[Knife Making] Micarta Camp Knife With Sheath

October 22, 2025

The knife during it’s final sharpen. I really like the finger grooves and handle-work, although that is a luxury that comes from knowing your end user.

Summary:

A new camp knife! This knife, which I made as a gift for my uncle, is made from 1095 high carbon steel and follows the same general pattern as my previous camp knives, but has a lot of fun firsts: First micarta handle, first composite handle, first time using stainless handle pins, and (most importantly) this is the first knife for which I have made a from-scratch custom sheath.

The design is loosely inspired by a fall-creek woodcraft knife, but hews a little closer to my prior work (which in turn is based on Walter Sorrels style) in terms of the finishes and aesthetic flares. Now that I have the process down, I’m trying to be more intentional about the theming for each knife. The goal with this one was “no-nonsense modern”, and that informed both the handle and pin materials selection. The leather sheath is a slight departure from that theme, but my uncle lives in New Mexico, and I wanted to bring some of those browns and tans into the project.

The Blade:

Not too many pictures of the knife itself I’m afraid, I made this blade as a side project while running a knife making class and photos weren’t top of mind. It follows the same process as my earlier camp knives though so you can take a look at those for a sense of the process. I did try putting a mustard stain on the blade (since 1095 takes a patina easily it creates cool patterns) but the result ended up looking kind of messy so I removed it. I think next timer I’ll avoid overlaps between mustard lines. The finish is a skotchbright-satin for easy touch ups. I did try out an ATP 641 anti-scale compound that worked pretty well. I’ve used it on a variety of tools since and it does a pretty good job.

The handle setup is black micarta with orange acrylic panels for visibility. This was a really easy way to add visual flare (I epoxied the each panel first before attaching it to the knife) I’ll definitely do it for future synthetic handles.

The Sheath:

This was the big learning opportunity for this build: Custom Sheath! I started out by tracing the blade onto printer paper, then added half an inch to the perimeter, a belt loop tab, and cut the leather to match. I then wrapped the knife in plastic and wet-formed the leather to match the blade shape. I do not now recall applying glue, but from my records I think I went with “Barge all-purpose TF Cement” applied after the shaping and before the stitching. Once shaped, I used a stitching punch to space the holes, and then drilled them out. The thread is saddle-stitched, waxed, and hammered for a clean durable look. You can’t see it in these photos, but there is a third layer of leather that acts as a liner and protects the stitching from the blade in use.

Overall, I am very pleased with this sheath, and I will likely use a similar design on my next few knives as I get a feel for the process. The one design element I want to call out specifically is the belt loop. Here I used a pretty short belt loop, which I find to be more comfortable for around-camp use. That is partially because I expect my uncle to get more use out of this tool car-camping. For someone that is going backpacking, a longer loop (so it hangs below the backpack belt strap) might be appropriate.

[knife making] rough spine camp knife

April 30, 2019

Summary:

The knife after sharpening, but before the last few touchups to the oxide layer on the spine and blade.

This is a short handled bush/camp knife. It is a bit shorter, and a bit wider, than my last bush knife, and is designed to have a bit more of a rough-finished look too it.

The blade was cold-peened to give it a textured look, and then the mill scale was left in place after heat treat to help give the knife a darker aesthetic.

For the most part this knife came out well. I really like the cold blued aesthetic for the spine, and peened blade. This was my first time hand sharpening a knife using a wetstone, and I think that worked well from a sharpness perspective. With that said, the edge ended up being a bit too thin, so I plan to dial that back, or maybe add a micro-bevel.

Update: This knife’s blade did not hold up well to chopping through wood. In talking with more experienced knife makers it seems like my temper temperature was likely too high (450F, rather than 400F) and that I needed to do a full body quench shortly after the edge quench to prevent retained heat from softening the edge and bevel.

The knife just after final touchups and sharpening. You can see that the silvery bits along the spine are now gone.

[Knife Making] BUSH-CRAFT Prototype

March 17, 2018

My third knife!

This is my take on a British woodcraft knife. It's made from 1095 high-carbon steel, with brass pins and a cocobolo handle. The blade is 3.8" with a 4.2" handle, and a 0.3" scandinavian grind for the bevel.

The profile, bevel, and handle scales were ground to shape on a 2x42 belt grinder, and then hand finished up to 2400 grit by hand. The wood, brass, and spine were then sanded to an additional 12,000 grit. This knife was quenched in salt water, tempered twice for 2 hours at 325 degrees F.

