I based the blade design on a Global chef knife, and made it out of Carbon steel from Gameco, 1084 steel. As this would be an easy steel for a beginner to heat treat.
Sawing out the basic profile with an electric jig saw.
Hand sanding the blade after finished filing it.
To heat treat the blade I heated it until non-magnetic in my gas forge, let it air cool 3 times. This is to normalize the blade, reducing the stress in the steel to reduce the chance of it cracking during the quench.
Then I heat it to non-magnetic again and quenched it in canola oil heated to 45 degrees C.
After the quench, the blade was tempered 3 x 1 hour in the stove at 200 degrees C. This is to reduce the hardness somewhat and make it more flexible.
Then it was back to hand sanding.. Next time I'll not spend so much time on this before the quench 🙂
Working on the handle; I got a piece of spalted birch from Brisa.fi for this one. Made a bolster out of nickel silver, and a piece of white spacer material in between.
After rough shaping on my belt sander;
Hand shaping with sand paper, then fine sanding up to 3000 grit.
Etching my logo on the blade, using a laser printout as the decal. Ended up not attaching properly, had to help it out with some nail polish 🙂
Thanks to Corin for the tutorial on how to create the stencil and etch it on.
I use an old power adapter, tuck one wire under the tape and the other end wrapped around the tip of a Q-tip dipped in salt water. The salt water conducts the electricity and etches any exposed steel, in this case only the bare steel within the logo as everything else is covered with tape and nail polish. This leaves a depression, from the logo.
The finished knife is sharpened to shaving sharp, the handle finished with CCL knife oil, and we are done!
It was fun making my own chef knife, and I learned a lot. Next time I will use wider steel, to get a wider blade. And probably try to hand sand a bit less before the quench 🙂
