Knives for L & S

I made a few knives recently my best friend and her fiance.
L's a stay at home mum with a shoemaking background and general creative and artistic flair so I thought a utility/craft knife would be suitable. I wanted to make a wharncliffe style blade with a hidden tang for a left hander.
I made the blade out of the other end of the file I used for SBW's knife and the handle is nickel silver, tin, reconstituted stone, black and white spacer material and curly birch finished with Danish oil.






S is a whiz in the kitchen so a chef knife was the obvious choice - or at least obvious after asking L for ideas and having her suggest it. I freely admit that I cheated with this knife and actually bought the blade as a blank, rather than grinding it myself. I was concerned that I'd grind too much off making such a thin knife and simply didn't want to take the chance. So rather than this being a custom knife it's more of a 'customised handle' knife, as all I had to do was fit a handle and give the blade a bit of a quick sharpen and strop.
The blade is a 440c stainless Santuko that I purchased from Jantz Supply in the US. Handle is made from red spacer material and Fiddleback Redgum. I finished it with a few coats of danish oil and sealed with wax.

Utility Knife Step-by-step: Part 2

I got so caught up in the moment of shaping the handle that I completely overlooked taking any photos of the process.
In a nutshell though, I shaped the handle using the bench grinder. I actually started with the stone wheel which might sound strange for use on wood but it does wonders with removing large quantities at once. I then shaped further using the belt grinder and drum sander.
After shaping the handle I finished sanding the blade with wet and dry, going from 80 grit through to 800.
Then I sanded the handle to 240 grit and finished off with an 800 grit sanding pad. This was followed by several applications of danish oil with a light sand in between coats.
And for the final touch I ran the flade over a clean sisal wheel.

The results are as follows:





The filework shows up really well with the black epoxy.


There are some bits I could have done better but overall I'm rather happy with how things turned out