Hi my son is big into the great outdoors etc and I'm big into trying things, he was as enquiring about a Combat knife so I suggested that we would try to make one.

Step 1: Material

Where we live we didn't have a great selection of material available so I got a length (1m) of 50mmX3mm stainless steel from a local hardware shop. (This Stainless Steel was/is difficult to harden but good for a replica knife).

Step 2: Template

Some people are good at drawing/sketching but not me/us in fact it was at this stage that my son became very disheartened as he knew what he wanted but could not draw/sketch it. Thanks to technology we conducted an internet search and even though we found plenty of pictures it was extremely difficult to get a picture which gave us the "true" length of a knife.

As a result in most of my pictures (in this post) I tried where possible to take pictures perpendicular to the knife for better scale. I've attached the PDF of the picture the one I used.

Combat knife template.pdf
Download

Step 3: Printed Template

Here we glued the paper template (printed from our PC) onto our steel. Note our material was not wide enough to accommodate the whole template so sacrifices were made and we positioned it to make the most of what we had.

Next we marked the outline with centre-punch marks so that we can drill around the profile to assist cutting we were using a 3mm drill so all punch marks were 2mm approx from the knife outline. (Punch marks did not show up on pic so I didn't include this)

Step 4: Chain Drilling

We drilled the first series of holes with a 3mm drill for the outline (chain drilling) and 4mm holes for the handle rivets with a 6mm hole for the lanyard.

Step 5: Rough Cut

After doing the straight line cuts on the knife we decided to mark and drill some more chain drilling around the curves to assist with the cutting later.

Step 6: Cutting

Onto the band saw for some more cutting, the previously drilled holes made cutting the curves considerably easier.

Step 7: Blank

Cutting completed, knife ready for filing.

Step 8: Filing/shaping

Filing took a lot of time, we did manage to do some of this work on the grinder but it was mostly done by hand.

Step 9: Heat Treatment

The heat treatment was done next and we concentrated on the cutting parts of the blade (all temperatures were done by eye/colour; I have included the recommended temperatures for reference, my humble forge no comments please).

Stage 1. Here we heated the knife in our forge to the required temperature (over 750˚C) and we soaked the blade in carbon (Case hardening, note carbon in the tin beside our coal fire).

Stage 2.We heated the blade (over 750˚C) again and plunged it into oil to harden it.

Stage 3. We then tempered the blade (heated it around 250˚C and cooled it) make it less brittle

Step 10: Quenching

I have included a short video of our quenching technique using what we have available 😊, (not what I would love to have #adapt, improvise and overcome).

Combat Knife (Call of Duty) - Step #10
Download

Step 11: Handel

After spending a lot
of time filing and rough grinding the knife we decided to use 10mm nylon for the handel.

Step 12: Handle Fitting

The handle was cut in two pieces (scales) and drilled individually the technique we use is where we marked the letter A on the top face of the blade (look closely at the picture) and the handle scale was marked with an A also marked and drilled, we repeated this with B on the other side so when you place the letters facing up you know immediately which scale should be at the correct face of the knife.

Step 13: Scales

The scales were then fitted this involved the mixing of some epoxy resin applying it to the scales (this is where your lettering is extremely important A + B) placing the scales on the correct sides and inserting the 4mm brass pins through the handles and peening the pins at both ends, (the 4mm holes on the scales were countersunk to a depth of 1mm approx)

Step 14: Finishing

Are you ever Finished!

We continued to finish the knife, filing/shaping the handle, grinding cleaning, are you ever finished!

Step 15: Semi Finished Product

Interestingly my son wants the knife blade as black as possible (he would tell me at this stage 😒 ) so we will consider “bluing” it with super blue into the future, we will finish sharpening and finishing the knife another time as he is too eager to have his new knife now!

We do hope that you enjoyed sharing our journey with us thanks.