Need to know how to make a knife

[Dave Mcintire]

Someone wants me to make them a knife. I will buy the blade but want to know how to attach the handle. The blade I am looking at has a blade extension for the handle that is smaller (narrower) than the handle will be. How do you fix the handle to the blade for a knife like this? Is there a book or DVD that shows this. DO you drill through the blade and rivet or use screws?

[Terry Beadle]

If the blade blank has atleast two holes in the handle area you are good to go to pins or rivets. If not, you have to see if the handle area will let you drill some suitable holes as some times the heat treat will harden the handle area so that a standard drill will not work. If that's the case, you can buy a diamond drill on line that will drill hardened steel. In either case you need two holes as only one hole will not work as well as two. Some knife blanks have three or more depending on the length of the handle and the diameter size of the holes.

You can buy pins from knife builders supply houses of which there are a plenty. You can also use soft steel, brass, or even copper round stock to make your own pins. You can buy round stock at Home Depot or Lowes. The scales should be pinned and epoxied for strongest results.

I do have a shop knife that has no holes in the handle tang but was put into a tight fitting mortise and epoxied. I've used this knife for over 10 years and there is no handle looseness at all. So there's some "slop" in the process if you do a good fit to the mortise for the handle.

I recommend tight grained woods for the handle scales. Not all exotics are a good idea even if they look beautiful. It depends on what kind of knife you are making too. If it's a working tool, hickory is cheap and tough. It can have beautiful grain too but to the artisian goes the spoils. If you are going for beauty, there are lots of knife scales for sale on the net. I like left overs from box or plane making projects. Call me cheap!

Happy Holidays and good luck !

[Tom Walz]

knifeforums.com
bladeforums.com

Alpha Knife supply

[Joe Lasch]

It sounds like the blade you have is one with a tang that will be hidden in the handle. Like Terry mentioned, a mortise filled with epoxy will be the way to attach a handle to it. If you aren't set up to do a deep mortise, one way around it is to use smaller blocks, drill a hole in each, and then stack them together. Makes for a cool looking handle that way as well to have matching complimentary woods. Just be sure to mask off the blade itself to keep epoxy off of it.
There are some very good knife making forums that have lots of answers if you really want to get into it. One that I visit on occasion is on TradGang.com

[Hugh Watling]

For general knife making information try the following sites:

http://www.northcoastknives.com/ (they have many tutorials with pictures)

http://knifenetwork.com/forum/index.php

http://www.knifeforums.com/forums/index.php?

http://www.knife-making-supplies.net/ (the knife gallery on the forums index page has plenty of good pictures)

For knife making supplies try the following:

http://www.knifekits.com/vcom/index.php

http://www.texasknife.com/vcom/index.php

http://www.jantzsupply.com/

http://www.northcoastknives.com/

http://www.premiumknifesupply.com/

[george wilson]

You can drill holes in hardened,even HSS,with a small masonry drill if you know what you are doing. Run it fast. Do not let it get too hot,or the brazed carbide bit will melt out. Peck with the drill,but peck firmly. This helps to keep the drill cooler. Sharpen the carbide drill on a diamond stone for each hole. I've popped 1 1/2" wide solid HSS power hacksaw blades in half. Found that I had to re touch the edge for each hole. I was making kitchen knives from them.

It sounds like you have a tang,anyway,that should be epoxied into a hole as said. Just added the drilling info.