New handmade knife...

A friend who had talked with me about my knives in the past, phoned last weekend to ask if I would help him make a knife of his own. We arranged a time and he turned up with some pictures off the net of some knives he liked the look of. On the whole they were a collection of heavy duty Bowie type knives (my friend is a fully-fledged cave-dwelling, hunting, being rescued from the sea by the RAF type wild man) but we settled on a slightly more subtle Fallkniven BA1 copy.

I must pause at this point to say fair-play to Fallkniven who publish templates of all their blades on their website - uncommonly generous, I thought.

I had a length of A1 steel (thanks Christoffish - Bushcraft UK) so we set about cutting, sharpening, hardening and tempering. This took best part of a day, with me showing him how to do it and him having a go himself.


Day 2, we chose some really nice wood for the scales - not sure what it is, it's been knocking about in my shed for ages (rosewood perhaps??). We pinned the scales with brass rod and shaped the handle - it came up beautifully. Overall I was very pleased with the finished results and I hope my friend was.

Next job, making a sheath.