6 Levels of Knife Making_ Easy to Complex _ WIRED

I'm Chelsea Miller. I'm a knife maker, and today I've been challenged to make a knife in 6 levels of increasing complexity. So obviously there are so many subcategories of knives depending on the knife maker's bent towards tradition versus ingenuity. Knives can become so complex. For example, making your own Damascus steel, which is a process of forge welding hundreds of pieces of steel together before you even begin to shape the blade. What I love about knives is that really the complexity level is endless. You could keep going beyond just the basic steps needed. So we're gonna focus on really the number of steps to get to a highly functioning knife beyond any decoration you wanted to add to that later on. So just remember, this is my personal take, my personal unique style in the knives that I make. And all of the materials that I use are repurposed. Level 1: Wood knife. The wood knife would be the most simple level because we're only working with one material, which is the wood itself. All you need to do is source the wood. We'll trace out our desired shape in the piece of wood, cut it out, sand it, and oil it. So we're only using very few tools here. Important things to remember when cutting out the shape is to keep yourself protected. So protecting your eyes, protecting your ears, and making sure that your fingers are always outside the reach of the blade. Leave yourself a little room. There's no adding material once you've cut, so it's important to give yourself a little bit of wiggle room and cut it a little bigger than you've traced. I mean, really, the worst thing that could happen is either you cut into the shape that you've traced, or maybe you go too deep when you're sanding it, in which case it's not really a big deal to just start over. Most important thing when sanding is not to remove too much material, because again, you can't go back. Start at a coarse grit and increase the tightness of the grit so you end up with a very fine fine sanding of the knife. This will keep the moisture out of your knife. It'll keep a really nice smooth finish on the blade, and that's very important. If you don't take the knife down to a really fine smooth finish, it will be really uncomfortable in your hand. It'll feel sort of hairy in your fingers. Also, food will get stuck to it, and the process of it being wet and then drying will tend to dry out the knife a lot. Also, wood loves oil, so if you apply a mineral oil, maybe a little beeswax in there, that'll help keep the moisture out of the material. I like to just use my bare hands. Just get that oil right in there into the grain. You scrub it between your fingers afterwards. For the next level, we're going to stay with a wood blade, and we're going to add a wood handle on top of that. Level 2: wood knife with handle. So you'll start with a block of wood. You'll trace your desired shape in the block of wood, cut that out, and then you're going to take another wood, lay that over your cut piece, and trace a handle. Make sure you leave a little extra space so that you can cut it just a little bit bigger than your original knife piece. Also, it's a good idea to examine the piece that you'll be using for your handle and make sure that it's got something going on, that it's got character. Then you'll go through the process of sanding your blade, sanding the wood handle, and then you'll drill holes through the knife and the handle pieces, glue them together, pin them together, let them set, and then you'll begin sanding both those materials at the same time till it's all smooth. So when it comes to attaching the handle to the wood blade, you want to really make sure that you've sanded each piece to fit so you don't have a big gap where you're gonna see epoxy, you're gonna see the glue. You wanna make sure it's really snug. Keep applying that wood handle until it's perfect. If it's got a little bump, you sand a little more, test it, sand a little more, test it, until you line it up perfectly before you wanna glue it, 'cause again, there's no going back once you glue it. So going into the next level, we're gonna introduce metal into the equation. Level 3, metal butter knife. So as opposed to making a wooden knife with a wooden handle, now we've brought in this other element, which is the metal. And the difference in the metal is different machinery, you're gonna wanna protect yourself in a different way, you don't wanna be breathing in those metal fumes. You're bringing in a whole new skill set in working with a brand new material. So to make a metal butter knife, you will source the material, and what I like to use are mechanic's rasps. So I'll find a rasp, trace out the shape, and then I'm gonna use a grinding stone to rough out that shape. So much about working at the grinding stone is about posture. If you're standing there like I am for hours a day, You want to make sure that you're not overworking your body because it'll really start to take a toll. You're using a lot of force. I have to be very aware of keeping my elbows in, keeping like in a, in a straight line so that I've got a lot of movement and I'm not too rigid, and then letting the material really guide me. Unlike working with wood where it wants to take your lead, the metal really will control you. Once I've ground out that shape, I'll use a series of sanding belts to bring it down to just the shape and thickness that I like. Then I'll drill holes for a handle, pins, wood handle, glue it together, clamp it, let it sit overnight, and then starts the sanding process. So the difference in sanding now this metal butter knife versus the wooden knife is that you're going to use difference in pressure. The wood is very soft and the metal obviously is very hard, so you need to