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Knife Making Kits: A Great Way to Start

A simple knifemaking kit.
If you're a beginning knife maker, a knife making kit is the way to go. Though a knife is made up of only four basic components: a blade with tang, a handle, a guard, and an optional pommel. The variety of metals and materials can bewilder a beginner. Knife making kits have everything together, it all matches, and directions are generally simple and direct.

There are plenty of places you can get a knife making kit, online or off, and there's plenty of variety in the knife making kits you'll find. The simplest knife making kits are used to make a straight Bowie knife or something similar; the more complicated knife making kits are folding knives or have harder metals than usual.

 

 

 ****************************recommendation: knifekits.com[link will open new window]Knifekits.com has a great selection of both fixed blade and folding knife kits available for sale. Be sure to check out each kit's skill rating before your purchase. Remember - start small and work your way up to the tough stuff.****************************Your choice of knife making kit should take into consideration both your confidence in your skills and the knife you want to own. It will do you no good to choose an elaborate knife making kit if you don't have the ability to build the knife properly. If you're unsure of your skills, the most basic (and cheapest) knife making kit is the right choice. Once you've made your first knife, you can try a more difficult knife making kit.

Safety is your first consideration after choosing a knife making kit. You'll need to buy safety goggles or safety glasses, and they aren't normally included in a knife making kit; metal can shatter, even if you're being careful, and while you're sanding the blade from your knife making kit or removing burs from the tang, you can send metal shavings into the air that can get into your eyes. Always tape over the blade from your knife making kit with masking tape while you're working with the tang, and use normal precautions if you're soldering the guard to the blade.

Tools not included in your knife making kit are your next consideration. You'll need either epoxy or another glue to fix the blade into the handle, and you may want to get a small soldering kit to ensure the guard is firmly attached to the blade. Since your knife making kit will probably come with a completely unfinished blade, you will definitely have to sand burs off the tang (remove metal jags from the end that goes into the handle).

Knife making kits also do not come with sandpaper or files; you'll need both, in differing grains, to finish your knife. A good investment with your knife making kit is an electric drill with sanding attachment. You'll also need a clamp or vise to hold things; the materials in your knife making kit sometimes require more than two hands to assemble.

After you have the knife making kit and tools, you'll need a work area. It's a bad idea to assemble your knife making kit components at the kitchen table; you'll be working with messy and potentially damaging tools, and it can be hard to explain why metal shavings are now permanently attached to the table. Instead, take your knife making kit outside, into the garage or work shed, or to a similarly damageable area. You'll need a solid table on which to work, and something to clamp your vise to. Knife making kits, obviously, require you to work with metal; your best bet for a solid work surface is a sheet of metal against which you can file and sand to your heart's content.

Don't settle for the first knife making kit you find online. You'll find the same knife making kit at a wide variety of places in many online stores; you should shop around a bit before investing. While you're online looking for a knife making kit, you should read everything you can. There's a surprisingly large body of knowledge about the properties of metals and the different ways you can make a knife available just in knife making kit catalogs and websites, and if you're serious about making knives, you should absorb all the information you can.

Making knives is a rewarding and venerable hobby. Though you may start with simple knife making kits and move on to more complex knife making kits, you'll certainly start designing your own knives once you've become hooked. At that point, though the knowledge you've achieved from assembling knifes from knife making kits will be valuable, you should find some serious books and other references on knife making. Kits can only teach you so much. You should also look around for groups in your area that make knives, or even a mentor. You'll find that a surprisingly large number of people are interested in knife making.

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