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Half-moon knife


CaptainBeaky
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Needing a new wallet, I decided to make one, at which point I realised that a round knife would be a far better tool for cutting very thin leather than a craft knife. Looking around the web then revealed eye-watering prices for anything half-decent, so I made one instead...

 

Round-knife.jpg

 

Made from an old circular saw blade, cut with a fine cutting disk to avoid losing the temper, then ground on the belt grinder. Scales are some oak burl that has been sitting in the garage for the last 10 years or so, and the mosaic pins were a leftover from a batch I made about the time I cut the oak, and used for this one just because.

 

I've just been cutting some 3.5mm bridle leather, and it works just fine :D

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Cracking effort - How hard was it to cut/grind without annealing the metal?

 

I've just started making knives and picked up a belt sander off the bay yesterday for a very good price - Blimey, it's a revelation what you can do with it. What would have been a good couple of hours with a grinder and a file done in 10 minutes, really neatly and without breaking sweat. Made a leather sheath that I wasn't happy with and smoothed all the edges over with it as well - Looks great now.

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Not too bad to cut using the very thin (1mm) disks - they cut really fast without removing too much metal, so don't heat up the surrounding metal.

This was a bit of quick and dirty tool-making, so I wasn't too concerned with a pretty finish, hence the non-polished blade and somewhat rough scales.

 

Even a cheap belt sander is a great improvement over filing by hand - you can make bigger mistakes much faster!

A proper belt grinder is something else again - I've used one once, and one day I will own one :D

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I'm intrigued, how do you use such a blade? Do you roll it, push or pull or chop? Typing this in the waiting area St. George's after nearly slicing the top off my thumb peeling carrots doh!

I'm intrigued, how do you use such a blade? Do you roll it, push or pull or chop? Typing this in the waiting area St. George's after nearly slicing the top off my thumb peeling carrots doh!

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We went to a village near to us a few months ago where they have recreated an early settlement that was there around 100BC. Part of the demonstration was a guy forging exactly the same type of tool for exactly the same purpose. The lady in the next hut was crafting leather pouches using one.

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The village these days is called Esse and is near to Confolens in the Charente Department. The ancient settlement was called Coriobona and was a Gauloise commune dated to around 100BC. Every summer the village opens for visitors and they have people dressed in the costume of the day demonstrating ancient crafts such as brick making, thatching and forging.

 

You can see some of the tools made using the old methods by clicking on Crafts in the menu on here: https://translate.google.fr/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://coriobona-village-gaulois.com/&prev=search

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  • 3 weeks later...

Nice work.

 

I have a Clarke belt sander, it does the job but laying my hands on zirconium belts in the correct size is difficult and expensive. Ally oxide belts are ok but wear too quick..

 

I have used it to basically make the whole knife,blade,handle etc.

 

I would love a proper knife makers belt grinder but I dont and never will have 2-3 grand burning a hole in my pocket.

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