Wood Carving Knives

I was recently asked by someone if I could make them some wood carving knives and they sent me a photo of what they were after, it looked simple enough and I had an old saw blade the perfect thickness for knives like these. I had also never made a knife where the tang was heated to insert into the wood for the handle.

Supplies

• Old saw blade
• Wood for handles
• Ginder
• Angle Grinder
• Round File
• Dremel
• Sandpaper
• Oil or varnish
• Gas Torch
• Draw Knife
• Wood Plane
• Wood Rasp

Step 1: Cut Out the Blade

Print out the attached template and glue these onto the saw blade. Once the glue dries you can easily cut these out using an angle grinder.

Step 2: Warning

I just wanted to take a moment to point out an important part of shaping the knife to make it much stronger. You will notice where the blade ends and the tang starts it's a graceful curve rather than a hard right angle. This is important because it prevents the weakening of the knife. A hard angle introduces a weak spot where the blade could potentially break off from the tang.

Step 3: Final Shaping

Before the final shaping of the blades, I annealed the steel by heating it red hot and allowing it to cool slowly, this softens the steel so it can be more easily worked. I then used a round file to carefully shape the curve into the transition from blade to tang as mentioned above.

Now I used a grinder to flatten and smooth out all the edges of the blades as they were a bit rough after cutting them out.

Lastly, I ground the bevel onto the blade. Since the saw blade was a lot thinner than what I normally used this went very fast.

Step 4: Heat Treat the Blades

I heated the blades up to critical temperature (glowing cherry red or a magnet no longer sticks) and then plunged them into oil to harden. If you hardened the blades correctly a file should slide over it without cutting in.

I then baked the blades in the oven at 180 to 200 degrees Celsius for about an hour. This tempers the blade so it won't be brittle.

Step 5: Prep the Wood

I selected a piece of Walnut from the woodpile and split it into chunks with an axe and then took them down to square lengths with a draw knife.

Step 6: Red Hot Handle

I haven't ever made a knife handle this way before, so it was a good learning exercise. I didn't want to heat up the knives I had just made and ruin their heat treatment so I made a copy of the knife tang on a leftover piece of saw blade.

I held the tang spike I made and heated it with the gas torch and then pushed the handle blank onto it. This burns its way into the wood. I found if I heated the entire length of the spike it would bend, so it worked better warming the entire length but only making the end red hot.

It was a pretty fun process and I've learnt a lot doing this and want to try it again.

I did set the smoke alarm off in my shed though, so a warning it does make a lot of smoke.

Step 7: Fix the Handle

Now you just need to insert the knife into the handle, I held the blade in the vice (make sure to use soft jaws to protect the blade) and then gently hammered the wood into place.

Step 8: Shape the Handle

I marked out the length of the handle and then trimmed the wood to length. I then removed the bulk of the wood using a small block plane and finished shaping the handles with a wood rasp.

I find using a sanding wheel on a dremel is a good way to smooth out the bulk of the handle, but I always like to do a final hand sanding to finish the handles.

Step 9: Finish the Handle

I initially gave the handles a coat of linseed oil but I didn't like the finish. I ended up giving the handles a few coats of varnish. After the first coat, it was a little rough so I gave them a light sand with fine sandpaper before applying the next coat.

Step 10: Sharpen

I wanted these knives to be very sharp, I don't know much about wood carving but I figured a blunt knife wouldn't be any good. So I sharpened these on some stones and then finished them up on the strop to really bring them to a razor edge.