Making Carving knives?

We all make stuff other than pipes, so here's a place where "anything goes" as far as showing off some of your projects and other hobbies.
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Kada
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Making Carving knives?

Post by Kada »

anyone here do it? i tried it a few years ago with ok results, but failed on teh metal en of things....i ended up burning the metal, which was poor quality to begin with.

I really like the idea of making my own (wood) carving knives cause it allows any shape we could want ( or rather, able to make) and a little cheaper.

i must admit, when it comes to teh metal i am a little lost. What type of metal is ideal? im told steel with higher carbon is good, but have no idea what it all means or to what ratios and what not. anyone know of a good metal stock to use for this? i was thinking of getting a few ruler sized pieces of good metal and cutting/working them into blades and making wooden handles.

any thoughts or experiences?
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KurtHuhn
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Re: Making Carving knives?

Post by KurtHuhn »

Yes. :wink:

Start off with good, high carbon steel. Do not use stainless steel for these, they can be made sharp, but the edge won't last, and heat treating them is a pain - and the steel is expensive to boot. The steel grade you'll want to start with is 1075, for a variety of reasons including availability, price, workability, ease of heat treat, etc.

Beyond that, everything changes. Edge bevels, blade shape, blade thickness, etc. Most carving knives I've seen tend to be rather thin blades with the bevel flat ground to the edge. They're seems to be a mix of single or double bevels, and I'm not sure what the difference is - perhaps it's between chip carving and traditional carving. Some are shaped like chisels, and some look like hooks. This one area where the shape of the blade and the bevel geometry is going to play a major part.

If you decide to go forward this, I suggest doing your research. There's a lot of misinformation out there, largely spread by people that have never made a knife - like "just heat it with a torch until it's red then dunk it in water" :lol: . There's a couple really good books out there, and I suggest anything from Wayne Goddard or Bob Loveless as a good start. These will give you the foundation you need to build on in order to make truly useful blades.
Kurt Huhn
AKA: Oversized Ostrogoth
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staffwalker
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Re: Making Carving knives?

Post by staffwalker »

I don't know how carving blades are ground but it is certainly different. The first pipe I ever made was whittled to basic shape with a carving knife. At the time I had a really sharp folding pocket knife that would shave and also hold an edge. I found it wouldn't do anything to briar, might as well have been using a butter knife. My son who is a hobbyist wood carver, gave me a simple cheap carving knife he bought by the dozens to give to boy scouts who took his woodcarving class. (He said it was cheaper to buy and give each a knife than try to repair his expensive knives after loaning them.) I found I could take off rather large chips from the briar block with this knife. It took me three or four days to whittle the 8oz block down to about 3 1/2ozs. At this time, after looking at the blisters on my hands from using the knife and thinking how many more days it would take to reduce the block a couple more ounces I thought to myself, "This really is looking more and more like a pipe, in fact, I'm calling it a pipe as of now". I still smoke it on occasion even if is does take two hands to hold it. bob
Kada
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Re: Making Carving knives?

Post by Kada »

hehe, ya carving an entire block with knives would be rather labour intensive!!! i shaoe more or less "traditionally" nad use knives/chissels to do detail stuff.

kurt, thanks a lot for the info, if your into i would love to see some of your work!

i have looked around as astart for some steels that are used in the knives i have bought jsut to get a feel for price. i have a grinder, and wheels are generaly not too expensive, but i am not sure the whole process (especially heat treating). in a very basic sense, would you say this is a very large investment?

i am looking to stay under $300 ish as thats about the cost of every knife i eventually want. but if it costs a little more to make them at least we gain a skill which is good :)

living where im living shipping things here is quite expensive, especially books....would you say "The Wonder of Knife Making." is the one to get? it looks quite good, but with $50 shipping costs for many books i want to make sure it is the right one to get :)

i am thinking of getting that one and 'How to Make Knives', at least as a start.
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KurtHuhn
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Re: Making Carving knives?

Post by KurtHuhn »

For the type of work I expect you'll be doing to start off, and the tool budget you're going to want to stick to, I suggest $50 Knife Shop from Wayne Goddard. It's an extremely good book, and shows you that you don't need a ton of expensive tools or equipment to produce a workable and usable knife. There's loads and loads of good info in there, not just from a design standpoint, but also from a metallurgical standpoint as well. From there you could go to almost any other book from any author and pick up additional tidbits and really hone your knowledge.

A good knife can be made with little more than a file, a drill, some sandpaper, and some time investment. The first "real" knife I ever made was made that way, and despite taking a long time, it came out great. Since then my collection of tools has increased, but the knowledge I gained by using nothing but hand tools was priceless. If you plan on making more than just a couple knives, you'll want a belt grinder or two, but these can be built from scrap for fairly short money.

Heat treating requires some knowledge, but on certain steels you really won't need too much in the way of specialized equipment. Just recently, actually, I heat treated a pocket knife I made for myself using a simple MAPP torch and some transmission fluid, followed by a couple temper cycles in the kitchen oven - but not all steels will be as simple to treat. Some require very high temps in inert atmosphere for up to a couple hours, followed by plate quenching and subzero cryo treat - not really possible on a budget unless you send them out to a specialty house to do them for you. That's why I suggested 1075, but any of the 10xx steels would be similarly easy, as would 5160 or the similar 9260 (though they're usually more expensive).

Whatever you do, don't attempt to make a very big your first time around. Start small. Small knives are far easier to shape and heat treat than larger ones. And do your research! Learn all you can! Knife making requires a great deal of knowledge to get right - everything from understanding the principles of edge geometry, to the metalurgy necessary to understand what the steel is doing as you're shaping or heat treating it.

Some of my past work:
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Kurt Huhn
AKA: Oversized Ostrogoth
artisan@k-huhn.com
Kada
Posts: 20
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2009 8:49 am

Re: Making Carving knives?

Post by Kada »

very nice work kurt! nice knives! the second to last is particularly handsome, to my taste anyway.

i got 50 $ knife and how to make knives ordered, cant wait to get htem here. thanks for the suggestions on books! now to try and track down a local source of metal...i would hate to think the shipping costs or steel stock....

i am feeling good about everything, but the heat treating, to be honest, worries me some!

take it easy.
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