Homemade Knife

Last week, I began my first go at full on knife-making. I’m not sure if anyone else can relate to this, but I had been very slow to take on the metal work because of the seeming enormity of the process. Equipment, trial and error, temperatures, forging, heat treating – it all added up to a lot of new territory for me. So for roughly a year, I have been customizing and building knives around existing blades and kits. As much fun as it was, I’ve been very careful to not call what I do “making knives,” but rather “building knives,” instead. Tonight I finished the heat treat on my first homemade knife. Perfect it is not, but it is uniquely satisfying because I have been wanting, and moving toward this, for so long now. I have a long way to go in bringing my skills forward, but this first blade feels like a stride in an exciting direction!