Building instructions for a knife

A knife kit makes it much easier to make a beautiful knife according to your own ideas than if you have to search for all materials individually.

A passionate knife maker will, of course, have enough choice of knife making materials in his workshop, but someone who is just starting in the art of knife making and is taking his first steps will certainly be grateful to have the bolster, end-plate and liner in one hand, including leather and thread for a knife sheath, in addition to the blade and the handle wood.

Making a knife by yourself is not that difficult, you just need some time, diligence and pleasure in design. These instructions show you all the single steps how to make a beautiful knife with a Pera Peris knife kit, up to the making of a sheath.

Besides contrasting interlayers of brass, steel and pewter, leather, fibre and birch bark, as well as bone, horn and horn are good for making the knife handle interesting. Even wood of different colours can create interesting effects.
With all this, however, it should be remembered that less is often more and therefore no more than three different materials should be combined.

A two-part wooden handle with an intermediate layer of horn, antler or bone, which is separated on both sides by a thin layer of leather, fibre or brass towards the wood, for example, results in a very interesting handle, which looks noble and valuable without looking overloaded.

What does a knife kit from Pera Peris contain?

A distinction must be made between knife kits for Nordic knives, i.e. those that have a blade with a tang, as it was customary for knives of the early Middle Ages and the Viking Age, and kits for knife blades with a full tang, as it is customary for late medieval knives and modern hunting knives.

In both cases, however, a knife construction kit consists of knife-blade, handle material and leather. You can choose between kits with knife blades made of carbon steel or damascus steel.

Our kits for Nordic knives include, for example, a knife blade with a tang, which we offer in various sizes and designs. In addition, you will receive a wooden block made of walnut, olive or ash wood and handle plates made of steel or brass for fitting and end-plate, as well as handle inlays made of horn, bone or leather, and a piece of leather for the knife sheath and sewing thread.

The knife kits for knives with full tang blade contain, in addition to the knife blade, two layers of horn, wood or bone for the handle plates and two attachments each made of natural material and metal, together with riveting pins for fastening, sheath leather and sewing thread.

If the material contained in the set should not be sufficient, you can also buy further accessories for your knife in our online shop in the category knifemaking accessories.

How to make a knife with a tang on your own

Making your own knife is not that difficult, you just need some time, diligence and joy of design.

If you want to craft a knife yourself you first need to get a hole in the handle material that is deep enough and wide enough to sink the tang of the blade. A beginner is recommended to saw the handle material into several pieces and then put them on one after the other, which makes the work much easier and also looks very nice in the end.

In addition to the handle material mentioned above, the following materials are ideally required for successful knife making, but with a little more work you can get by with fewer tools.

- Wood saw and possibly steel saw
- Cordless drill or Dremel
- Drills for wood and metal
- Needle rasp
- Needle file
- Epoxy resin adhesive
- Vice
- Screw Clamp
- Rasp
- Flat file
- Sandpaper in the grit sizes 80, 120, 180, 240
- Cutter Knives
- Awl
- Leather needle

Step 1 - Before you start working, you should wrap the knife blade with a solid adhesive tape, firstly to prevent injury to the sharp edge and secondly to prevent the blade from being damaged during work.

Step 2 - If you have chosen a multi-piece knife handle, saw the handle in two or more pieces, the steps can be straight or diagonal, depending on your taste. Straight cuts, however, are the easier and more common procedure. You should mark the single pieces so that you do not mess up the correct order of the pieces later. Afterwards, all sawn end faces need to be threatened with file and sandpaper until they fit together completely flat and even.

Step 3 - Now mark the centre of each piece of the handle material in the size of the rod and then drill three holes in each piece with a suitable drill bit. The diameter of each hole should not be much larger than the thickness of the tang.
After drilling the holes, the bars between the three holes have to be removed with a needle rasp and a needle file and the recess must be brought to the size of the rod.

Step 4 - Proceed in the same way with the recesses for the bolster, end-plate and intermediate layers. As a rule, the bolster must be filed slightly at the top and bottom with a file so that the blade lies completely flat and accurately on the fit.

Step 5 - Before you start glueing, you can put all the individual parts on the rod once to make sure that everything fits well. The parts should be on place tightly, but of course, they must still be able to move.
If the tang is too long, you have to adjust it to the right length before inserting it into the handle, so that it doesn't stick out of the handle at the end. Unless this is desired when the rod shall be riveted to the end-plate, which means more effort.

Step 6 - To glue the individual parts of the handle together, the lower part of the tang needs to be threatened with a little epoxy glue and the fitting has to be pushed onto the rod.
Now apply a lot of glue to the back of the fitting and the following grip as well as the section of the tang and put the parts together with a little pressure. This is how you proceed with all following grip parts and intermediate layers.
Besides, a thin layer of dark leather or fibre between the bolster and the wood looks very nice.

Step 7 - The knife kit assembled in this way must now be pressed together firmly so that it can harden "under pressure", for which a simple vice and clamp is very well suited. Depending on the glue used, this process can take only a few minutes or last until the next day.
The knife blade must be protected during this process, which is why a thick piece of leather or cut open rubber hose should be placed between the blade and the chuck.

Step 8 - Using a steel saw, the hardened handle is sawn into the desired shape. It is a good idea to have already drawn the desired shape of the handle with a pencil directly on the wood so that you only need sawing along the marked lines.
In the absence of a saw, the knife handle can also be carved with a sharp knife, but this is much more complex and requires that no metal has been used in the handle.

Step 9 - To create the final shape of the handle, you can very well use a rotating grinding plate, as you can buy quite cheaply in a DIY store as an attachment for a drill. However, you should install it permanently and clamp it in a workbench, for example.
Alternatively, the knife handle can also be brought into a pleasing and handy shape with a rasp and a flat-file and coarse abrasive cloth.

Step 10 - Finally, the handle can be smoothed with sandpaper in various grits from 80 grit paper to and120 grit and 180 grit up to 240 grit.
It is a good idea to moisten the handle slightly with water or better still methylated spirits between the individual sanding passes, which will cause the wood fibres to settle and then sand away more easily. In a final step, the knife handle can be polished to a shine with 800-grade sandpaper and, if necessary, fine steel wool 000.

Step 11 - Finally, the knife handle should be sealed to protect it against moisture and dirt and to bring out the wood grain. Vegetable oil, such as linseed oil or special liquid wax is suitable for this purpose. Traditionally, boiled linseed oil is used in knife making, but this has a slight smell and can tend to yellow.
Walnut oil is also very well suited as it hardens quickly, or, if necessary, simple sunflower oil. Simply brush the handle with the oil, let it rest for 20 minutes and then wipe off the excess oil properly.

Step 12 - For safe storage, the knife should have a sheath. That is why our knife kits always contain a piece of solid core leather made from pure vegetable tanning with a sufficiently long piece of sewing thread.


Should you now feel like making more than just a knife with a ready-to-do knife kit, then you will find in our online shop at www.peraperis.com many different knife kits and a wide selection of knife blades in different sizes and shapes made of carbon steel and damascus steel as well as a wide variety of handle materials.

Beside wooden blocks and handle plates made of real horn and bone, you can also buy finished bolsters and end-plates made of steel, brass or damascus steel, as well as intermediate layers made of leather or fibre and matching leather pieces for knife sheaths.