how to make a stock removal blade

Thank you. Very helpful. Especially to a newbie like me. Between following this, Brendan's tutorials, and reading all the old weapon making posts from the old forum, I feel like I'm ready to tackle my first blade. It may be a knife or dagger for the first one though. +1 from me too.

Very cool! Can't wait to see more. Thanks.

Thanks chenessfan Who knows, maybe there'll be something in here that will make some step easier for you.

Thanks a lot cook79 I'm glad that it might be of some use to you. Starting with a shorter blade will definitely be easier on your patience. Plus, less wasted work in the off chance something should go wrong.

Thanks John, next installment is down below

Thanks Curtis_Louis, and you're welcome

Thank Rob

Now on to the next installment…

It’s important in that last step to make sure that the edges of your blade blank are nice and straight. Any low spot or high spot at this point will be transferred to the final blade. Once you are certain that the profile is even and straight, it’s time to lay out the edge bevel. First thing is to coat the entire edge with layout dye, I used (censored)m Steel Red Layout Fluid for this, which you can see running down the side of the blank in the previous photo. A fat permanent marker will work for this too, just be sure and cover the whole exposed edge.

Once that dries, you’ll need to mark out the edge thickness. You don’t want to mark right down the center of the edge since you won’t be grinding all the way to the center before heat treating the blade. I usually leave about 1/16 inch thickness of edge on the blank. You can make a tool to mark your line with a small “L” shaped piece of steel and an adjustable point, however, a cheap set of calipers works too. To figure where to set your calipers, take the overall thickness of the steel you are working with and cut it in half. Then take the thickness you want your edge to be, cut that in half, and add it back in to your other figure. For example: If you are starting with a piece of steel that is ¼ inch thick, first cut that in half to get 1/8 inch. Then take the thickness of the edge, 1/16 inch, and cut that in half to get 1/32 inch. Add that back into your first figure, 1/8 inch + 1/32 inch, to get 5/32. Arrgh, blasted imperial measurement system! When I was in grade school, they told us everything was going to be changed over to metric!

Anyway, set your calipers to your final number and set one on the calipers jaws on the edge of the blade blank and hold the other jaw against the side. Draw it down the length of the blank to mark one line of the edge thickness.


Then flip the calipers over and mark the other line of the edge thickness from the opposite side of the blade.


You’ll end up with something like this.


The exact thickness you choose for your edge isn’t super critical. It is very important that the edge is an even thickness all the way down its length.

Once the edge thickness is marked out, it’s time to start grinding. You’ll want to clamp the blade to the edge of a table for this. Not the kitchen table, your wife/mom/landlord won’t appreciate that. Do this outside with all your safety gear on. Clamp the blade to the table so that the edge of the blade blank hangs just over the table’s edge and the tip of the blank is just over the end of the table. You’ll need two clamps for this. If you use only one, no matter how tight you think you have it, the blank will pivot on that point as you grind. Put two clamps on the tang as far apart from each other as you can put them without them getting in your way.

Important note here about the grinder angle. Yes, the grinder will cut faster if held at a steeper angle. It will also gouge the blank very easily and produce a very rough cut.


Hold the grinder at a very shallow angle. This will help you get a nice smooth cut.


Also note that you can choose to cut with either edge of the grinding wheel. One way will spray the sparks back at you (wheel cutting from the center of the blank toward the edge), the other way will spray the sparks away from you and out onto the driveway onto the hood of your car (wheel cutting from the edge toward the center). I find I get a better cut when the wheel is cutting away from me, and when my girlfriend’s car is parked in front of mine.

Now you’re almost ready to put on your mask and prepare for some boring, tedious work. You don’t want to move the grinder in little circles or run it back and forth to grind. You want to run it down the entire length of the blade in one stroke. To do this, you’ll need to stand at about the center of the blade blank. The movement will end up looking sort of tai chi like as you shift your weight from one foot to the other while keeping your body even. Don’t put a lot of pressure on the grinder; let the speed of the grinding wheel do the work. You want to concentrate on moving smoothly along the length of the blank with light, even pressure. When you get to the end of the blade, don’t grind back in the opposite direction. Pick the grinder up, go back to your starting point, and grind another stroke in the same direction as before. After several grinding strokes, the steel will be getting hot. Unclamp it and dunk it in water or run the hose on it. Wipe the water off the blade before clamping it back down. If you let the steel get too hot, you could end up hardening the section you’re trying to work on, or warping it. Either of these will make the job more difficult. :!: if you don’t want to take the time to grind the blade evenly, just buy a cheap windlass instead, it will be much less effort and will be nicer than what you were about to make anyway.