Build:

Note: You'll have to forgive me for the lack of pictures. I was running a small knife making workshop concurrently with this build, and ended up not taking as many pictures as I might have liked. Well worth it though, I'm hoping to do another session again next term.

Learning Goals:

This knife is the first in - hopefully - a series of very similar knives based on a traditional British woodcraft design. The idea is to winnow down the number of design variables in play, so I can work on tweaking my build process and on getting a sense for what goes into good ergonomics. The learning objectives for this knife can be found below:

Practice sanding up to the reasonable limits of conventional sandpaper without leaving scratches.
Experiment with 3d profiling of the knife handle.
Experiment with handed finger grooves.

Zip Tie cutter

July 29, 2017

Summary:

This is my take on a dedicated zip-tie cutter. The idea was to make a blade that was strong, and extremely sharp, but also really short so that the user has as much leverage as possible. The design I settled on is intended to be used for slicing work, the sharp angle of the blade helps keep the user's hand moving perpendicular to there body when cutting, and the curve is sized to fit my thumb for more control when pulling the blade.

I used 1/8" 1095 steel, ground down to 3/32" and peanut oil quenched. It was then tempered for 1:20 at 500 degrees. The patina is the result of that process, and the blade was then re-ground to give it a bit of definition. The spine of the knife is 4-3/4" long with the 7/8" blade set at a roughly 30 degree angle.

Reflections:

For a second knife I'm quite pleased. I had never really used a belt grinder before and found that to be something of an education. It sharpen's easily, and cuts well. I also think that for cutting zip ties 1/8th was the correct choice. It mean's the blade is essentially indestructible. That said, I would increase the angle of the blade to make prying a bit easier.

Inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFDIV4bynDE

My First Knife

July 20, 2017

Summary:

This is a knife that I made, hopefully the first of many, as a collaboration between myself and my father. I made the blade, and he made the handle. Both the blade and handle were completed almost entirely using metal files and a hacksaw. The one exception being an unsuccessful attempt to put the final polish on the blade with a handheld belt sander.

This knife is based on a very excellent video (below) by Walter Sorrels and is composed of 1/8" 1095 steel. Which I quenched in peanut oil and then subjected to two, one hour, 350 degree (f) tempers in the oven. It remains to be seen how well the knife holds an edge in practice, but it is extremely sharp, which I find to be encouraging.

Build Pictures:

Cutting the steel to size. The hacksaw made supprisingly quick work of it.

Failed attempt to do the final polish on a handheld belt sander.

Magnet glued to a steel rod to test for temp.

It's a barbecue... A very hot barbicue...

Knife post-hardening. I almost wish I could keep the black. It's not a bad look.

Note: Drilling hardened 1095 is a no go.

Time to put on the scales, olive wood is very oily, so it's important to clean both the knife and the wood with acetone.

Clamped, Epoxied, and ready for handle shaping.

In addition to my own reflections above, my father also had some reflections which I have included below:

1. We drill the holes for the brass pins before we harden steel. That is an obvious from our last experience.

2. When selecting precut scales, we inspect both sides of the scales and pick the most aesthetic pieces of wood for the external side of the scales. I do not know whether you did this or not, but it is an aesthetic that we want to incorporate.

3. If we are cutting scales from a block, we use the sides of the cut pieces which should be similar or even mirror images unless we make a conscious decision that for aesthetic reasons we want to use a non-matching piece. In addition, I think we should sand and pre-finish the two exterior sides of the pieces preliminary to see that we like the look before committing these pieces to the exterior and discovering after they are pinned include that we do not like the look. This will make for a little more work, but the actual finishing of the sides is the least time-consuming part of making the handle.

4. We precut the scales closer to the actual dimensions of the knife handle. The advantage of this is that we can do more hand sanding which is finer work and be more precise than having to grind it down with either the power sander or a file. I think this will give us a better more precise handle fit and less likelihood of a "mistake" that requires a redo.

5. By using the stir stick and a light amount of epoxy I think we can avoid the situation we just experienced where the epoxy expanded out of the glue area.

6. I am still undecided as to the best way to finish the knife handle. I am going to research this further but I have reservations about only a 220 finish sanding. The question is whether (1) we stop at 220 and apply the oil (2) sand to the 220, apply oil, and then proceed to finish to a 400 grit or (3) finish to 400, apply the oil and then re-sand and buff accordingly. Each of these has a theoretical advantage with the first choice perhaps getting a better oil absorption and the risk that the finer sanding will result in wood that is harder for the oil to penetrate, but I also think that the 220 finish may not be as durable or hard as the 400 grit finish. I am going to do some further research and we can discuss this later.