The tools you will need are in the picture above.  Unless you’re well practiced or have a good eye for proportion, you’ll need a caliper to measure and mark your initial cuts.  You’ll need a vise to hold your work, and a triangular and a round file.  I like to do my filework before heat treating, as it’s easier to do, and easier on files.

The first step is to score lines along the spine, equal distance apart.  The actual measurement is arbitrary, but about 1/2 inch is right.  The scored lines didn’t show up in the pictures.  Step two is to make a small half-circle cut with the round file at every line along one side.  Make the cut at a 45 degree angle to the flat of the blade, and perpendicular to the spine of the blade.  You want the cut to come almost to the middle of the spine, as in the picture above.

The picture above illustrates the correct angle to make your initial cuts.  From the top, it looks like a 90 degree angle, from the side, a 45 degree angle.

After you have made your half-circle cuts all the way down one side, turn the blade and make cuts down the other side, directly in the gaps of the first cut.  What you end up with after all the half-circle cuts have been made should look like the picture above.

After you’ve made your alternating half circle cuts down both sides, it’s time to move on to the triangle file.  Using the same 45 and 90 angle as you made your first cuts, make a SMALL (only two or three strokse) cut with the triangle file just past each half-circle cut, toward the tip of the knife.  This step isn’t pictured, but is essential in helping you get nice, sharp, uniformly placed thorns.  After you’ve made a SMALL cut, shift your file angle to a compound 45 degree angle to make the thorns.  The file now runs at a 45 degree angle to the flat of the blade (same as the previous cuts) and also at a 45 degree angle to the spine.  Your hand should be toward the butt of the knife, with the file pointing across the spine and toward the tip of the knife.  Use this compound angle to set your thorns.  The small cuts you made in the previous step will serve to keep all of your thorn cuts in the same place relative to the half-circles.  What you’ll end up with should look like the picture above.

Using either the flat of your triangle file, or a small flat file, round off the “corners” of the half circles and the inside of the thorns.  It only takes a few strokes on each corner.  What you’ll end up with should look like the picture above.  In the picture, the top side has been rounded, while the bottom side has yet to be done.  You’ll notice that on the knife in question, I did all the thorns on one side before I started the other side.  This is the harder way to do it.  It’s easier if you make all of your small triangle cuts and set your thorn positions on both sides before  you clean up the thorns and round out the corners.

I put vine filework on two blades the day I made the tutorial.  The picture above is both blades completely finished.  On one, I marked the spine with a black sharpie to show the filework a little better. 

I hope what I’ve shown is understandable, helpful, and will help you make a more beautiful knife.

I etch the blade after the handle is finished, before I sharpen. It’s the last step before I call a knife “done.” Step one, the blade must be clean. I clean the blade with acetone, then wash it with dish soap. It’s important to do both, or the etch won’t come out right.

Next I write my name with a sharpie marker and box it in. It usually takes me several tries to get it right, but sharpie comes off easily with acetone. It needs to be a regular sharpie, as the fine point ones don’t lay down enough ink.

Next I apply a little bit of diluted ferric chloride, careful to keep it inside the box. Ferric chloride is available as PCB etchant at Radio Shack. I dilute it 4:1 with distilled water for my knife making use.

I let the ferric chloride sit about one minute, maybe 90 seconds, then I rinse it off in the sink. I rinse toward the spine, so the FC doesn’t run back across the unprotected blade. Coming out of the etch, the logo looks like this.

After cleaning the sharpie off with acetone, it looks like this. I take a tiny bit of JB bore paste on a rag and buff the logo by hand. I assume Iosso or Flitz or something similar would work as well. If your etch comes out where the letters have some etch in them, you left the etch on too long. You can buff the logo until almost all the oxide is gone, and it looks more frosted. If you etch went well and you have no etch in the letters, you can buff the logo just a little or not at all.

After buffing with the JB and cleaning with acetone, the logo is finished and looks like this. This method isn’t nearly as professional looking as an electro etcher or stamp but it works well for those of us on a budget. I suppose it would be harder if my last name were Szymanski or Wilkerson, but it works pretty well for Fry.

How I Build a Knife

The first thing I do is draw out my ideas on paper. You can see the paper in the top of the pic. After I get a good idea of where I’m going with the design, I transfer the design to my raw material with a sharpie marker. These particular knives are made out of some of the customer’s grandfather’s farrier rasps. Grandpa was a farrier, and my customer wanted something with that heritage. He wanted three knives that were alike, but subtly different.

