Bill Menees's Blog

I've finished my first knife this year. I started running in February, so a lot of my free time has been spent doing that. But Amy and Aaron were out of town for a night a couple of weeks ago, so I took the opportunity to start a new knife.

I started a 15" Bowie knife back in January, but it was very hard to work on. It's so big I can't really work on it evenly with my sander or buffer. So I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out what to do with it. Finally, I just stuck it on a shelf as a project for another day.

So I started fresh and decided to make a small knife this time. The first day I met with Bob (my knife mentor) he told me that making smaller knives was easier anyway because the bigger they are, the more room you have to screw up. That's certainly true. I intentionally kept this knife small, and it seemed easy to work with the whole time. My failed Bowie knife was a tedious disaster by comparison.

This is a full tang knife where I filled in the gaps between the handle slabs using thin oak strips. I originally planned to put a cord wrap on the handle, but the curved shape made that awkward. The wrap kept slipping off the end, so I gave up on it. Straight handles or handles with ends work better for cord wraps.

The sheath is the first leather work I've ever done. It's very amateurish, but it could be worse. I used some leather supplies that my father-in-law had as a kid, so they're probably 45 years old or more. The nicest piece was 4oz leather, and I only had plastic lace. Mostly I prefer woodworking, so I may go back to making wooden sheaths on future knifes. But we'll see. If I had 8-9oz leather and some basic tools for working with it, I'm sure I could do better.

My conclusion after finishing this knife is that I really need to get some better supplies if I want to start making better knives. At a minimum, I need to get sanding belts finer than 120 grit, I need to get some good knife steel (ATS-34), and I need a basic leather working kit. This art really is hard. I'm in awe of what traditional knife makers could do without any power tools or carefully manufactured supplies.

Material: Random stainless steel with oak handles and 1/8" steel pins. 4oz leather sheath.
Blade Length: 4 7/8"
Overall Length: 9 1/8"
Started: June 11, 2007
Finished: June 24, 2007

Labels: Knifemaking