I’ve wanted a set of wooden kitchen knives for a while now. All the training blades I have ever run across were all patterned after crazy blades meant for poking holes in, or cutting, other people; basically large combat or hunting blades.
For knife work, I figure that if I ever have to defend myself form a knife attack, it is way more likely that my attacker will be using a weapon of opportunity than pulling out some crazy combat or hunting knife. Conversely, kitchen knives seem like a good pattern to practice basic knife attacks – as they are easily found most homes. So I am making a set of kitchen patterned training knives.
I started with some holly that I had harvested a few years ago.
The piece of holly I started with was fairly thick – so after cutting out a knot
I planed the rough cut stock flat on both sides, cut the stock in half, and then planed it flat and to the desired thickness.
From there I traced the pattern of the pattern of the knife in question onto the wood. I tried and pick a location and alignment with the grain that will work best for the knife pattern in question.
The next step is gluing on the handle scales. Holly is a very white wood, so I am glueing on American cherry scales. I’m hoping after a few coats of linseed oil it will finish off nicely. The scales are taking forever to add since each side takes a day for the glue to dry.