knife blanks

[rickm]

I dont know if I can explain what Im getting at. I have seen a website that sells the knive portion blanks, that is in other words the blades only, no handle. This idea intrigues me, but I am stuck with a immediate problem. I would love to keep my old handles and only replace the blade, but how would u get the old knfe blade out of the wood? without totally destroying the handle. My guess is that the new knife blade is then glued in, but I cant get past the initial how does one get the old blade out of there?

[Tom Ellis]

Rick, Can you post a picture of your knife, and are you getting blades from the same knife maker?
If they are not riveted, you may be able to heat the blade to a point that it will soften the glue, and then just pull it out. You could easily make a new handle, and use the old one for a pattern.

Good luck, Tom

[Inadv]

rickm,

Tom offers a really good suggestion here. Sitesby sort of got me onto making handles with the suggestion of embedding an X-acto knife into a homemade one.

As I sat here and worked with concept drawings on the computer and a chunk of poplar, I realized that most knives are not really very ergonomic. For example, I want a thumb groove on the top for push cuts, and reliefs for the other fingers on both sides of the handle that also tapers to a larger diameter toward the rear of the knife. Plus I have really large hands so a larger handle feels much better than the long slender ones. Woodcraft offers a large selection of the Denny blades (very reasonably priced) which have a flat tang with holes for rivets. Unless the knives you have now have round tangs these would likely work for you.

Happy trails

[Gulf Coast Handyman]

I made a laminated handle for a denny blade, I copied the Helvie handle. It worked out real nice.

Dave

[brianrickman]

I too have found making my own knife handles to be very rewarding. I bought some knife blades on ebay (4 for $20) and carved handles from different scrap woods I had sitting around the shop. One pine, two cedar, one an unknown dark hardwood. All the handles I made are substantially larger then those on store-bought knives, and they feel much more comfortable to me.

[tbox61]

I have had some fun making my own knife handles for purchased blades. I have never broken down an old knife, saved the blade and started over, however,

I have used the heavy duty Warren blades for most of them. I simply picked my wood of choice, and inletted the blade on one of the knife scale halves. After epoxying them together I finished the handle to my liking.

The last one I did was with one of Little Shaver's Denny knife blanks. I designed my own handle, drilled a hole to accept the blade, pinned it and then cut and split an 'plug' of wood to fill in the end of the knife blade where the blade protruded.

Turned out pretty slick!