Bill Menees's Blog

After making my first knife I got in touch with Bob Levine the TN state mentor for the Knifemaker’s Guild. I set up an appointment to go work with him for a day, and he told me there was nothing wrong with making wood knives until I got the equipment to make steel knives. He said he occasionally made and sold wood knives, and he later showed me some of them.

I’ve always loved swords and daggers, so I started making a dagger. Bob told me that double-edged knives are harder to make, and he was right. I cut the blade out with my scroll saw and shaped it with my rotary wizard. It was uneven and a little ugly.

I decided to put a guard on this one, so I cut the tang down and made an elliptical guard to fit it. I drilled the guard hole out, and then used an Xacto knife to shave it out to a square slot. It made a really tight fit. The guard was still little ugly, so I did some filework on it. That made it more interesting and slightly less ugly. I wish I’d planned ahead better and done the filework before I put the guard on. The file left some dings on the blade.
For handles I used two pieces of pine the same width as the tang. I used “Liquid Nails” to glue them on, and I didn’t pin them. Instead I took some old twine and did a very tight handle wrap using the instructions I found at http://runningdogknife.homestead.com/cordwrap.html. To keep the wrap from sliding off the butt end, I made a pommel using a wood screw and several washers. It isn’t pretty, but it works.

Update: In mid-July 2006, I got a belt sander, and I used that to smooth out some of the wavy spots on the blade. It’s still not a very pretty knife, but at least it’s less ugly.

Material: 1”x ¼” Pine
Blade Length: 7 ¾”
Overall Length: 12 7/8”
Started: Early July 2006
Finished: Mid July 2006

Labels: Knifemaking