How To Make An Appalachian Style Knife
Many resourceful craftsmen have used discarded items as raw material to make various types of knives throughout history. For the Appalachian style knife (one similar to those used in the Appalachian mountains), the raw material most often used is a worn or broken hand saw from which one can cut out a blade. Well, if you live in a city then it can be a little difficult for you to get the very best material that you need in order to create a knife on your own. This is where you can try https://knifedge.net/ for the very best material that you need for your knife and time and recommendations that you can follow in order to craft a high-quality knife on your own.
To make an Appalachian style knife, first, make a pattern in the shape of the knife blade you would like, then trace around the pattern directly onto the saw blade. Next, place the saw blade on top of an anvil, or another sufficiently hard surface, then get a chisel and place the edge of it onto the pattern line and strike it with a hammer to make a small cut. Continue moving the chisel along the pattern line, striking it with the hammer and cutting it out until your knife-sized piece is fully separated from the saw blade.
Next, take your cut piece and place it in a vice, or clamp it onto a table and smooth down the rough edges with a file. The portion of the blade that will fit into the handle (called the “tang”) should be cut one and a half inches shorter than the desired handle length since it will later be set into a piece of solid wood.
The next step is to mark where you want your rivet holes to be positioned on the knife tang. Carefully position them so that they will not be too close to the ends of the wooden handle, which would weaken the knife considerably. Place a nut (a piece of metal with screw threads that fits onto a bolt) the size of the desired rivet hole onto an anvil or another hard surface, then position your knife tang over the nut, take a punch and drive it through the knife tang and into the hole of the nut behind it. After you punch out each rivet hole, clamp the knife to a bench, with its edge extended over the end of the workbench. Take a file and bevel down one side of the blade. Then turn the blade over, reclamp it, and bevel down the other side.
To make the handle for your Appalachian style knife, find a section of a tree limb or another piece of wood that’s about 3/4 of an inch thick, then cut or whittle it off the same diameter as the width of your knife tang. We are going to make a ‘half-tang’ handle, which will extend only part of the way through the wood going lengthwise. Make sure the section of wood is left longer than the desired handle so it can be clamped into a vice. Next, saw a “kerf” (a slot or trough made by a saw blade) lengthwise down the center of the handle section for the blade to fit into. Now place the handle on top of the knife tang and carefully mark where the rivet holes should go, then drill them into the handle of the wood. Before you can insert the tang, you will probably have to slightly enlarge the slot. Simply use sandpaper to sand back and forth to widen the slot.
Making the rivets will not be too difficult. Use large diameter copper wire or nails that are about 1/8 inch longer than the thickness of the wood handle. The knife tang should then be inserted into the kerf, with the rivets pushed through the wood and the tang holes. (You may have to ream some of the rivet holes out with an ice pick to enlarge them.) Then place the rivets onto a hard surface and peen them over with a hammer.
Next, cut off the excess length of the handle and shape it in whatever way you like, then hone the blade of your new Appalachian knife to a fine edge, and you’ll be ready to skin a bear or a wild boar or whatever else comes your way.
It will take some practice to be able to make your own Appalachian style knife in a high-quality fashion, but once you get the basics down you will be able to make many knives to handle all your hunting and fishing needs, or any other uses you may have.