Knife Making

When it comes to making knives and other objects from a variety of materials and assemblies, you can often get by with what you can afford, to start with. As you progress, the difficulty (in my opinion) lies in choosing what should remain manual and what merits investment, a machine with a motor, for example. Mind you, I’m not saying that hand tools are always cheap! This lovely Canadian plane can testify to that....

What is steel, anyway? Wikipedia tells us that steel is an iron-based alloy with a carbon content of between 0.02% and 2% by mass, which may or may not contain other chemical elements (impurities). The elements added to iron modify its physico-chemical characteristics. Carbon is always present, but in variable quantities, which influences the alloy’s maximum hardness or its ability to be enamelled, for example. When the carbon content exceeds 2....