In the past couple of years I have modified a couple of old paring knives and a butter knife to use as whittling/carving knives. The former butter knife did not work out so well. A plastic-handled Ginsu knife made and okay claw-like blade, but I sharpened the wrong side; the contours on the handle feel funny when I use it.
To this point, my favourite to use is the first one I made - just a nondescript wood-handled paring knife. I carved most of my airplane parts and spaceships with it as well as carrying it around (with a wooden cap on the blade) to use as a general-purpose blade. While it is/was my favourite, it had some drawbacks: the handle is a little too small in my hand and there is a groove where the blade is inset that isn't so comfortable some of the time, especially when removing large bits of wood on the initial shaping of a piece.
My latest attempt at a custom blade goes beyond all my previous productions. I shaped a spent reciprocating saw blade to a knife blade with holes drilled in the tang (yes, I did just look that up). Then I roughed out a handle, which I split. I hollowed out space on the insides of the split pieces to accommodate the tang and drilled holes to match. Following that was a Gorilla Glue treatment to assemble it all with some largish nails set in the holes as my rivets (but not glued so I could remove them to more easily shape the handle).
After shaping the handles, I glued the rivets into place and filed them down to be flush with the handle. Then a stain treatment using a natural stain (I kind of wanted something darker, but natural was what I had and I wasn't going to buy a new tin). Sealed it with a couple coats of polyurethane and here's the result:
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| Attempted some contouring to fit my fingers. Did it work? I'll find out. |
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| Maybe you can see, maybe you can't, dark spots that sanding just couldn't seem to remedy: rustic, yeah! |
I haven't done anything more than cut up a credit card with it yet, but I'm hoping to remedy that soon.
