Knives have been with us in many forms since the beginning of history of mankind. Many people think that their way of knife making is the best or even the only way to make a knife. There have been knives made of stone, brass, bronze, flint, ceramic and hundreds of different types of steel.

I will stick to the form of making a knife from steel. Is a knife superior if it is forged or ground? It is my opinion that the selection of steel and the heat treating is what will give you a superior blade.

What steel do you have to us? Any kind that you want to achieve to blade that you desire. Here is a few different types of steel that have been used over the years to make blades from.

1050, 1060, 1070, 1080, 1084, 1095, 154cm, 440a, 440c, 440xh, 50100b, 5160, a2, ats34, aus6, aus6a, aus8, aus8a, bg42, cpm-10v, cpm-420v, cpm-t440v, d1, d2, d6, d7, f2, l1, l2, l6, l7, m2, o1, o6, o7, w1, w2, 52100, aebl, 420, Vasco Wear, Stellite 6-k, Damascus and Titanium to name just a few of the hundreds or possibly thousands of different steels that can be used for knife making.

After you have waded through the types of steel and decided of the best one for you, then you can decide on a type of blade design you want to achieve. What design do you like? Drop point, skinner, trailing point, straight point, spey, hawk bill, tanto, spear, sheep’s foot, clip, bowie, dirk, dagger, santuko, scimitar, or even a Ulu.

Now you need to decide what kind of tang your knife will have. You can choose from a full tang, rat tail tang, hidden tang, half tang, encapsulated tang, push tang (1/2 length) or a push tang (full length).

Now you can forge your blade to the desired style that is pleasing to you.

After forging to a close desired shape that you want, you need to fully anneal your blade. Our instructor called this thermo cycling. After the blade is fully annealed to it’s very softest state, it is off to the belt grinder to actually grind the blade into the finished dimensions. Once the blade is ground to your liken you need to harden the blade, then draw it back to the temperature and time that is needed according to the type of steel that you chose to work with.

Then you need to soften (anneal) the back of the blade so that the blade will not snap into from being too hard and bent sideways during use. Now you can sharpen your blade to your desired edge type and that is as far as we got in this class.