How to Make a File Knife - Stock Removal

Today we are going to be making a knife from a very common and

cheap tool; a file. 

To begin with, you will need to find a file a sufficient size for the knife you want to make. Usually you can find these at flea markets and garage sales pretty cheap. The other materials you will need for this project are: some pretty hardwood like maple, some 1/4" brass pin stock, a grill, charcoal, heat-proof tubing of some kind, ( for making a forge) a hair drier and some two part epoxy.

 Your tool checklist will include: a belt sander or file, a drill and

1/4" metal cutting drill bit, a small ball peen hammer, tongs or long vice grips, a hacksaw or bandsaw, clamps and a paint can of any kind of oil.

First we are going to make our forge. To begin with, drill a hole the size of your pipe in the bottom of your grill. Now secure the pipe in the hole, with about ½" sticking up in the bottom of the grill. Then duct tape the hair dryer to the other end of the pipe. When the hair dryer is on, it supplies a constant flow of air to your fire on top, and we will use it for the hardening and annealing of our knife. Note: if you are confused, YouTube making a forge, there are a lot of detailed videos there.

Begin by starting up the forge with lump charcoal and turning on the blower. Now heat as much of the file as you can to a dull red. If you need, you can heat one side up, then flip it and do the other side. Once both sides have been or are red, bury the file in sand. Once it cools, it is ANNEALED, meaning it is as soft as it can get. Now, using a bench grinder or file, you can shape your knife. 

Once you have the shape you like, it's on to the next step: putting on the bevel.

To grind the bevel, you need a belt sander with metal abrasive 

belts. If you do not have one of these, a very rough file will work as long as your metal is annealed. Using a file is tedious, but you are not going to mess up easily at all. With a grinder, always have your would-be blade up. First establish a good 20 degree bevel, then by rotating your wrist minutely clockwise you can make the grind line get taller each pass on the grinder. Once you have the grind established, keep thinning it out until the edge is about as thick as the a piece of paper. DO NOT GET IT SHARP. If you do this, the edge will melt off in the hardening process and ruin the blade.

Now you need to drill your holes.  If you are not using a brand new drill bit, it won't cut. (A little tip: use Ace brand drill bits, they are the best for this kind of stuff) And if you didn't anneal your metal, the drill will not cut at all. That said, position your holes where you want them, and drill away. I really advise using a drill press for this, and if you don't have one, try to find a friend that has one and will let you use it. 

Once you have done all of this, it is time for the heat treat. Get your forge fired up, and place your blade in the hottest part of the coals. Make sure the hair dryer is going good, and get the blade part up to a bright orange color. Once the entire cutting edge part is orange, grab it with your pliers and dunk the blade in your oil. But don't just dunk it, move it around in the oil. This helps air pockets from forming on the knife and lessens the chance of warping. This is called hardening. 

(And it MUST be oil; water will not work, for it is too violent of a quench. If you were to quench it in water, it would get tiny little cracks in the blade that would grow in size with use of the knife and ruin the blade)

 Take it out and run a file loosely across the edge. If it slides over with no catching, it is hardened. If the file bites into the metal, it did not harden properly and you need to try again. After this, take your knife and check it for warping. If it warped, DO NOT HAMMER ON IT. The knife is very brittle and would break. Heat the knife up to a red and then bang on it and re-harden it. 

If your knife was straight, put it in the oven set for 400 degrees and leave it there two hours. When you're ready, take it out with pliers and dunk it in some water. This process is called tempering; it takes some of the hardness out of the knife and ensures a good edge. Now take your knife back to the sander or file and take all of the scale off of the bevels. Now you can get it as sharp on the grinder as you want.

OK, on to the handle. First, trace the handle of your knife onto a piece of your hard wood, twice. Using a bandsaw or hacksaw, cutting outside of the line, cut the pattern you traced out. Now position one of these slabs underneath the actual handle, get it how you want it, and drill holes that line up exactly with the ones in your file. Do the same with the other side. 

Now cut two 1 ½" lengths of your pin stock and put them into the holes. Once done, you can do the pre-final sanding and profiling of the handle with the pins holding the wood in place where it will be when it's all said and done. Once you have the shape of the wood slabs lined up with the tang of the knife, take the pins out and cut them down until, when they are slid into the holes, there is only 1/8" protruding on each side. 

Now take all of the parts and set them out. The handle slabs should be inside-up and the pins should be easily accessed. Now mix your epoxy, and smear a thin layer in both sides of the tang and the insides of the handle slabs. Line all the holes up, and insert the pins. Now take the back of your ball-peen hammer and peen the pins over gently on each side until they are good and flat. Clamp it up good, but not so tight that you squeeze all the epoxy out.

Once the epoxy cures, you can do the final shaping on your sander... or with sandpaper. When you have a shape you like, rub the handle down with a few coats of oil, and ... viola, you have a file knife. 