use a lot more resistance. In the final sanding of your knife, which will be hand sanding, you want to make sure that you use separate pieces of sandpaper because say you're sanding the metal material and then you move to the handle, you've then rubbed bits of metal particles into your wood, which if you are using a very light-colored wood, it'll just get into the grain and look dirty. So you wanna make sure that you separate your sandpaper for the wood and your sandpaper for the handle in the hand sanding process. For the next level, we're adding a lot of stages to this next knife. Level 4, paring knife. The difference in making a paring knife as opposed to a butter knife is that now we're using this knife to cut different materials. We are thinking about how we need to cut vegetables or, or fruit. So we need to think about the length of the blade, how it fits in our hand, what kind of edge we want, and also we want to make sure that that blade is structurally sound. So making sure that the molecular structure is going to last a really long lifetime and hold an edge forever. Well, maybe not forever, but— So as opposed to using the grinding stone to create our shape for the paring knife like we did with the metal butter knife, we're gonna need to remove a lot more material this time. So the best process that I like to use is to heat it in the forge. Forging is a process of heating your material and then hammering it out, spreading the material forward. An important thing to remember when you're hammering, keep your movements really close to the body. So instead of having your arm way out here and putting a lot of stress on your back, your shoulder, your elbow, to keep it really tight. It's like trying to do anything without using your core. A lot of the techniques and the steps that we'll be going through requires a lot of really centered core strength. So things to be aware of when you're forging are the fact that you're working with a very hot piece of metal and you're working with machinery that gets also very hot. And as you're hammering, bits of that material can fly off in multiple directions. So you want to make sure that you are protected against heat. So I create a rough shape there. Then I move to the grinding stone to rough out a more specific shape. Then move to the sanding belt, bring it down to mostly the shape that I want. We'll have to heat treat it. Heat treating is a process of heating and cooling your material to bring out the optimal characteristics. When we put our paring knife into the forge, we're heating it to a very extreme temperature and then manipulating it as it cools down. So all the electrons in the material, all the carbon is scattering about the material. So I like to use a heat treat oven. It's a very controlled preset temperature. That way I can be sure that I've got the optimal heat treating going on. So the temperature at which you're going to heat treat depends on the grade of steel that you're using. The grade of steel that I use is repurposed tool steel, which is 1095. I will heat treat between 1475 and 1500 degrees. I put it a little high because every time you open the door, the temperature will drop about 100 degrees. So opening and closing will change the temperature. I want to let it sit for at least 5 to 10 minutes at 1500 degrees before I remove the material and quench it into a warm oil. Now, one of the reasons I like to use my heat treat oven is because it's very consistent. When you're heat treating with a torch or in a forge, oftentimes the rate of temperature at different areas in the knife can be, can be different, and therefore certain places in your knife can be weaker or more brittle. It's very important to avoid having a brittle edge because you'll never be able to keep it sharp, and there's a possibility that you could break it by bending it or applying too much force. Then begin the process of building a handle, finding the wood, cutting the shape for the handle, pinning and gluing it, and then again the process of sanding the handle and sharpening and sanding the blade. There are obviously many ways that you can go about sharpening a knife. I prefer to use a series of whetstones. Of course, there's a big learning curve in whetstones. It takes a lot of practice to get your angle right, and the number one key is your angle. It's a great satisfactory moment when you've been working on your knife and you can really see the progress you've made. Besides that, I would recommend something that sits on your countertop and you slide it through with a moving belt. Knife sharpeners I don't really love are really the on-the-go that you hold in one hand, two pieces of tungsten just V'd together that you slide your knife through. Personally, I prefer a whetstone. When you're using a whetstone, really the most important key is to maintain your angle. Now, I'm so familiar with sharpening my own knives that I can essentially freehand on the belt sander and then clean any of it up on the whetstones to create the edge. So if you're just starting out, the best way is to set up a jig on your sanding belt to the exact angle. You place your knife in the jig, it's the same every time, and then you get that muscle memory of where that exact angle is. Some people prefer to always use a jig, then you just know it's preset, you know your angle. I like to be a little more loose in form, makes me feel good when I when I'm free-handing it and I can see that I've done a good job. So it's really a personal preference. Now, going into the next level, we're adding on a little more complexity here because we're gonna be using this knife for another range of tasks. So we need to be more mindful of how this knife is gonna be balanced, the shape in which you're gonna be using it for whatever things you're