“What tools do you need to make a knife?”

Its likely that you’ve seen knives being made. Knife making is depicted in movies, at renaissance fairs, and in popular television shows such as forged in fire. While the way knives are made in those depictions make for good entertainment, the reality is you might get bored watching my knives being made. Then again, you are here, so you must be interested.

What knife making looks like depends largely on whether the process is forging or stock removal. Forging involves heating up steel and plastically deforming it, usually via hammer and anvil. This is the more “exciting” kind of knife making, i.e. the stuff you see on television. Stock removal is a very different process. Like Michelangelo chipping away at everything that didn’t look like the statue of David, knife makers using the stock removal method will start with a piece of steel and grind away everything that doesn’t look like a finished knife. The process is usually much more tedious, and much less exciting. Stock removal and forging both finish the knife blade on a belt grinder. The tools used to make a knife will depend on the desired features, finish, the materials used, and ultimately the quality sought. A railroad spike can be hammered into shape with a sufficiently hot fire and a primitive hammer; the knives you will see here are more refined, and therefore require much more technologically advanced tools.

Here is a short list of the tools and equipment my shop has to offer, with descriptions of their use.