# Making a knife from an old knife



## notontherug (Dec 20, 2016)

I have an old N Schreiber and Sons 10" Chef knife that has been sitting in a drawer for years. The handle is uttlerly shot on it and the tip has about 3/4 of an inch broken off of it. 

I've seen experienced guys grind old knives down in to a new shape before online, but never attempted it myself and don't really have any fancy tools except for a bench grinder and some sharpening stones. 

My ideal would be to take a few inches off of it and make it in to a bunka knife, somewhere in the 165-175mm range. I think there is enough usable steel there to work with. 

Any advice you guys could give me would be much appreciated. 

I'm thinking that I might just pattern it out and then go for it one day in the near future. I'll probably remove the old handle and maybe even grind the tang down to have a Wa handle fitted to it. Might as well. Who on this forum does cheap handles? At this point in time, I don't have the resources to do a handle myself.


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## merlijny2k (Dec 25, 2016)

If i can get a decent Western handle on a blade anyone can. All you need is a drill, a file, suitable screws and sandpaper. Wa handle is a different story though.

I think the two most important caveats: bench grinders are great for reprofiling but quite difficult to get a decent grind with beyond the earliest beginnings. Thinning by hand takes forever. Then again you arent planning to decrease the blade height so i guess it should all work out quite easily.


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## notontherug (Dec 25, 2016)

A few other guys I know who work with knives recommended using a 1x30 sander instead of a grinder. I will have to pick one up since I don't have one. 

I got tons of other pointers from them as well. 

I'll certainly start a thread here once I start the project. I just need to find the time


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## xsmx13 (Dec 25, 2016)

Seems like a shame to take that down that far in size. I had a similar, but smaller, old chef knife I found with about a half inch missing from the tip. Instead of either belt sander or grinder, I mostly reprofiled it by hand on 220 and 400 stones and it came out fairly well.


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## merlijny2k (Dec 26, 2016)

Improving the grind and all OK but for setting a K-tip i wouldn't recommend doing to on a stone as it will pretty much ruin it. I fixed a knife with a crop that had a large chip in the edge near the heel. Now i have a fixed knife and one side of my stone has become useless with grooves. If i had a bench grinder i would definitely do that for profiling (mom has one so i worked on it often enough. After that stones can do the rest just fine. Wouldnt buy a belt sander yet if you are planning to work on only one knife.


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