On Lumberjocks, we periodically do swaps, in which each person in the swap makes an item and sends it to another person. Everybody makes one, sends ones, and receives one. It’s a lot of fun, and I always try to do something a little beyond what I’ve done in the past.

This swap was a knife swap, and I wanted to make a folding knife. I got the mechanism from Santa Fe Stoneworks and dug out some stabilized birch I have left from Minnesota. It originally came from some wind-downed trees at Timber Bay Lodge, where we stayed on vacation back when we lived in Minnesota.

The folding knife came out ok, but there was a small chip in the birch on one side which I felt bad about. It still looks good, but it’s not great. I decided since I had a little more of the birch left, I would make a pair of cooking knives to make up for the blemished pocket knife.

I used blades from Hock Tools, specifically their paring knife and 5 inch chef knife. The paring knife got the more sedate grain from a straighter piece of wood, and as the wood was thinner than idea for knife scales, I sandwiched in some brown micarta.

I think the paring knife came out relatively well.

The chef knife got red (aka “fire”) micarta and some birch with some fairly crazy grain. It was from a crotch in the tree, and most of the grain ran the wrong direction for the strongest knife scales, but it looked pretty great visually, and the micarta and the metal tang of the knife would provide plenty of strength.

The chef knife came out pretty good, too. There’s a couple cracks in the handle that opened up when I was epoxying them to the micarta, but I filled them with sawdust and CA glue.

Finally, I made a couple boxes to hold the knives. By this time I knew who I was sending the knives to, and my guess was that the guy would get the folding knife, and his wife would get the cooking knives, so I wanted a separate box for each.

The cooking knives went into a box made of ash and walnut, with the walnut inlaid into the ash. I thought it looked pretty neat, and it’s a technique I’ll try again (probably to better result). I also made an insert to hold the knives securely in the box and to carry the care directions.

The pocket knife went into a foam insert inside a hinged box made of white oak and sapele, along with the description of the blade.

#woodworking #knife #project

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I made a carving knife for myself recently. The handle is apple from a tree growing in my front yard in Minneapolis, with red Micarta, ash, and a brass pin to hold everything together.

The blade is a Morakniv 120 LC laminated carbon steel blade with the tang running full length through the handle.

The ash veneer matches the thickness of the tang, which makes construction easier. The pieces of apple I had were thin enough that I though some extra thickness from the Micarta would feel good and would also offer some contrast.

Once I had chosen red Micarta, I decided the sheath needed to match, so I ordered some red dye. The sheath is constructed in the traditional Scandinavian manner taught to me by my friend MaFe, with a wooden insert cemented into the leather to protect the leather from being cut if you insert the blade carelessly.

I’m happy with the knife and it will probably become my primary carving knife for a while.

#woodworking #knife #project

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