Mammoth Ivory Knife

[BellamyBlake]

I decided to make my first handmade knife special by finishing it with handles made out of stabilized mammoth ivory. This needs some final sharpening, but I'm happy with it!

 

 

[Randyw]

Looks nice! Good job!

[Tidgy's Dad]

That certainly cuts the mustard. 

[PODIGGER]

Looks great!  How did you attach the handle?

[BellamyBlake]

2 hours ago, Randyw said:

Looks nice! Good job!

Thank you

2 hours ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

That certainly cuts the mustard. 

Haha love that expression, and mustard. Thank you!

1 hour ago, PODIGGER said:

Looks great!  How did you attach the handle?

Thank you :). I used epoxy resin. The handles that the epoxy was applied to, as well as the opposing metal, needed to be scored with a knife because otherwise epoxy doesn't have a lot of gripping surface.

[Ptychodus04]

@BellamyBlake This is way better than my first attempt at a knife!!! Very cool. What did you use for your steel? Do you have a forge, or did you use a torch for your heat treatment?

[BellamyBlake]

1 hour ago, Ptychodus04 said:

@BellamyBlake This is way better than my first attempt at a knife!!! Very cool. What did you use for your steel? Do you have a forge, or did you use a torch for your heat treatment?

Haha I cheated a bit and bought a steel plate! I simply cut and shaped it out of that plate. There were no forges or torches involved. Truthfully, it's dull and I have to find a way to sharpen it significantly

[Ptychodus04]

1 hour ago, BellamyBlake said:

Haha I cheated a bit and bought a steel plate! I simply cut and shaped it out of that plate. There were no forges or torches involved. Truthfully, it's dull and I have to find a way to sharpen it significantly

You can use a belt sander/grinder with zirconia grit. I grind my blades starting at 40 grit, progressing up to 600 grit for sharpening. It takes some time and practice to get it right. They will hold up to the steel. In the future, you will want to heat at least the cutting edge of your blade up to red hot and quench it in oil (I use canola) in order to harden the cutting edge. Otherwise, your knife will not hold an edge. If you only heat the edge, and don't plan to use your knife for abusive bushcraft, you don't need to temper the blade. If you do a full blade heat treatment, you want to temper your blade at 400 degrees for at least an hour to remove the brittleness in the blade. You'll be amazed how easily you can break a freshly quenched blade.

 

I've been making knives for about 5 years and have learned most of the ways possible to wreck scores of hours of work on a blade.

[BellamyBlake]

4 minutes ago, Ptychodus04 said:

You can use a belt sander/grinder with zirconia grit. I grind my blades starting at 40 grit, progressing up to 600 grit for sharpening. It takes some time and practice to get it right. They will hold up to the steel. In the future, you will want to heat at least the cutting edge of your blade up to red hot and quench it in oil (I use canola) in order to harden the cutting edge. Otherwise, your knife will not hold an edge. If you only heat the edge, and don't plan to use your knife for abusive bushcraft, you don't need to temper the blade. If you do a full blade heat treatment, you want to temper your blade at 400 degrees for at least an hour to remove the brittleness in the blade. You'll be amazed how easily you can break a freshly quenched blade.

 

I've been making knives for about 5 years and have learned most of the ways possible to wreck scores of hours of work on a blade.

Thank you very much for your advice! I'll have to find some way to heat it to red hot without a forge or torch then haha. I didn't look too much into it before I made the knife, but heat treating is an aspect I'll have to look further into before making more knives. I made a spear that sharpened pretty well without heat out of the same steel, and simply assumed that the knife would be no different. Of course it's different, because a spear penetrates through blunt force whereas a knife has to be finer. Thankfully I just bought a belt sander, that works out well

[Ptychodus04]

The heat treatment allows the cutting edge to maintain its sharpness. Any metal can be sharpened to a point that it will cut. The softer the metal, the quicker it looses its sharp edge.

 

Beware the curse of knife making. It will suck you in.