Bill Menees's Blog

This is my first knife that I think is really cool. I got some oak at Lowe’s, and it makes for much harder blades. It’s a little too porous, but it’s beautiful, cheap, and hard, so I’m working with it.

The blade shape is basically a rip-off of the main blades on Gil Hibben’s “Alien” fantasy knife. The handle shape is a rip-off of one I saw on a tactical knife in Blade magazine. I shaped the blade with my rotary wizard and belt sander. The rotary wizard is a must for the hook and the concave curves on the top of the blade.

I did the “filework” on this blade using a woodcarving chisel. I started with a triangle file, but the oak kept splintering. So I ended up just using a straight-bladed chisel to push in on either side of my marks, and the divots come out nice and clean.

I used Super Glue to put on the handles, and I used a drill press to drill 1/16th holes through the entire handle. Then I tapped nails through, clipped them off, and filed them down. After that I used the rotary wizard (mounted in the vise now) to shape the handle contours.

This knife has plenty of imperfections, but it’s way better than my first two knives. I think it looks cool. I wish the “thumb rest” on top of the handle came up a little farther. It would be more comfortable that way, and it could use some cool looking straight file marks to improve the grip. But since I only had 1¼” oak for the blade, I couldn’t make it go up any higher. If I ever make this knife in steel (which I’d like to), I need to start with 1½” bar stock.

Also, I’d like to round the handle off a little more, but since I only had ¼” poplar handle slabs, I didn’t want to take too much off. The grip would feel too thin. If I had 3/8” slabs to start with I could do more rounding off. Currently, the handle is a little blocky given the rest of the curves on the knife.

Material: 1¼”x ¼” Oak blade and 1¼”x ¼” Poplar handles
Blade Length: 5 7/8”
Overall Length: 11”
Started: July 15, 2006
Finished: July 23, 2006

Labels: Knifemaking