Okay! in this part of the tutorial we get to the actual making of the knife. First we make a paper or cardboard template then we transfer the pattern to steel and cut out the shape of the blade. Cutting out the shape of the blade is called Profiling the knife.

Part 1 of this tutorial is here

Let's start with some templates and mockups.

I drew out my knife shape many times until I came up with the shape that I wanted. I have a template for this right here

I also made a mockup of the knife with cereal box cardboard so I could really define where the guard is and where the smaller sub-guard is and how it all fits together.

Now we have the shape of our blade. Let's transfer that pattern to the steel. I put masking tape on the steel, put the template on it then traced around the template with pencil or pen.

Cutting out the shape of the knife
This process is called Profiling the blade

Then cut that shape out with a hacksaw or other tool. You don't have to be super accurate with your cutting. Just don't cut inside the lines. A little oversized is best. You can use other tools to get the knife to its final shape and size. The think about the hacksawing though is that the more accurate you cut it here the less work you will have to do later.

Ok, the knife is cut out. Looks good.

Now we use a variety of tools to get the knife to its final shape. Or very close to final shape. We can always touch it up a bit more later on. I used a belt sander and a mill file.

An important thing to do here is the get the square corners for the guard. We use a mill file for this. We want the guard to sit nice and flat and even against this area.

This is what we are looking to do here with the filing. Those flat edges line up with each other as if you drew a straight line from one to the other. And those angles inside there are nice 90 degree angles.

Okay! That's it. The blade is profiled and it looks great. Clean all the masking tape and grime off of it with turpentine or paint thinner.

Let's continue with the tutorial

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