If you are reading this it is safe to say that you have more than a passing interest in the world of handmade knives. How much do you really know about what goes into crafting a knife? Have you ever thought about it?
When considering what goes into the process of crafting this, many people will conjure the vague image of a burly smith standing in front of an open, roaring fire and pounding on a piece of glowing steel. From there the imagery tends to grow a little indistinct, and then somewhere along the way the knife is finished!
The first part is perhaps a little romanticized, but it is also more or less accurate. When a knife is crafted, the first step often is the forging process. But believe it or not, in most cases the forging is only maybe 10-20% of what goes into crafting a knife. After a blade has been forged, its shape has to be cleaned up and refined. Even the best smiths in the world use a combination of cutting, filing, and abrasive processes to resolve their forgings into the crisp shapes and volumes of finished work.
A huge part of what goes into knife making is time spent at the grinder. Most knife makers will use a machine affectionately called a “2×72.” These numbers refer to the dimensions of the abrasive belts that remove material from the forged blade. The belts are 2” wide and 72” long. They are driven by a motor around a series of wheels and ultimately over a contact surface of some sort. This will typically include contact wheels of various diameters (often anything from ½” up to 10” or even 14”) and a flat surface called a platen. The belts are available in a very broad range of grits, from a very coarse 25 grit (which refers to the number of abrasive particles per square centimeter), up to 6 micron, which feels like the smoothest silk. Without a 2×72, makers would be forced to rely on files and sandpaper, and the work would go much, much, much more slowly.
The grinding is often one of the make-break points in terms of what goes into crafting a knife. Some might think using a powerful machine like this is somehow cheating because it robs the craftsman of some degree of agency in the work. This is most certainly not the case. Yes, it speeds things up, but “with great power comes great responsibility.” The power and speed of these tools makes it so much easier to make an irretrievable mistake, something that will either ruin the knife—or worse, ruin the makers hands. The degree of skill and focus required to become a proficient knife grinder is extreme.
Another important thing that goes into making a knife is heat treatment. This is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, and it is where the craftsman becomes an alchemist. Heat treatment is what determines how well a given piece of steel will perform. The central step here is the quench. Depending on the alloy, the steel needs to be heated to a certain temperature and held at that temperature for a particular interval. A lot of the time, the smith judges temperature by eye only; when steel is heated past ~900f, it starts to glow a dull red. At about 1200, the red turns to orange. At about 1475—the target temperature for many blade alloys—the orange is a bright, warm color, just starting to verge toward yellow. Once the steel has reached its target temperature and has been held there for the proper interval, it is thrust into a bath of oil (or sometimes water or brine) to drop its temperature as quickly as possible. There are specific formulae for each alloy, and the knife maker has to have a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of his materials and their requirements.
What else goes into crafting a knife? So much. At this point the knife has hardly even begun. For one thing, we haven’t even discussed the laborious process of forging and folding damascus, which would happen before any of the above. But even once a knife has been heat treated, the work has only just begun. Now it needs hilting, and that means fitting multiple components together in different materials; the craftsman has to keep in mind how each material will move over time, and has to know the best way to join or bond one material to the next. Then the whole handle has to be sculpted carefully so that the ergonomics are just right. And after all of that, every square inch of the piece must be smoothed and polished to very exacting standards.
So what goes into crafting a knife? Quite a bit, actually.
Reach out to Jonas Blade to learn more & craft your own knife!
About The AuthorZack Jonas was born and raised in Massachusetts in the 1980’s and is still a New Englander today. With his growing love for art over the years, he took an introductory bladesmithing class at MASSart. It was there that he learned one of his most valuable lessons, which is that everyone has some insight worth learning. Today, he is a full-time bladesmith and feels incredibly fortunate to have found his calling.