How To Make A Knife (Part 2) – “Knife Simulators”
This is where you find out how weird I am…
Actually, that’s not true. If you watched the video on How To Make A Knife (Part 1), then you’ll already know.
However, I want to cover again what I did in the video from Part 1 (but with words and pictures :-D).
What The Hell Are “Knife Simulators?”
Truthfully, this is something I made up.
This knife I’m making is for my key-chain. And so the #1 criteria is of course the size (and the weight to a lesser extent).
I need to know how big I can go with this knife. Bigger is better …until it becomes too big. I’m trying to find that “sweet spot”.
What I decided to do was make some rough “blanks” of what a closed version of the knife might look like.
I sketched this as a rough design:
What I’ve then done is make a few versions of these.
The smallest one is around 40mm long and the largest is around 60mm long:
I then cut these out of the same 6mm-thick Grade 5 Titanium plate.
After some grinding and sanding these “simulators” were ready to be tumbled to smooth the edges and corners (otherwise they’re go to be very “stabby” in my pocket).
A number of hours later and they’re smooth and ready for testing.
As I write this I’m testing out the largest “knife simulator” on my key-chain today. It’s actually not as big as I thought it would be:
I reckon it’s good to be compulsive (not that I have a choice).
Figuring out the maximum size I can make the knife now means I don’t need to think about it again.
Some more on the Knife Simulators…
What’s Next?
Just now I have a boat-load of stuff to learn about blade design, blade steels, mechanisms … and a whole bunch more.
While I do that I’m going to continue testing for how big I can go with the knife on my key-chain.
I’ll also continue sketching more designs.