Thanks cast boolits

[Sinned]

We'll looks like I'm going to have to try yet another project thanks to this site.....;-p

[mac266]

HAHAHA!!!! I just made my first knife, too. I started with a kit from Track of the Wolf (no, I don't work for them), and am happy with it. I think for your first you should do that, too. Going from scratch with a slab of steel would be very, very time consuming.

[Sinned]

It's to late for me to go with a kit knife . I took an old corn knife off an international corn head and cut it down a little , cut out a rough shape with the plasma cutter . rough red out my bevels with the grinder and started refining them with a file . So far anyway...

[Sinned]

[Sinned]

Well I finished my first knife learning a few things along the way. When I used the plasma cutter and angle grinder to get the rough shape of my knife I lost a lot of temper in the steel,and I quickly learned this knife was just to big to heat treat with the torch. So I ended up building a small propane forge out of an old propane bottle we had laying around the farm.
So I then heated the blade to critical (non magnetic) and oil quenched then tempered in the oven for a couple hrs, sanded with a few different grits of wet dry paper and sharpened with a few different stones,and wrapped the handle with 14' or so of para cord (I know I need to re wrap and take my tome and make sure my loops are even).
After sharpening and wrapping the handle I took it out and hacked down a few 3" diameter or so trees and dropped the edge on the corner of a chunk of steel and the edge never suffered anything a handful of licks on a sharpening stone wouldn't fix so it seems to be pretty good steel.