Thread: Show me your knives

After grinding up the little rabbit knife in the top of the picture below, I was impressed by the comfort of the 3/4 length buffalo horn handle and the finger scallop. Works extremely well in a range of grips maximising the versatility of the blade. So, I decided to have a go at making a compact flaying and boning knife to match.

The two new blades are O1 tool steel. Now this steel is a bit more complex in its heat treat requirements over the 1075/1084 type plan carbon I have been playing with so far, but I have just purchased a heat treat kiln so was looking to experiment!
Following internet based recommendations the blades were normalised three times with a quench on the last cycle, then hardened and tempered. Unfortunately, the anti-carburizing past that I used failed during the normalising heat cycles, and as a result I did lose a bit of carbon from the steel in the process. The heat treat should have yielded 60-61 HRC but a test by the local metallurgy lab have 58HRC. Still up there with most commercially produced blades, and it did make the blades easier to sharpen in comparison with the rabbit knife which I suspect is in the low 60's based on how long it took to get an edge on my water stones.

Blade surfaces was left as heat treated.



Then the next fun part was making my first ever kydex sheaths.
Kydex is wickedly expensive by my standards, so I hunted for some alternatives. Found a company selling 6'x4' sheets of ABS for around $70 so ordered that instead.
Watched a few youtube clips and then had a go.




Due to the slim, compact shape of the knives, I decided to try for a double stack ……..





All of this has been in an effort to keep my learning one step ahead of the boys (and a couple of their dad's) that come around on a Thursday to learn to build stuff in the shed.