpen the blade using sandpaper.

DIY glass knife

Making cutting tools from glass is not a very pleasant task, but sometimes it is necessary, for example, in camping conditions. You will need:

a suitable piece of window glass;
sharpening stone;
rope or duct tape.

Important! If necessary, window glass can be replaced with bottle glass. The main thing is that there is a long piece with a more or less even edge. It is better to immediately remove chips that are too protruding by placing the workpiece on a large flat stone and working with a smaller stone.

Once you have a blank of approximately the right shape in your hands, make a handle. This is especially necessary when working with glass. You can simply wrap the shank with something. Do the final sharpening on a flat, rough stone. But in any case, this tool can be used more like a scraper, although it can also cut meat, vegetables, etc.

Glass knife at home

At home, you can make a real masterpiece out of glass, which will both cut and decorate, for example, the kitchen. A product made of colored glass will look especially impressive:

Make a sketch - you can just do it on a sheet of paper.
Place a piece of glass on the paper.
Cut along the contour with a glass cutter.
Make a handle from transparent plastic and sand it.

Such a knife does not need sharpening or polishing if you just cut it fairly evenly.

Now you know what is best to make a knife from in any conditions, how to do it, so in any unforeseen situation you will not be left without a cutting tool. And perhaps, using the tips and instructions from this article, you will begin to create real decorative masterpieces. And if so, we wish you creative success!