Written Tutorials

Knife maker Bob Warner has a website which contains a nice group of tutorials on building some of your own shop equipment for knife making. One of his tutorials contains the diagrams and a parts list for building your own electro-etching unit. This tutorial is a detailed description of how I built one of these units, and a list of the tools and parts used.

This tutorial will show you how I make a slipjoint pocketknife step by step. I didn’t have any special equipment such as milling machines or surface grinders, so the knife in this tutorial should be able to be made in any standard knife shop.

So every time I turned on my dust collector, it would put out a puff of dust that reminded me of Pig-Pen from the Peanuts cartoon. I believe it was blowing more dust back into the shop than it was keeping in the collector. Therefore, I wanted to upgrade the filter to something that would do a better job.

This tutorial demonstrates how to make a vacuum stabilizer out of a mason jar and a break bleeder pump. With this hand pump I can pull and hold between 23 and 25 in.Hg of pressure.

How To Make .004 Inch Stainless Steel Washers
I’ve put this tutorial together to demonstrate how one can make stainless steel washers out of razor blades to be used in folding knives. I’ve developed this method based on ideas and suggestions which have come from talking to and visiting with other local area knife makers.

This tutorial came about because of my need for a new set of tongs. My first set of tongs were made from an old lawnmower blade, and they worked great for many years. After many years of use, the jaws on these lawn mower blade tongs became quit brittle, and they were on their last leg. I didn’t really want to order new tongs, so I started trying to think of a quick and easy way to make a new set. That’s when I came up with this idea...

It took me around five hours to make this workbench, and I did it for well under $100. It's a basic design, but it's extremely sturdy. I came up with the design based on a sketch I found in a book. The top surface of the bench is 36 inches off the ground. It's 6 feet wide and about 23 inches deep. I took pictures of the process so I could document it when I finished.