Hardcore Survivalist Makes Handmade Knife from Scratch!
If you talk to legendary survivalists like Les Stroud or Bear Grylls they’ll tell you that a knife is your most important tool. Having a knife when you are stranded can be the difference between life and death. Knives are also pretty handy in day-to-day life, especially if you’re a country bum like us. We found one talented gentleman who could turn metal into a hardened, beautiful, and polished knife from scratch in his own garage. Keep on reading and be amazed by this man’s incredible work!
A sneak peak at the finished product
We aren’t going to drag you along through a grueling and exciting step-by-step process without giving you a taste of what’s at the end first. Here we see one of the knives created by a man who goes by the username, Phenixworks. That’s a pretty knife, right? You’ll be happy to know that it carves and cuts as good as it looks. Now let’s see how this fantastic tool was created.
It all starts with a steel bar
Let’s be honest, our first thought was that there is no way this blue steel bar is going to become a trio of knives. We’d, of course, be wrong. What we are looking at is a 1084 steel bar that is 1/8″ thick by 1-1/2″ wide. The reason that the steel is purple-ish blue is because it has been coated with a layer of layout fluid. Here we see that our survivalist has outlined his future knives.
What is layout fluid?
We aren’t going to just gloss over the little details here. Layout fluid is a liquid that is used to coat a material in order to prep it for carving. The fluid gives the carver a completely blank slate from which to work, hiding all imperfections in the metal. As Jesse Pinkman would say, “Yeah, Mr. Phenixworks, science!”
The knives have been outlined!
Now we have the knives actually cut out of their original steel bar and outlined. They still look a little rough but, well, that’s what you get when you use an angle grinder to shape your blade. This sounds easy enough but angle grinders can be tough on steel if you don’t know what you’re doing. We’d definitely say that Phenixworks has been around the tool before.