After I get the designs on the raw material, I use an angle grinder to cut off the big pieces and my belt grinder to finish the profile. When they’re done, they look like this. I had started grinding the bevels on the top one.

Once the knives are profiled, it’s time to grind the bevels. These knives are all going to be flat ground most of the way up the spine. I grind the bevels with a 60 grit belt, then switch to a 120 and then a 220 to get them ready for heat treating. When they’re ready to heat treat, I drill the handle pin holes. Don’t forget to drill the pin holes before you heat treat, as hardened steel is tough on drill bits, if it will drill at all. Learned that one the hard way.

Once they’re ground and machine polished, it’s time to fire up the forge. My forge is literally a pile of bricks and some charcoal. Forced air from an air mattress pump is blown under the fire through a pipe called a tuyere (tweer). The materials are simple, but it takes practice to learn heat control.

You can see in the picture how the knife is showing some color. It looks like dark red in the picture, but it’s more like a red in natural light, or like a dark orange at night. The simple version of what I do is to take the knife to nonmagnetic and then quench it in oil. There’s more to it than that, as I normalize at least twice before the quenching heat, and I pay careful attention to not overheat the blade, particularly the tip. When the heat is nice and even throughout the blade and I see the color I want, I quench the blade. There are many quench mediums available, anything from waxy goop up to fancy quench oils that cost 25 dollars a gallon and more. I use vet grade mineral oil, a light thin oil, and it gives me results that I’m satisfied with. To me, my results are better than are available using goop, dirty motor oil, or vegetable oil.

Coming out of the quench, the blades are very hard, but brittle. If I were to whack one on the side of my anvil, it would shatter. In order to take care of the brittleness, the knife is tempered. I like to temper at 450 for two one-hour cycles, shooting for a Rockwell hardness in the 58 to 60 range. You’ll notice in the picture that the knives are silvery gray. That color is one of the indicators that the heat treat went well.

When the knives come out of the oven, they have interesting colors. You may have read about tempering to a “dark straw” color. The blades in the picture are purple. When you wash and scrub the oil off of your blades, which you won’t forget to do more than one time, and put them in the oven with forge scale still on, the scale holds a little of the oil and makes the colors darker. When you sand off the scale before you temper, you get….you guessed it, dark straw.

After tempering, I take them back to the grinder. I grind the scale off with a fresh 220 grit belt, then polish them up with 320 and 400. When the 400 grit finish is nice and even, it’s time to start hand sanding. Some people find hand sanding relaxing, others tedious. Either way, it’s the best way to get a nice even finish. Someone once told me to use sandpaper as if it were free. You’ll only frustrate yourself and take more time by over-using a piece of paper. I like the Norton paper, and the 3M comes well recommended. The cheap stuff from Harbor Freight is cheap for a reason. If I took the blade to 400 on the machine, I start hand sanding at 320. I use WD 40 as a cutting fluid.

That’s my brother sanding. You may notice that he’s using a block of wood to back the paper. A hard backing makes your paper cut better and last longer. I use 320, then 400, then 600. When you switch grits, change directions. Think ahead so that your final grit runs parallel to the blade. When you get your 600 grit finish nice and even, clean off the blade and get a fresh piece of 600. Run it in smooth lengthwise strokes the entire length of the blade. This makes a good working finish with no “fishhooks.” Take one side all the way to finished before you start the other side. Tape up the finished side before you put it back in the vise, so you don’t scratch it.

The picture above is the machine finish on the second side, after I finished the first side. When the second side is done, tape the entire blade. Cut your handle material roughly to shape and drill the pin holes. Leave your pins a bit long, so they stick out the sides of your handles. You only have to profile the front edge of the handle prior to gluing, but get that front edge down to at least 220 grit. I use 2 part 60 minute epoxy. Glue the handles, and clamp lightly. The strength of the joint is in the glue, and if you clamp too tightly, you’ll squeeze too much glue out.

