Making knives from saw blades is a good way to repurpose steel. blade is over an 1/8 of an inch thick. I am using a 24 inch diameter concrete saw blade.



I cut a chunk of it away with a angle grinder.



This will be a hunting knife with a drop point and a finger guard.



This is a very thick blade.





Next, I heated the blade cherry red and let it cool very slowly to soften the steel. so I could drill hole and grind a bevel and do some file work.



this time I am going to do a "W" pattern on the backbone of the blade. I marked off the spacing with a sharpie.



Then I used a small square file on one side of the blade.



Then turned the blade around and did the other side.



I added a little bluing to bring out the details.





With all the file work done, I heat treated the blade by heating it until it was non magnetic (around 1500F) and then quenched it in 130F salt water. Next I temper it at 400F for one hour. Finally I polish the blade to a mirror finish.

I used curly maple and aluminum pins. I'm calling it "Blonde"











The last step is to make a sheath. I use 7 Ox. Veg. tanned leather and then dye it to the color I want after I sew it.









Other knives from that same saw blade.



I annealed it so I could do some file work and drill pin holes.



Then I used some 1/4 inch aluminum plate to make bolsters. I have not made a knife with metal bolsters before. I used 1/8 brass pins.



I added Cocobolo scales and hollow brass pins and tried my hand at homemade mosaic pins. I used small diameter alum. tubes.





Today I finished the handle with tung oil. I do not want a glossy finish so I rubbed the tung oil in. I will give it a few more coats over the next few days. I only have a 2 Mega Pixel camera so the quality of the pics is low. I am trying to take better pics but until I get a better camera, this is about as good as it gets. I started this on Friday night and finished it Sunday after noon.











All the knives I have made from this saw blade finish out at RC55 to 58 for hardness. I heat until non magnetic and then quench in a 135F salt water bath. I then temper at 400F for 1 hour.

This knife will have elk slab sides. It was a prize for a turkey contest. The blade comes from the same 1/8" thick rusty old concrete saw blade that I have made other knives from. Recently I cut a few small pieces from this blade and heat treated them and took them to work and used a hardness tester to see how effective my heat treat really is. The untouched blade material came in at Rockwell 35. The heat treated material came in at RC55 for hardness. A file is RC60. These will hold an edge nicely.



For the first step in stock removal, I use a 6 inch bench grinder. I don't care if the blade gets hot and turns blue because I will be heat treating it later. I simply clamp a metal stop on the tool rest to keep things consistent.





I move it once to get closer to the tip after removing material from higher up on the blade. The tape is to keep me from grinding away the finger guard



I follow up with a belt sander to smooth out the grind marks.





This leaves more of a straight or convex grind which is slightly stronger than the conventional concave grind.

With all the stock removal done and the blade heat treated, I give the blade a going over with 120 grit sandpaper on an orbital sander.



I used elk antler for the scales.



I split the section in half and sanded them to shape.



I added the antler scales to the knife blade. I used slow cure epoxy and brass pins. I turned out fairly well.