Woodlore Blog

Woodlore customer Hywel Evans recently had a go at making his own knife handle and sheath, with fantastic results:

Hywel's finished Julius Pettersson knife along with its sheath (click for full size)

I purchased the custom knife blade from Julius Pettersson last Christmas, and on receiving it  was very pleased with the quality of the blade; I found that it was the perfect design for carving, splitting small logs and everything bushcraft. I had seen that the handles of most half-tang knives on the market were practically all made of wood, so I decided to make a knife slightly different to the usual design.

I bought the book Antler Knife, and decided to mix the two designs a bit. I used two blocks of masur birch, a block of oak burl, some reindeer antler I purchased and leather as the dividers. The ferrule was made out of brass, and I found this to give the knife extra strength when riveting the tang at the end piece of the antler pommel. I used polyurethane glue to stick it all together, using a homemade jig, and have found this to be a more than sufficient way of securing the separate blocks.

I made the handle into the shape of my hand, and I have found that this knife handle would benefit from a thicker set handle. I finally finished off the handle with a file and some very fine sandpaper, with a touch of linseed oil to bring out the grain.

The bottom half of the sheath was an L-shaped reindeer antler block I had purchased from Woodlore, and the top half was a piece of leather that I had stamped with one of my favourite logos. The pieces of antler I glued together with Araldite, and the leather section was stitched together with an awl, some waxed linen thread, and a lot of elbow grease!

My final product was a knife that not only looked nice, but that I could trust to use; I would highly recommend the hand-made blade from Woodlore, as for me anyway, it is of great design and quality. I will hopefully be making some more knives in future, so I will try and keep you posted.

About The Woodlore Team

Woodlore, School of Wilderness Buchcraft was founded in 1983, by the British Bushcraft and survival expert Ray Mears. Woodlore began as a relatively unknown company, offering a small selection of courses on bushcraft techniques. With Ray's ambition and perserverance, Woodlore has since grown into a world-renowned and highly respected school, offering in-depth courses on a wide range of bushcraft and survival subjects. In addition to training, Woodlore now also provides some of the finest outdoors equipment from around the world, carefully selected on the basis of our extensive experience.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 8th, 2011 at 2:21 pm and is filed under Bushcraft Kit, Customer posts.