My knife builds

[rifletuner]

Nice work!

Thanks mate

 

[rifletuner]

This is one I finished up a month or so back for a customer that needed to replace a knife that went AWOL. The knife was made to order and they chose the pattern out of some options I showed them, and also chose the handle colours. It was a very straight forward build as the brief gave me a fair bit of latitude.

The blade profile is a Nessmuk style skinner with a thumb ramp. The steel is 3mm Nitro V with a full flat grind. The edge is right on 0.2mm and cuts very well. The handle is a tapered tang with orange G10 material, black G10 liners. brass Loveless bolts & brass lanyard tube. Leather work is by a friend.

 

[rifletuner]

This is a knife I just finished for a customer that bought one of my knives at the Sydney knife show last year. He had the knife in his car and it was stolen in a brake-in. He wanted me to remake the knife like the original, but we changed a few things to suit him since it was being specifically made for him this time round. The original knife was one of my bushcrafter profiles, but he used it mainly for game processing and camp chores, so I modified it a little to suit that role a bit better.

The steel is 3mm Nitro V with cryo treatment. The bevel is a high saber grind, and the edge is ground to 0.2mm to make it quite slicey. I would normally grind the profile to more of a spear point, but this has a bit more drop at point to help with game processing. The handle is a tapered tang with Micarta handles, black G10 liners, brass Loveless bolts and brass lanyard tubes. The liners are difficult to see in the pictures, but that was what the customer requested.

 

[rifletuner]

For a while I have wanted to make my version of the Marbles Woodcraft knife. In 1915 Marbles released the Marbles Woodcraft knife and was awarded a patent on the knife in 1916. I decided to make my version of the Woodcraft, but as a full tang knife. I profiled out and fitted bolster and a set of handle scales. But the balance was off and I wasn't happy with the result. I put it aside for a while, but recently decided to remake it. I ground off the bolsters & handles, tapered the tang, then ground the blade down slightly. This version is much better balanced and should be a good worker.

The steel is 5.5mm S35VN. The tapper on the tang and distal taper on the blade remove a lot of the steel, so only a small section in the centre of the knife are still 5.5mm. The blade has a swedge which really gives it a fine point. The edge is a little under .2mm, so it will cut very well.

The handle is a book match piece of gidgee with some nice figure to it. It has fine red G10 liners, brass Loveless bolts and a brass lanyard tube.

 

[rifletuner]

This is one my son profiled out a couple of years back when he was fairly new to making knives - a classic skinner pattern. He did a few knife profiles at the time, and has done more since then so he had a few on the go. He started grinding the bevels on this one, but cocked it up and put it aside to work on other projects. After seeing it in the workshop for a couple of years, I asked him if he was okay with me finishing it off. He said he was fine with that, so I gave it a go.

The steel was 3mm SF100 stainless, but I had to grind about 1mm off in total to clean up the plunge lines to what I liked, so its about 2mm thick now. I have never fixed this problem with the grind before, so I screwed up the order of operations. I ground the bevels even, then ground the plunge lines down to correct them. But I should have done it the other way around. I had to take a lot of the plunge line off one side, so now the bevels are a bit out-of-whack. The knife is still totally usable, but it annoys me knowing it is something I could have done better.

For the handle, I wanted something a bit reminiscent of the Dexter Russel Green River skinner knife, but with a handle that has a shape that is a bit more modem. I had a care package of timber from a friend a few years ago that included a set of rough cut handle scales marked "maybe blue gum". For this project that we a bit of an oddity, the mystery wood seemed to be the right choice. The handle has black G10 liners and copper Loveless bolts. I think the colour combo worked well with the lighter timber.