I have only made 4 knives, 2 of them - shall we say I learned a lot from. This is not a new effort, finished it early last year but I have not posted it on this forum and I thought I'd share. I'm starting small actually I'll stay small in the knife making department and draw inspiration and experience from the some of the folks who post their work on various forums.

I saw an armguard knife on the cover of a traditional archery book years ago. I did make a prototype using a lovely bone handled damascus steel skinner I have but the knife was to heavy.

I wanted to test the practicalities of a small lightweight knife to mount on an armguard. No suitable knives where available commercially so I made one, perhaps in part inspired by the various small neck knives and sheaths I see from time to time.

The blank was taken from a piece of disgarded broken circular 30cm saw blade I dragged out of a mates rubbish bin as evidenced by the profile Believe it or not the curved profile was part of an image I had in my mind before I saw the broken shard.

I do not have acces to appropriate heat sources so detempering/ retempering was out of the question for me. Luckily the saw blades metal displayed fine knife making qualities, flexible, a good rockwall hardness to take a fine and durable edge and it's not brittle. I left a short area of ground down saw blade teeth as a poor imitation of filework.

I spent hours with a $25 bench grinder that I chewed through a full 1/3rd of the wheel and several new files which I used until ruined and have kept for later experimentation. I used a cutting wheel mounted on the bench grinder to carefully cut a slot part of the length of the handle for the stainless bolster retaining pins as drilling was out of the question.

I dipped the blade every few seconds at all stages of the grinding/cutting and put new meaning to the words slowly slowly. I spent mind numbing hours hand polishing the blade with wet and dry sandpaper and very fine diamond hones.

I think it was a Kimal thread I read somewhere a fair while back describing how to make homemade Micarta. I used scrap pieces of a snake skin print Flannelette glued together with Botecote and sandwiched between cling wrapped and clamped pieces of hardwood. After finishing the light brown colour looked horrible against the arnguard so I dyed it with aniline leather dye to match.



I've have butchered several beasties with the little knife and it holds an awesome edge. The concept of an armguard knife sheath is despite many illinformed jibes I've endured is very sound, practicle, very lightweight and does not interfere with the armguard's primary function. You completely forget you are carrying a knife as part of the armguards design.

regards Jacko

Good work mate great idea too you always have a knife with you that way.If you ever want to heat treat some carbon steel or want to do a bit of blacksmithing then drop me a line you are always welcome to come and use my workshop.I am only an amature but I do have some equipment here that makes life a bit easier.
Cheers KIM
PS Good to see you back posting again too.

looks real good ,handy little knife..............................Rod