The Cheap Haversack Kit

By Caleb Steck

This kit is designed to be carried in a belt pouch and a haversack. Consequently, it must be quite light. Everything must be absolutely necessary. You are not going to be carrying things like a draw shave, or even a tarp. 

That said, let’s start with cutting tools. First is a quality belt knife. (Click HERE to see an article on that issue) The 4 basics of a good belt knife are: full tang, good grind and temper, and a comfortable handle. My bush knife is homemade, which cost me about $7, some charcoal, and about 2 hours of work, but I already had the forge. (Click HERE to see how make a very basic knife) If you were to buy a bushcraft knife new, it would cost about anywhere from $10 to upwards of $150. But, if you went to a few flea markets, you could find an Old Hickory butcher knife for around $3. 

Next is a belt hatchet. My favorite is the Gerber pack hatchet, but that is rather expensive. The other option is to search flea markets. Look for an old carpenter’s hatchet that’s suits you, and re-furbish it. This is my preference, for if you can find an old hatchet, it was usually made really well. I also carry a “hobo tool” that was my grandpa’s which has a large 4” blade, a smaller blade, spoon, fork, 2 awls, wood saw, scissors, file, cork screw, can opener and a bottle opener. Almost all of these tools I would carry anyway, so having them all in one folding tool is a big bonus. 

Moving on to containers, I have a wooden kuska that is great as a traditional water cup, and I even made the gouge I used to carve it. Next I use a tin can cookset I made, consisting of the following: 1) 18 oz soup can with the sharp inside rim crimped down, 1) 14 oz soup can that nests inside of the other can upside down creating a container, a soda can with the top cut off and the edge crimped down (which nests inside of the smaller can), and my sugar, salt and ‘Ol bay seasoning inside it all. 

Note: if you are planning to stay for longer periods of time, or there is more than one person camping, add a larger pail that can carry gear, but will be used to make soups in. 

Next I have a water bottle, as large as possible, a few plastic bags and a supply of tin foil. For food, I use a bag of rice, a bag of oatmeal, cooking oil, jerky, and a fishing kit.  

During squirrel season I also take along a good gun and a gun care kit, which is paper towels, hex wrench set, plastic bags, a length of bankline with loops on each end for a gambrel string, and a pocket knife (which everybody should already have). 

My main fire source is cotton balls and Carmex, which burns even better than petroleum. Carmex has petroleum, bee’s wax AND certain kinds of oil, all of which are fuel sources. Besides that, I have a lighter and ferro rod in my pocket, and my fire kit. It contains char cloth, a piece of flint, waterproofed strike-anywhere matches, and extra Carmex.

 Another thing I have is a leather belt pouch that I made, which contains my fishing kit, electrical tape, compass, and is a place for my fire kit. 

That concludes the contents if the scrounged belt kit, and I put mine all together almost free. Just scrounging and blacksmithing alone will knock a lot off the cost of this kit. So, while you can go buy $200 worth of brand new gear at Academy, if you keep your eyes open and learn a little blacksmithing, well you can have a $20 worth of gear and you even know how it was built!!

The Ultamate Bush Knife

The Ultimate Bush knife

 

Ok, right out of the gate I am going to tell you this; there is no one-size-fits-all ultimate bush knife, it doesn’t exist.  But I can describe one the most useful knives for bushcrafting in the south. First you must have a full tang. A Mora type knife would be great for carving, but not batoning and chopping. You want enough stability to know that that handle is not going any where. Second, you need a good grind and shape. I like a little lower grinds, where they maybe come halfway op the blade. My preferred handle material is micarta; it is pretty much indestructible, and is also water resistant. As long as it is good carbon steel, most any steel will work. 1095 is mostly what I work with; it provides good hardness and you can strike sparks off the blade in an emergency. And the last of these specs is size. I prefer larger handles, like 4 ½ inches. The blade length should be in between 4 and 6 inches. Now I am going to build the knife we just described, and then show you how well it works.

Ok, two days later here is what I have:

So, the above is a great example, and I would, without a second’s hesitation, trust my life to this knife. But, going back to my previous point, there is no perfect knife. In my opinion an old hickory butcher knife from Amazon or a flea market is a fantastic bush tool, although it is not as sturdy as a thicker knife. Any knife that fits in the categories listed at the top of this article is a good bush knife.

Well, I hope this little tidbit helped you,

and keep on bushcrafting,

-Caleb

Hunting Seasons

Just a reminder, hunting seasons start up soon, so be sure to check the parks and wildlife website for your state, that's where the dates are posted. For Texas the website is tpwd.texas.gov. For wood and smith counties fore sure, SQUIRREL SEASON STARTS TOMORROW!

