Personal Boning Knife

I designed and built this knife to be used on Whitetail deer. It has the same five inch by 1/16 inch ATS-34 as the one listed earlier. However the handle is shaped a bit more with dovetailed brass bolsters, brass bolt style fasteners and a .22 magnum shell. The handle material is canvas micarta.

Micarta Boning Knife

This boning knife is my attempt at an all-in-one hunting knife. It is to be used for field dressing, skinning and butchering. I am curious to try it out. The blade is five inches long and 1/16 inch thick made from ATS-34. It is stiffer than I expected, but it is light and feels great in the hand. The handle material is Black Paper Micarta with brass bolt style fasteners and a .22 magnum shell.

Drop Point Hunter for Donation

Here is a little drop point that I just finished. It will probably be donated to church for a missions fund raising auction. The blade is 3.5 inches long and 1/16" thick ATS-34. Over all length is 7.5 inches. The handle is Whitetail deer antler that I found in in the woods behind the house as a kid. It has brass bolt style fasteners and a .22 magnum shell as the thong hole tube.

Boning Knife

In the past few years my family and I have taken up deer hunting. This has provided me the opportunity to field dress, skin and butcher about a dozen deer. This experience has proven to be very useful in making hand made hunting knives. One thing that has been interesting though, is that by far the most time spent with a knife is during the butchering process. The field dressing and skinning hardly take any time at all. It is amazing to me how much emphasis is placed on the size and shape of a hunting knife when it is really used for such a short period of time. On the same thought is how little you hear about butcher or boning knives. I'm sure that a lot of this is due to the fact that many people have someone else do the meat processing for them. I was quickly looking for a good boning knife design and even better yet would be one knife that I could use for all three processes (field dressing, skinning and butchering). I noticed that many professional butchers will have a favorite knife that they use for just about everything. This includes skinning a deer when or if needed. Below is my first attempt at making such a knife. It worked quite well, but it is not my final revision. The blade is 1/16" thick by four inches long ATS-34 and had a fair amount of flex. It was a little too stiff and short for filleting some of the silver skin off of the larger cuts of meat.  The blade shape worked quite well for skinning. The up-swept point wasn't too dramatic for gutting, but I did have to be extra careful not to puncture anything that I would regret. The handle is canvas Micarta with dovetailed brass bolsters. It provided an excellent grip in all cases. A spent .22 magnum shell dutifully serves as the thong hole tubing. Hopefully soon I will be able to show you my next two revisions of this idea.

Early Skinning Knife

I made this in Moses Lake for a friend. It was an early attempt at a full tang skinning knife design that I later settled on . The blade was 1/16" thick ATS-34 and the handle was Diamondwood. I was still playing around with different sheath designs at the time. I'm sure that the knife performed well (1/16" ATS-34 would slice like the dickens) but I wasn't yet happy with the way the overall knife looked.

Father-in-law's Fillet Knife

This was made in Moses Lake for my Father-in-law. It had a blade of 1/16" thick ATS34. I had it sub-sero quenched, but that made it too stiff for some reason. There were some other things about it that proved to not be so great. The Diamondwood handle got very slippery when your hands were covered in fish slime and brass bolster would turn green if you didn't clean it off well. I find that brass works well for hunting knives, but not so well for fillet knives.

Wife's Letter Opener

The top and bottom knives were in another post already, however I have not yet talked about the letter opener that I made for my wife. It had a blade of 1/16" thick ATS-34. The handle was from Pink Ivory (wood) with mosaic pins that I made myself. I made this just before I moved to Moses Lake. We were not yet married and were writing letters to keep in touch. It was before the days of email and Facebook. She still keeps it on her desk.

Carving Knife

This was the only time someone asked me for a carving knife. It was for my fishing buddy in Moses Lake. The blade was from 1/16" thick ATS-34. The handle was a nice multi-colored Diamondwood with a stainless steel bolster. It turned out well, but I don't think that I would make one for fun.

More Drop Point Hunters

Theses were both made in Moses Lake for friends at work. The top one had a multi-colored Diamondwood handle with a blade from ATS-34. I have never really liked gut hooks. I always thought that they were more of a gimmick than any thing, but that is what he wanted. The bottom knife was for my friend's son-in-law on his birthday. It had a D2 blade and a Corian spacer on the bloodwood handle. He was happy with it.

Norm's Knives

These were made for a friend of mine (Norm) in Moses Lake. It must have been close to 10 years ago now. I traded them for some tools. I think the blades were from 1/8" thick ATS-34 since that is mostly what I was using around that time. He always wanted a knife with .22 shells for rivets. He noticed that a .22LR shell would slide perfectly into a .22 Magnum shell. So that is what I made for him. The top knife had a multi-colored Diamondwood handle with a full tang. The rivets are spent .22 shells, including the thong hole tube. I made quite a few knives in that design. However it was the only one that had .22 shells for the rivets as well as the thong hole tube. I still prefer to the .22 Magnum shells for the thong hole tubing. It's just cool. The bottom knife had a whitetail antler handle. That was another knife that I made a few of. Whitetail antlers are a little on the small side and the little drop point lends itself well to them.

Kitchen Knife Collection

A collection of various kitchen knives that I made. All but the cake knife were made in Moses Lake. All blades are made from ATS-34 stainless steel. I will list them starting from the top.

First is a fillet knife that I made for myself. I used it quite a bit for many years. The blade was 1/16" thick and very flexible. The handle is micarta and the guard is stainless steel. The guard was designed differently then any other knife I have done. I was concerned about the blade breaking off at the guard when it was flexed. This design proved to be very strong. I recently sold this knife since I don't do much fishing any more, but I kind of miss this one.

Second is a cake knife that I made for our wedding. The handle is white micarta and has red spacers between the micarta and the knife tang. The bolster is dovetailed brass and the blade is engraved with our wedding date.

Third is a kitchen knife that I detail in a previous post.

Fourth is a little one-piece bird and trout knife that I made for myself. I sand blasted the handle for a little more grip. It is still in my lunch box and gets used quite frequently.

Fourth is a paring knife that I made for my wife. It has a Pakawood handle and stainless pins. The handle is too small for her so she never uses it.

Kitchen Knife for the Wife

This is a little kitchen knife that I made for my wife while in Moses Lake. She didn't like it though because the blade was the wrong shape for her. It was too much of a "hunting knife drop point" shape for her liking. She wanted something that was shaped more like a chefs knife. It sat in the drawer for years until I sold it to a friend who wanted to use it in his kitchen. The first time his wife went to use it, she cut herself badly and he had to hide it from her, so it may never see much use. The blade was 1/16" thick ATS-334. The handle is blue Pakawood with stainless steel bolster and pins.

Pakawood Bird and Trout

Here is a little bird and trout knife I made while living in Moses Lake. It was about mid point in my Moses Lake years (approximatively 10 years ago). That is the time that I started making those sheaths. I believe that the blade was ATS-34. The guard and pins are brass. I actually made two of these. A friend of mine bought them, one for himself and one for his son.