How to Make a Knife #2 - Materials

OK, so you got your tools ready, and you are itching to get started making your first knife.

Let's look what you need of the materials and I'll drop a few tips on how to get them.
These are the four most common ingredients for a knife:

1. Steel for the blade
2. Wood or some kind of composite for the handle
3. Some kind of barrel-like object that you can use for pins
4. Glue to help things stay together

My workshop in I-should-really-tidy-up-soon phase

If you really wanna go old school you can ignore 2-4 and just use steel - we'll cover this when we get to design.

I. STEEL
I've talked a bit about steel in my Handmade knives 101 #1 post, and actually, I won't elaborate too much on all the steels in general in this session. I'll just keep to the ones I think should be used for your first knife project - simple high-carbon steels.

There are two basic ways of getting your steel: you can buy it, and you can recycle.
Although making a knife from an old file is almost a must for your first knife, there are actually no advantages of using recycled steel. This is especially the case if you live in the US, and I'm guessing Canada...
If you live in one of those two countries just skip this whole paragraph and go to Wallmart or whatever hardware store is near to you and buy a bar of O1 tool steel.

For the rest of us, the process of acquiring steel is not as easy as buying a botle of milk. But before we get into how to buy, let's tackle the topic of what to buy.

Now, you could go and buy yourself a bar of San Mai made of stainless Damascus and some kind of super powder steel, but you will probably fail in your first attempt, so let's keep things simple.

If you've decided to buy your steel look for something really simple in chemical composition - nothing with Chromium.
The more complex the steel is the more trouble you'll get in when you go to heat treatment.
So, look for O1 or 1080-series or their equivalents. Those are the steels that you can heat treat with almost no problems at home.
As I've mentioned before, if you are in the US you can basically walk to any hardware store and buy O1. If on the other hand, you live in Europe you will have to do your research to find where an how to buy.
Luckilly, there's a fair chance that you are not the first one looking for them so sniff around knifemaking forums and I'm sure you'll find whole lists of places that are nearby or deliver to wherever you are.

OK, but what if I don't want to buy steel - or you live in some of them shit hole countries© and steel is not easily available.
Well, you can recycle.
The upside of recycling your steel is that you can find some good quality steel just about everywhere. The downside is that you can never be sure what kind of a steel you got, and that can make heat treatment a bit tricky.

Best choices for recycled steel by your favourite Doc:

1. Files - the older the better. Don't use cheap new files because they are probably case-hardened and no good for knives.
2. Saw blades - same deal - the older the better.
3. Spring steel from, well, springs - you will have to forge them so if you don't have the means just use first two.

Go to a flea-market and buy some old files, or go to a scrap yard, bring a 6-pack to the guy(s) who work there and they'll have a bunch of usable steel for you in no time.

Some Damascus and 1095 I've bought

This is a bowie I did from an old file.

Saw-blade - my favourite source of recycled steel

II. Handle
You can use just about anything for a handle material. Wood is my favourite, but there are plenty of modern composites that can be used for handles: G10, micarta, Corian...

Just find something you like or have in your garage and use it.

Tip - parquet or any wood that is used for floors is probably your best choice - it's flat, not to thick and it's usually pretty.

III. Pins & screws
Brass, copper, stainless... round bars or tubes will work just fine. There is also quite a selection of screws that are appropriate for knifemaking or are actually designed for it. Just look around and be creative - I'm sure you'll find something.

Some pins at the back

IV. Glue
I use two-part epoxy, you can probably get away with something else, but honestly, it's not worth the trouble. Just buy some decent glue and you'll be just fine. 5-min epoxy is OK, but spend some extra $ and you'll have more time to get things right. In my experience, 5 minutes is way to short time-frame for getting it right on your first try.

OK, I'll give you a few days to get all of this and then we'll start making your first knife.

If you haven't, check out the first post in this series The Tools You Need.

And as always, feel free to ask any questions or leave a comment or two.