Learning from Cooking Mistakes

In this post, I am going to discuss my gear modification, and we're I went wrong with my backwoods cooking, so please learn from my mistakes. Since my last post, I have completely redone my hut, and my gear pack. On my hut, it is now just a roof which is a combination of a tarp and debris, with a overhang covering my fire pit. My gear pack now consists of the following:

Homemade Mora knife and sheath, hatchet, folding knife, ferro rod, bankline, paracord, twine, lighter, steel wool, rock salt, beef jerky, 2 bandannas, frying pan, stew pot, soup can , compass,  oil, water bottles, hard tack mix, johnny cake mix.

First, I started work on the fire, and since it had rained the past 4 days, this was not an easy task. I got a cedar bark tinder bundle and as much tinder as I could. I lit the bundle and it burned up without igniting the sticks. Then I used 0000 steel wool and that didn't work, so I moved to grass and the third bundle with that had enough coals that I was able to blow them to life. That done, I put the pot on the fire and got some water to a simmer. I say simmer because that's all that it was, wet wood does not burn very hot. 

Then I cut a couple slices off the frozen squirrel I brought out there, and put them in the water. I added the potatoes and when they were done, I served myself and my brother. Neither one of us liked the meat, but the potatoes disappeared instantly. I put the meat back on the boil, and broke out the jerky.

Next I went to work with my Johnny cake mix. I added water to it, and then realized that I had used corn starch instead of corn meal. Well, that was a bust. Next I did the hardtack mix. I added water, and then fried it. You bake hardtack. So I threw that out, and put some more mix in some aluminum foil and put that in the fire. It cooked real good, but when I went to eat it, it tasted like I was eating pure salt cake. So I threw it out. By now the squirrel meat was looking good so I took it off and ate it all. Clean up was simple; boil water and use the bandanna to wash the plate and knife off, then burn the trash.

WHAT I WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY

First, I would make a bigger fire. Next I would use a "just-add-water" cornbread mix. Lastly I would stew the meat with some vegetables in a larger pot. Lack of cleanliness pretty much made the process miserable, and next time I will have a large bucket of warm, soapy water to wash all the dishes and utensils. 

The Rocky Mountain Fur Trappers and Price Inflation

What they paid vs. what we pay 

The beaver pelt was the staple trade item of the early eighteen hundreds, hence the name “Fur Trade Era”. The beaver trappers of the early eighteen hundreds would go into the mountains, trap beaver through winter and spring, then rendezvous at a previously agreed location. While there, they would sell off their skins to men like William Ashley and John Jacob Astor, who in turn would sell them to distributors who could make then into hats, or sell them one at a time to individuals.

With the money they received for their pelts, (which, in 1829, sold for $5.25 a pound, with each man averaging about 74 pounds of fur each), they bought the supplies they needed to do another year of beaver trapping in the mountains.


Some of these supplies sold at the rendezvous sites were; fishhooks, traps, coffee, sugar, tobacco, lead shot, knives, cloth, and blankets. These were the staple items meant for use, but there were a few more like cloth, beads and awls which were almost strictly for Indian trade. From the Lewis and Clark expedition, all the way up to the late 1800’s, trade with the Indians was a priority. On the Lewis and Clark expedition, there were over 4,600 needles, 70 square yards of red cloth, many shiny medallions and hundreds of pounds of kettles and army jackets strictly for Indian trade.


In John Jacob Astor’s inventory of tools, he has over 300 knife blades, over 11 gross assorted awls, 70 files, 509 assorted axes, 300 log dogs and 1,050 assorted hooks, most of which were for trade with the Indians. That is how important trade was.


In 1813, if a man wanted 1 dozen fishhooks in town, he could get them for about $0.50 cents, depending on where he got them. The Current Price Equivalent (CPE) of that is about $7. If a man wanted a dozen fishhooks at a rendezvous, he would loose $1.50. The CPE of that is about $22. We can go to Wal-Mart and get ½ dozen hooks for $0.95. In 1832, Jonson Gardener, a free trapper, paid $2 each for a lot of butcher knives, CPE is about $52 EACH. Those same knives were bought by the seller for less than $0.20 cents each in town. Now we can order those same knives for $8.00 a piece.

The reason for such inflation was the cost in getting the supplies to the rendezvous site. He had to carry them on horse back or buggy many hundreds of miles at the risk of his life and still make a profit. Now I come to awls, which were the #1 trade item with the Indians. Today a good leather stitching awl is $6.50. In 1812, you could get a dozen shoe awls for around 5 cents, a CPE of $0.06 each, as opposed to $6.50. Blistered steel sold for 7 cents per pound, CPE $1.05 a pound. Today it is as much as $30 for maybe 3 pounds of steel. So as you can see from these few examples, the price of some things has gone down, and the price of other things has gone way up. I wrote this article as an insight into what money was worth back in “the good ‘ole days” and what the trade items were worth. I really hoped you liked it and learned something from it.