Here’s what the blank will look like after 30-40 passes with the grinder.




As you grind, your patience will decrease and your fatigue will increase. If you try to grind one side all at once before moving on to the next side, you’ll end up with four progressively worse ground sides. You’ll find it easier to keep all your bevels even if every time you unclamp the blank to cool it, you flip it over and grind on the opposite side. Do this for all four bevels (counting your strokes so that you do the same number on each bevel) and then start over at the first bevel again. Here is what it looks like when the edge bevel is ground almost all the way down to the line.


Notice that we aren’t grinding the primary bevels yet, we’re just setting the thickness of the edge.


I prefer to stop grinding just before the line I’ve marked, that way I still have my line there as a guide.

Next installment: Primary bevels.

Please, don´t do that, its a sure way for ruining your calipers.
Vernier calipers are a tool for measuring, not for scribing.

A good way for marking the middle of your blank is to clamp it onto a flat surface. Then you pick a drillbit about the size of your billets thickness and use it to scribe the lines you need for later grinding. Place it flat on your working surface and run it along the side of your billet.

Very nice, Jeff. I see you use a different approach than I do. I establish the distal taper before I grind the bevels, helps me to get an even distal taper. That way I don't have to check the thickness of the blade all the time when I grind the bevels as it's already installed.
The idea with the marker plus calipers is friggin awesome, I can't wait to try that out.

How does it do that? they cut the steel far more agressively during drilling then a light scratching in a scribe action. I've scribed a long blade completely, then drilled slab holes with the same drill bit probably four or 5 blades, bit drilled like the first hole everytime. Buy quality bits. Don't do it to your calipers cheap or not, buy a real adjustable center scribe or make one, if you can make a sword you can make an adjustable center scribe in less than an hour, then you can use your still good calipers to set your adjustable scribe and scribe away like a pro.

Also, I forgot to add, if you look at your picture of scribing the blade with the calipers, you are holding it with the point on the side of the blade at an angle, which rotates the point actually making the mark, it might sound trivial but it means your scribed marks are inaccurate, which could cause problems down the road.

I wasn't directing anything to you in particular in my post except the comment on using drill bits to scribe, the rest was a generic informative post to the general audience. I must have missed your funny inference in your comment about the drill bits and your winking smiley face which to me looks smarmy. There was also no inference of any of the things you said, my quality bits comment was made to the fact that if you can't scribe with a bit or it get's "ruined" being used to scribe then you are obviously using poor bits, The comment about what you should do with your 12$ calipers, in light of your recent post let's just say I didn't really post what I think you should do with your 12$ calipers nor will I.Thirdly, the calipers and drill bit are half ass scribes, plain and simple, they get the job done sure. But every proffessional knifemaker I've ever met has used a proffessional scribing tool as it's 99% accurate and in the proffessional world that counts. You are already a pro anyway, nothing I do or say or any of my info can change that :lol:

BB, I think you misunderstood my intentions.
I didn´t want to tell you what to do with your tools. Thats non of my business at all.

But since you wrote a guide for other people, who may not have bought cheap vernier calipers just for scribing, I wanted to point out that they may damage their (possibly expensive) tools, so I suggested a different method.

oh, and drill bits are designed for cutting steel as Sam Salvati pointed out, so they are perfectly suited for cutting (and scribing)

So as Brenno said:
Keep it up bro!

Thanks Brendan Yeah, you could easily write a good sized book on the subject. I figured a condensed post that hit the key points that I thought would be important to a beginner would be a good addition to the new forum.

Basically I'm saying, "if you like the blades that I've made (and it's cool if you don't, to each his own) here's how I do it, so you can do the same if you like".

We're cool Quasihodo, I just thought it was funny that you basically said "don't use tool X for a job that should be done by tool A, use tool Y for a job that should be done by tool A" I don't really think you're going to ruin your drill bits that way, I was altering your quote with "drill bit" replacing "calipers" to poke a bit of light fun at you for the humorous juxtaposition noted above. No offence intended.

Thanks Cameron Next installment will be up shortly.