After the glue cures overnight, it’s back to the grinder for profiling. The scales on this particular knife were extra thick, so it took a while at the grinder to get them profiled. Fresh belts cut quickly, and old belts don’t cut as fast. Keep that in mind. As you get closer to where you want to end up, switch to an old belt so that the inevitable “oops” won’t be as bad and will be easier to fix. When you’ve got it just about profiled, you can switch to a finer belt, or you can go to hand rasps and files for even more control. When you’re satisfied with the profile, take the handle down to at least 220 grit. This one went to 400. I use a super glue finish on most of my handles. It takes at least 4 coats, sometimes 8, to get a nice even finish. Sand smooth to 220 or higher in between coats. I use a single finger from a latex glove, because super glue will stick your appendages together. I like the thin glue that I buy from USAKnifemaker.com, as the thinner glue makes a better finish.

After the handle is finished, all that’s left is to sharpen the knife, etch my name, and take pictures to get it ready to sell. I forgot to take pictures of the etching process. I’ll catch it on the next round and put pictures up. Specs on this one: 13 inches OAL, handle material is paduak, with three 3/16″ brass pins.

I finally finished two more of the knives from this thread. The one on the left is about 11 3/4 inches with cocobolo handles and six 1/8″ brass pins. The one on the right is 11 1/2 inches with bubinga handles and two 3/16″ brass pins.

ATS-34 steel, walnut bolsters, olive handle.

 1080 carbon steel, walnut bolsters, osage handle

 1080 carbon steel, mesquite bolsters, snakewood

D2 steel, mesquite bolsters, rosewood, tapered tang

CM154 Stainless, mesquite burl bolsters, cocobolo handle.

Same knife as above, showing the tapered tang and dovetailed bolsters.

 Typical sheaths for this model.  I also do basketweave tooling.

Bottom knife, 1080 carbon steel, juniper burl, mesquite.

This was my 150th knife.  The blade is CPM 154 Stainless, mirror polished, with dovetailed nickel silver bolsters, double cut wave filework, and cocobolo handles.

1080, Orange G10 bolsters, Black Canvas Micarta handles with stainless 3/32 pins. 

This knife is the bolstered version of the Spicewood Special.  This blade is 1080 steel, with dovetailed 416 stainless bolsters and some top-notch mesquite burl from my grandma’s ranch in Christoval, Texas.  Filework is the vine pattern. 

This knife has dovetailed black micarta bolsters, osage handles, and stainless pins.  Filework is the traditional vine pattern. 

This knife is similar to the one above, with camel bone bolsters and buffalo horn handles with cross filework and red liners.

This knife is the original Spicewood Special, made from 1080 bar stock with elm handles and brass and mosaic pins.  Ever since I first profiled this knife, I’ve liked it, and it turned out sleek.  The first one is 7 1/2 inches long, with a 3 3/4 inch blade.  This was my fiftieth knife.

I had a customer see the original Spicewood Special and ask me to make one just like it with bone and filework. 

Here are a couple more Spicewood Specials.  The left one has contoured Texas ebony handles, red liners, and triangle filework.  The right one has dovetailed micarta bolsters and osage handles, with vine filework. 

This knife is 1080 with osage handles and stainless pins.

This next handle is some mesquite from Lankford’s here in Abilene.  Blade is 1/8″ 1080 carbon steel, with four brass pins and small broken wave filework.

While I may occasionally buy handle material and bar stock online, I grind or forge every blade I make.  Some “knife makers” buy a blank off of the internet, handle material off of e-bay, and put it all together and call it a custom knife.    This particular knife is as far from that as possible. 

This knife blade began its life many years ago as the leaf spring from a 1958 Ford pickup truck.  I cut the spring down to a bar 1 inch x 3/8 inch and went to forging on my brother’s Peter Wright anvil.  An hour or two later, I had a blade, using only about 4 inches of the original 9 inch long bar.  I normalized three times, then did some grinding to clean up the bevels and the profile.  I heat treated the knife in my kiln, soaking at 1500 degrees for ten minutes then quenching in mineral oil, then tempering two one hour cycles at 450 degrees. 

This handle material is from a juniper burl stump I carried out of the mountains in Ruidoso, New Mexico, from approximately 33 degrees, 20 minutes, 58.42 seconds North and 105 degrees, 41 minutes, and 29.45 seconds West for you GPS users who want to see exactly where this stuff came from. 

The guard and pin are copper, to match the reddish color of the burl wood.  This is perhaps the finest wood I have ever personally harvested.