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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.