gonna be cutting, and also for the user themselves. Level 5, kitchen knife made from a pre-made blank. So this knife really would be between a paring knife and a chef knife, something that you would grab in your kitchen for all those in-between kind of tasks. At this level, we're gonna be using pre-cut materials. So we're gonna order a pre-made blank and then also a pre-made handle. So oftentimes you'll see these in starter kits. You can order the pre-made blank, it arrives already cut to the shape and with a pre-formed beveled edge. So really we're cutting out our blank handle piece, attaching it, and then just putting an edge on that pre-beveled edge. It's very important to know what kind of bevel you're working with, what kind of bevel your knife has. So a single bevel knife is a knife that is completely straight all the way to the edge on one side and has a slight bevel and an edge on the other side. These are generally used in Korean and Japanese cooking where you're cutting raw fish or you're creating really long slices in vegetables. And a double bevel knife is pretty much for everything else in your kitchen, far more common, where you have a bevel and an angle on both sides of the knife. That's much more useful when you're cutting meat or you're cutting large vegetables. It's a little more versatile and also easier to sharpen and maintain in your kitchen. On my knives, I use a double bevel, and the angle is about 17 to 20 degrees. The main difference between this pre-made blank and the paring knife that we just made is that it's arriving many steps to your door that we've already put in the work for. So instead of sourcing your material, you'll buy that material. Instead of shaping it on the grinding stone or forging it in the forge, it'll already arrive in the shape that you want. Instead of applying that beveled edge, it'll appear with a beveled edge on it. Instead of heat treating, it will arrived heat-treated, so the process that you'll begin at will be fitting it to the handle. So we'll cut out those wood handles, attach it to the knife as we like, and then glue, pin, sand, and sharpen that blade. So the steps are reduced in making it, but it's far more complex in your kitchen because you'll use it for many more tasks than you would the paring knife. It also has a much more substantial blade and a longer blade. So the next and final level that we're gonna cover today will be the most complex Next, level 6: chef's knife from raw materials. So in terms of sourcing raw materials for this chef's knife, there are a lot of options to choose from. You can choose types of steel depending on the kind of things that you want to be cooking in your kitchen. You could choose stainless steel for your blade. It's a little bit different in the way that you work with it, but generally the process is the same. I prefer to use high carbon steel as it's got a lot more characteristic takes on a patina over time. The relationship you have with your knife is much more involved in oiling and drying the knife. You might find that stainless steel is a little harder to manipulate than high carbon steel. Really, it's just about personal choice. So in terms of cutting your raw material, there are several ways you can go about it. You could use an oxy-acetylene torch, you could use a water jet. My personal preference is to use a plasma cutter because it's a very thick piece of material, so the plasma cutter is the most efficient way I have found to cut through a material that thick in in a matter of seconds. There aren't so many things that can go wrong in this stage in terms of cutting out the shape, because you can always fix those up later. This is really the most rough part of the process. You just want to be obviously really aware of safety. You're working with plasma, so obviously you want to make sure that you steer clear, that your body is free of any falling debris. So I use a piece of metal guarding the lower half of my body, and also making sure that you have a respirator, because the fumes released are not so good for your health. A key piece of safety gear are welding goggles because the flame of the plasma cutter is bright enough to burn your retina. You want to make sure that you have mobility and you maintain an equal distance between the material and the flame. I have found that the best thing that works for me is straddling a chair and resting one arm over the other. That way I have one arm to stabilize the other as I cut. If you were to veer away from that direct angle, you may come off to one side, creating a lot of slag, which means a lot of the material is sort of folding back up on itself and becoming very hard and crisp along the edge. It also makes our, our next stage a lot longer, where we're cleaning all of that up on the grinding stone. Now, the reason we don't use the forge for this particular knife is because my particular chef's knife also incorporates a grater on the side, which is leftover from the original purpose of the tool. So we're gonna use the grinding stone as opposed to the forge so that we keep that intact. We keep that zester grater intact. If we were to heat it in the forge, forge and hammer it, we would lose that texture altogether. So second stage, at the grinding stone, removing excess material. Third step will be at the sanding belt, sanding, bringing that knife down to a finer shape, and then heat treating, finding a handle from raw materials, attaching the handle, gluing, pinning, letting that cure, and then a process of sanding, sharpening, and finishing. So I think we've covered a lot today. Obviously we could continue on with other levels of complexity, but we're gonna stop at this level today. We've outlined the fundamental steps of creating a functional, characteristic knife. Thanks, Wired.