Deer Field Dressing Knife

[MigPlazArc]

Well I'm working on a deer field dressing knife...


The knife is stainless steel 1/16" thick 12" long and 1.25" wide.
Not done yet... I still have to make a wooden handle and sharpen it...
Will post more pictures later...


Using this as my fifth project.

[jerky]

do you do lots of wood work as well? and what kind of wood are you going to go with for the handle?

[DaveO]

Pictures 1 and 3 appear identical, picture 2 looks like the handle tapers more than 1 and 3. Is that a different knife, or is it a trick of the photo?

[ogorir]

alll three pics have the same nick in the blade, so I'd presume it's the same knife. what'd you use for steel stock and are you planning on hardening it? I've been curious about knifebuilding for a while, but I haven't actually done any yet. well, apart from the time a friend and I forged a sword out some flat stock on his great-grandpa's portable coal forge. good times.

[dgarnier]

12" seems kind of long for field dressing - I like a short blade some where about 3" - 4" for working in tight spaces. Plus it folds up and is easy to fit in my pack

[welderdude]

That looks like a pretty nice start. What alloy of stainless is it?

[bobwills]

In my opinion ya need to grind down the curve further to get more of a point cause using it for field dressing poking through the hide and anything really ya need a good sharp pointy tip on it.

[DVA]

What did you use to sharpen the knife? Do you have a belt grinder.

[MigPlazArc]

do you do lots of wood work as well? and what kind of wood are you going to go with for the handle?

Yes, my brother and I have been doing woodworking since we were little. We do anywhere from custom speaker enclosures (we even install the speakers into the box) to lathing spinning tops. We made a dual speaker sub woofer box with 8" Pyle Blue Wave subs for our cousin. He put it in his car with the factory radio and it sounded awesome. I asked him if they were still pumpin' awhile back and he said "OH YEAH." I'll have to dig up some pics. My brother made a quad 8" PBW enclosure for his truck too lol.

[MigPlazArc]

Pictures 1 and 3 appear identical, picture 2 looks like the handle tapers more than 1 and 3. Is that a different knife, or is it a trick of the photo?

They are all the same knife... It's the way I took the picture. I hade to take the pictures at an angle because it's so shiny that it hives it that brownish look in the pic...

alll three pics have the same nick in the blade, so I'd presume it's the same knife. what'd you use for steel stock and are you planning on hardening it? I've been curious about knifebuilding for a while, but I haven't actually done any yet. well, apart from the time a friend and I forged a sword out some flat stock on his great-grandpa's portable coal forge. good times.

Haha gotta love the good old times... Like it says in the first post 1.25" wide, 12" long, and 1/16" thick. I had it sheared at storm steel...It's 304 grade because they don't have 316. No I'm not going to harden it...But if I was how would you do that? Never done research on it...
I built two throwing knives awhile back, but I guess I didn't think about trying to harden it...They both bent so I gave up on them after bending them back every 2-5 throws.

12" seems kind of long for field dressing - I like a short blade some where about 3" - 4" for working in tight spaces. Plus it folds up and is easy to fit in my pack

Yeah it might be...But if it is we have a Super Cut 50 so no problem lol. Gotta start long and shorten because it's really hard to put back on

That looks like a pretty nice start. What alloy of stainless is it?

304 Stainless

In my opinion ya need to grind down the curve further to get more of a point cause using it for field dressing poking through the hide and anything really ya need a good sharp pointy tip on it.

Maybe I should sharpen the back side too.

What did you use to sharpen the knife? Do you have a belt grinder.

6" double disc bench grinder. We have a belt sander... I'm gonna use my mom's knife sharpening rod thing to fine tune it.

[SeanMurphy265]

I was going to say that is awful long!!!! Will it be strong enough since it's 304? I would think you need to harden it somehow?

[ogorir]

Haha gotta love the good old times... Like it says in the first post 1.25" wide, 12" long, and 1/16" thick. I had it sheared at storm steel...It's 304 grade because they don't have 316. No I'm not going to harden it...But if I was how would you do that? Never done research on it...
I built two throwing knives awhile back, but I guess I didn't think about trying to harden it...They both bent so I gave up on them after bending them back every 2-5 throws.

I missed that it was stainless until after welderdude asked what series it was. unfortunately, you can't really harden 300 series stainless. marstenic stainless can be hardened, though. wikipedia lists 17-4ph as an option, but my guess is that it's going to be incredibly expensive.

I was looking at using o-1 oil hardening tool steel blanks the last time I looked at making a knife. I didn't pull the trigger on that project, so I can't tell you how it worked out. I'd be inclined to go tool steel for any knife, but having used a set of (nice quality) stainless kitchen knives, I personally think they're about useless.

Throwing knives are a lot of fun! I should make a couple of them to keep the squirrels in check. now that it's finally rained, they're everywhere.

[Tritium]

There is a lot of information on you tube about heat treating, forging and knife making.

Thurmond

[welderdude]

pretty much any 300 series stainless steel alloy is useless for a knife blade. Even 17-4 ph wont get hard enough to keep a nice sharp edge at a max HRC of 45. 17-7 ph would be a little bit better, it will get up to HRC 49. A good alloy would be something like 440C or 420HC or even S30V if you can afford it. Here is a good website with a bunch of different alloys listed.

http://zknives.com/knives/articles/knifesteelfaq.shtml

on a side note, 5160 which is what leaf springs are made form is a very good and cheap alloy for making knives. it can be hardened up to about 60 HRC for a smaller knive or in the mid 50's for something that needs to be very tough. Its also easy to work with. Here's a good link for heat treating 5160 steel.

http://www.caffreyknives.net/journeymanarticle.html

[Trip59]

Just a note, not trying to take anything away from your project, but you're not going to have much luck hardening or heat treating it...

300 series stainless can only be work-hardened, same with half the 400 series, the ferritic (can't remember all the numbers off the top of my head). The Martensitic 400's can be heat treated.

That said, I've always preferred non-stainless blades, much easier to get the qualities that make a good knife out of them, and if you play the heat game right, you can get them to hold an edge for quite some time.

[Tritium]

Just a note, not trying to take anything away from your project, but you're not going to have much luck hardening or heat treating it...

300 series stainless can only be work-hardened, same with half the 400 series, the ferritic (can't remember all the numbers off the top of my head). The Martensitic 400's can be heat treated.

That said, I've always preferred non-stainless blades, much easier to get the qualities that make a good knife out of them, and if you play the heat game right, you can get them to hold an edge for quite some time.

Old car leaf springs make some wonderful knives. The material heat treats very well. So do many farm implement consumables (disk and plow points).

Thurmond

[Trip59]

I've got a handful of leaf springs and coil springs (they work if you have a forge and a good arm). One note on those, the older the better. Steel is not steel, it varies greatly over the years. The old ones are much higher quality, so much so that you can feel it in the tools as you work the pieces.

[Tritium]

I use the old car springs from model T's and up through the 1940's and old grader blades. The grader blades make wonderful hoe's and fireplace tools.

Thurmond

[jerky]

ya know, just a though on the length of this, the blade is 12" long, but once he puts a handle on it, the blade might only be 6". i think it would be a nice sized knife, just have to have a straight holder.

[hooda]

I use the old car springs from model T's and up through the 1940's and old grader blades. The grader blades make wonderful hoe's and fireplace tools.

Thurmond

That's exactly what my late Grampa used for just about ANY homemade cutting, gardening, chipping, or chopping tools. He had a stash of leafs and plow bottoms just for it. Odd thing is that, shortly after he died, I went looking tor that stuff, and it was GONE!