Knife Handles

[dl351]

I was looking through my photos and found these pictures. I'm a bit of a knife collector (though being fresh out of school and jobless has slowed my collecting), so I decided that I wanted to try my hand at making knife handles. First is a SOG Seal 2000 that I made the cross-guard and wenge handle for. Next is a Ranger Knives RD6 with Bloodwood handles. After that is a Spyderco Mule. For that one I used black/tan G10 phenolic and black linen micarta. Next is a Becker BK2 that I used cocobolo, gray spacer material, and black paper micarta on. For fun, there are a couple firesteels made from thuya burl and mallee burl. The scrapers are hack saw blades with bloodwood on them. These were made before I had my lathe. Last, but not least, is a Cold Steel SRK that I reground into a full-height flat grind and put a walnut handle and brass cross guard on. Enjoy!

 

[snyiper]

Nice knives what do you grind the blades with? Always loved knives but unsure I could complete one and have it look nice.

 

[dl351]

Nice knives what do you grind the blades with? Always loved knives but unsure I could complete one and have it look nice.

Thanks. All of these are production knives that I simply made new handles for. The only one that I actually (re)ground is the Cold Steel SRK. That one was a saber grind (only ground partially up the side) and I turned it into a full-height flat grind so it will slice better. I used my dad's old 6x48 Craftsman belt sander. Since it was already heat treated, it was a few hours of repeated grinding and dunking in water to make sure it didn't heat up too much and ruin the temper. I've completely ground 3 other blades from annealed steel and unground blanks, but I still need to send them out for heat treating. I'm sure I'll post them here once they're done.

If you're really interested in doing a blade from start to finish, I recommend checking out this site:

www.usaknifemaker.com

They have plenty of un-ground knife blanks to choose from. IMHO, those make great starting points because cutting/grinding the outline of knives takes forever. With that part already done, you still need to grind the blades, get them heat treated, put handles on, and sharpen them. That's plenty of work to make them "your own" knives.