# Christmas is coming



## milkbaby (Nov 12, 2017)

Since my sister saw the knife that I made and gave to my dad for Christmas last year, she's been bugging me for a knife. She wanted a little paring knife to use as a utility knife in the kitchen. She's basically one of those people who uses a little knife for everything in the kitchen, I think. 

I started with a left over offcut of 15N20 carbon steel and drew something on there that would work with the offcut of handle scales I had left over from another knife. I usually design a knife on paper first, but I wanted to kill two birds with one stone: use up scraps, make little sis a little knife. Waste not, want not.









From the start this knife was a bit of an afterthought while I was working on other knives. In the pic below you can see the leftover handle scale offcuts. The design followed from the leftover materials.








Partial grind. Was pretty happy at that point that it was looking fairly clean and even. 








Heat treated and tempered at the same time as a chef's knife that warped from the asymmetric grind, but the symmetric utility stayed straight.








Time for playing with wood and getting sticky fingers.













For handles, I like to wet sand in tung oil finish especially on natural woods. This is bocote and padauk. Padauk tends to have open grain/pores that do better filled. 













Pictured with the chef's knife I made simultaneously. That knife is one of the best I've made so far but the utility knife is kinda blah at this point, sort of an afterthought. It looked a bit crap, wasn't happy with the grind and finish at that point. 













I delayed making a saya for a few months because how crap I felt about this knife. After taking this pic, I went back and redid the grind both going thinner and evening it out better. 








Saya is chiseled out basswood, a great soft wood that's kind to the edge. I love it for sayas because it's a bit more durable than balsa but easier to chisel than pine. The one downside is that it's a bit boring, though I do find bits with cool figure occasionally. 













Since basswood is boring, I fire distressed the saya pin and added some wood veneer and leather ornamentation on the saya.













I put some tung oil finish on the saya but got it on the dyed leather which promptly turned really dark, not even very red anymore. 








I kept trying to get an acceptable color out of the leather and thought I was happy with a really dark maroon after sanding and trying to refinish but then I saw the original color in the earlier pic and thought it was a shame to not have some red in there. I thought that I had some textured red scrapbook paper to use but couldn't find it. So I dry tested a strip of the original dyed leather and thought it looked nice. Voilá, fixed! 








Also, I redid the belt finish because I almost always manage to leave some stone grit somewhere while sharpening or always cut through an onion root with dirt and scratch my knives. Pretty happy that I was able to turn around a project that I was originally unhappy with.


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## jessf (Nov 12, 2017)

Mmmm toasted tung oil lager.


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## merlijny2k (Nov 15, 2017)

Those handles..... drool.


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## crunchy (Nov 17, 2017)

Your handles and design concept are very unique and different. I personally prefer my knives toned down a bit as far as contrasting colors and materials. Sometimes minimal design can be beautiful &#128522; Great craftsmanship!


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## TheCaptain (Nov 17, 2017)

I absolutely love WIP shots/threads. Thanks so much for the detailed pictures and explanation. Those take a lot of time and it's very kind of you to invest precious time in that for the benefit of the rest of us.

(Nice work BTW!)


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## Mute-on (Nov 17, 2017)

You guys are so talented it makes me sick 

Very nicely done. Professional and creative. Ridiculous


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## Dave Martell (Nov 18, 2017)

I have to say that the level of finish you got on the padauk is amazing!


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