How To Make A Folding Knife

[fly fisher]

Im gona try to show and explain how I make a three blade folding whittling knife. If theres anything your not quite sure about just ask and I'll do my best to help. You'll need the templates if you want to make it so drop me a private msg and i will send them to you.

This is how it looks finished







The first thing to do is make the blades all of which I find the most useful when carving.[ They might not be to your taste and a bit of reshaping.] Also I like to make the blades from old files but you could use whatever steel you normally make knives out of.

Blades

[fly fisher]

Cut and Shape two side plates and the blade divider from brass sheet and drill the pivot hole in both as shown in picture. Pin all the pieces together and make sure they line up.



Cut and shape two springs from stainless steel , spring steel or as I use old files annealed and ground down [ if doing this they must be perfectly flat ] then drill pivot holes in both as shown in picture.

[fly fisher]

The two springs need to be riveted together at one end so pin them up through the pivot hole and drill a small hole.



Counter sink the outer side of both holes then using mild steel rivet them together.

[fly fisher]

One end of the brass blade divider needs to be filed to a point. It has to be done evenly from both sides. [ it helps if you scribe a center line before starting ]
It should look like this



Slide it inbetween the springs and check the pivot hole lines up

[fly fisher]

The rivited end of the springs need to be ground down to just slightly thicker than your large blade. should look like this



Now put all the parts together and you'll see the side plates don't touch all the way down, so a bit of bending is needed untill it all looks like this.

[Northwest29]

Richard, looks mighty good from where I'm sitting. Again, thank's for sharing.

Ron

[fly fisher]

Using the template mark out the holes at each end and drill. It is very important this is done precisely, if not the blades will not fold correctly. put all the pins through holes to make sure everything lines up.



Test fit all the blades and make sure everything is working as it should. A little bit of fettling might be needed here and there until it all operates smoothly.

[fly fisher]

All the hard work is done now and its time to put your own style onto it. First i stripped it down and put a pattern on the back of the spring



Then i gave all the parts a polish

[fly fisher]

The side shells were made out of cow shin bone i got off the butcher. After cleaning , boiling and disinfecting I sawed it down the middle.



Then ground it into a flat slab then made two shells

[Inadv]

Richard,

Excellent!!! Good job and a good looking example to aspire to. I sent a regular email to request the templates. Thank you for all of your time and effort to produce this step by step process for us.

L.P.