In this build I will show you how I made a knife from an old farriers rasp to sell to a friend.

I will try to explain my methods as easy the understand as possible so forgive me if I fail.

Step 1: Design Your Knife

when making a knife for someone else you should ask if they have any design input. My friend just told me to surprise him so this is what I came up with, if you need inspiration Pinterest has some great pictures of knives. I try to keep my handles at about 4in but that's just me, the blade I put at about 5 1/2in

Step 2: Find Material

Now this step is important. To get a knife to keep it's edge you need to harden the metal, normally when making a knife you use a softened piece of metal, grind it to the shape you want and then heat treat it which makes it very hard and then use a prosess called tempering to make the blade less brittle. Using a file gives you an advantage if you do it correctly, because a file is already heat treated all you need to do is temper it and then grind it to shape. But you must be very careful not to burn the metal, if you do then you'll have to heat treat it to regain the hardness, so when making this knife whenever it gets to hot to hold cool it in water.

the farriers rasp or file you can find at garage sales or flea markets

Your going to need to heat up the metal to 400'F and keep it at that temperature for 2 hours. You can use whatever you have to do this, I used our families oven the first time but (see story below) after that incident I've had to use the barbecue, but I'm not sure how well it keeps a steady temperature, so I would say the best thing is what my cousin uses which is a toaster oven which he bought at a garage sale

You'll want to clean it off first. I tempered a large batch of files at once in our oven which included 3 farriers rasps which are used to file horse hooves and I smoked up the house

Now useing an angle grinder I ground the teeth and filings down to get a smooth surface

Step 3: Cut Off Excess

put the design that you have on the rasp, mark then cut the excess off the rasp and profile the blade with the grinder

Step 4: Finish Profile the Blade

I use a 4x36in belt sander to profile the knife.

I follow the lines mostly but now you can go pretty much by feel

Make sure to keep it cool

Step 5: Bevel the Knife

I use the sander to bevel the blade,

there are ways to do this using measurements but I like to do it freehand.

Hold the blade at the desired angle to put the edge on it, and repeat on the opposite side. keep the sides as even as possible and keep the edge straight

Step 6: Soften Handle

now from what I told you before you know you want the blade hard, but your going to want to drill holes for the handles so we have to soften the handle without softening the blade

To do this place the blade in a fireproof container fill it with enough water to cover the blade. Use a torch to heat up the handle until the colour turns bluish. Let it air cool and now it will be soft

Step 7: Drill Holes

You can use a hand drill but it is very difficult to keep the holes straight that way. My cousin has a drillpress so I use that measure the holes trying to keep them even.

I drilled a lot of holes for looks but you don't need that many only about 2

Step 8: Clean Blade Part 1

Frequent dipping in water will make the blade rusty to clean this place the knife in an old cup full of vinegar, just don't leave it in for more then a day. I left a blade in too long once and it became pitted and was very difficult to fix

Step 9: Clean Blade Part 2

using the vinegar puts a grey hint to the knife. to clean this and to make the knife look nice clamp the knife down and hand sand I use WD 40 to aid this

Step 10: Find Handle Material and Pins

I forgot to take pictures of the wood before I cut it so I put a different picture

Find a nice looking wood for the handles I think what I used is oak

Find pin material that fits your holes, I used two different kinds for a cool look

Step 11: Cover Blade

i didn't want to get glue on the blade so i wrapped the blade in a paper towel and taped it on

Step 12: Glue Handle Scales

so I use 2 part epoxy which cures in 5 mins so these pictures are from before I glued it

Mix the epoxy spread on one side of the handle and blade push the pins through the holes spread glue on the other side of the handle and blade and push on. clamp the sides tightly and leave overnight