How to Make a Knife: Your First Knife, Step by Step

Here's how to make a knife at home with hand tools: print a template, mark it onto carbon steel bar, drill the pin holes, saw and file the shape, file the bevels, harden and temper the blade, fit a wooden handle and sharpen it. You don't need a forge or a belt grinder. Files, a vice, a drill and about £150 of kit will do it.

This guide is for complete beginners. It's built around our free First knife template, a small drop point drawn so every curve can be shaped with a flat or half-round file. Expect it to take several evenings, mostly filing.

How to make a knife: the steps at a glance

Step	What you do	Key tools
1. Template	Print at 100% and check the scale bar	Printer, ruler
2. Mark out	Transfer the outline and bevel line	Layout fluid, scribe
3. Drill	Pin and lanyard holes, before hardening	Drill, cobalt bits, clamp
4. Saw	Cut just outside the line	Hacksaw, vice
5. Profile	File to the line	Flat and half-round files
6. Bevels	File the scandi bevels	File guide, flat file
7. Harden	Heat to non-magnetic, quench in oil	Torch, firebricks, magnet, oil
8. Temper	Two hours in the kitchen oven	Oven thermometer
9. Finish	Sand the blade	Wet and dry paper
10. Handle	Shape, glue and pin the scales	Epoxy, pins, clamps
11. Sharpen	Sharpen on the scandi bevel	Whetstone or paper on glass

What do you need to make a knife?

The full list, with prices, is in our £150 hand-tool shop build. In short:

Steel: 1084 or 80CrV2 flat bar, 3.2 mm (1/8") thick. A 30 mm (1¼") wide bar fits all three template sizes; 25 mm (1") fits the smallest.
Layout: the printed template, Dykem blue layout fluidAmazon or a permanent marker, a carbide-tipped scriberAmazon.
Cutting and shaping: a Bahco 319 hacksawAmazon with bi-metal blades, a Bahco 12" flat bastard fileTooled-Up (Nicholson 10" mill bastard fileJantz in the US), a half-round fileTooled-Up, a vice and G-clamps.
Bevels: a hardened file guideAmazon, or one you make yourself.
Drilling: a drill (a pillar drill is easier), and cobalt bits at 5 mm and 6 mm.
Heat treat: two soft firebricks, a propane or MAP torch, a magnet, oil in a metal container with a lid, and a KitchenCraft oven thermometerAmazon.
Handle: hardwood scales, 6 mm brass rodAmazon, Araldite Standard epoxyAmazon (G/Flex epoxyAmazon in the US).
Finishing and sharpening: wet and dry paper, 120–3000 gritAmazon, and ideally a King KW65 1000/6000 whetstoneAmazon.
Safety: safety glasses, leather gloves for the heat treat, and an ABC fire extinguisher.

Which steel should you use for your first knife?

Use 1084 or 80CrV2: simple carbon steels that harden well with basic kit and file easily before hardening [1] [2]. Knife Steel Nerds calls 1084 "a very popular steel for beginning knifemakers" [3].

Buy known steel from a knife supplier, such as 1084 flat bar, 1/8" × 1½"Jantz · from $14.95 (Oct 2026) in the US [4]. Don't use old files or springs: you won't know the alloy, so you can't plan the heat treat [5] [6].

Step 1: Print and check the template

Download the First knife template in A4 or US Letter. It comes in three sizes:

Size	Blade	Handle	Overall	Blade height
Starter 70	70 mm (2¾")	95 mm	165 mm (6½")	20 mm
Starter 85 (default)	85 mm (3⅜")	100 mm	185 mm (7¼")	23 mm
Starter 100	100 mm (4")	105 mm	205 mm (8")	25 mm

All three use 3.2 mm (1/8") stock, two 6 mm pins and a 5 mm lanyard hole. The 85 mm size is a good all-rounder.

Print at "actual size" (100%), never "fit to page", and check the scale bar with a ruler before you go further.

Step 2: Mark out the blank

Coat one face of the bar with layout fluid or permanent marker. Cut out the paper template, stick it to the bar with glue stick or tape, and scribe around it. Mark the pin and lanyard hole centres with a centre punch.

Now mark the bevel line. The template shows it: for a scandi grind at 12° per side on 3.2 mm stock, the bevel runs about 7.5 mm (5/16") up from the edge. Scribe it on both faces.

Mark a centreline along the edge too, so you can keep the bevels even. A carbide scribe on a height gauge set to half the stock thickness is the neat way; a drill bit slightly thicker than the steel, laid flat, does the same job [8].

Step 3: Drill the pin and lanyard holes

Drill now, while the steel is soft. Clamp the bar firmly to the drill table or in a drill vice; never hold it by hand, because a bit that catches will spin the bar [9].

Start with a small pilot hole, then drill 6 mm for the two pins and 5 mm for the lanyard. Run the drill slowly and use cobalt drill bitsAmazon: makers find hardware-store cobalt bits cope with knife steel better than carbide ones, which tend to break [9].

Step 4: Saw out the profile

Hold the bar low in the vice and cut about 1 mm (1/32") outside the line. On curves, make a series of straight cuts rather than trying to steer the saw round.

Step 5: File to the line

Clamp the blank in the vice with soft jaws (aluminium angle or wood) so the jaws don't mark it. File across the edge down to the scribed line, keeping the file flat so the edge stays square.

Use the flat file for the spine and edge, and the half-round file for the handle belly. Files cut on the push, so lift the file on the return stroke.

Step 6: File the bevels

This is the step that decides how good the knife looks.

Clamp the blank to a flat board with the file guide set at the bevel line, then file the bevel flat from the edge up to the line. Work both sides alternately, checking against the edge centreline. Uneven bevels and bevels that stop short are two of the commonest first-knife faults [9].

Don't file the edge sharp yet. Leave it thick before heat treatment: grinding too thin before hardening is the classic beginner mistake, and a thin edge can warp or crack in the quench [9] [10].

Finish the bevels and flats with 120 then 220 grit paper on a flat block to remove the deep file marks. It's much harder to sand them out once the steel is hard.

Step 7: Harden the blade

For 1084 and 80CrV2 you can harden the blade with a torch and two firebricks. If you'd rather not, post the blade to a heat treater: about £8 a blade in the UK (c.2018) or $10 in the US (2022) [11] [12].

Work outdoors or somewhere well ventilated, on a non-flammable surface. Wear safety glasses, leather gloves and natural-fibre clothes.

Build the two-brick forge. Use two soft insulating firebricks (under £5 each in the UK), with a small chamber carved between them and a hole for the torch flame [11] [13]. A MAP-gas torch got a 1080 blade non-magnetic in under 3 minutes in one test [13]. Don't use vermiculite boards or barbecue bricks [14].
Warm the oil. Use a container deep enough to take the whole blade with room to spare, about 6" (150 mm) deeper than the blade is long, with a metal lid [15]. Warm the oil to about 50°C (120–130°F); much above 80°C (180°F) it cools too slowly [16]. A hot piece of scrap steel dropped in will warm it.
Heat the blade evenly until a magnet no longer sticks to it. Keep the heat moving so the thin edge doesn't overheat before the spine catches up.
Don't push it hotter. For 80CrV2, Larrin Thomas's advice for forge heat treating is to heat to non-magnetic "no hotter" [2]. For 1084, makers aim for just past non-magnetic, about 800°C (1,475°F) if you can measure it [17] [18]. Overheating is the commonest failure: only about 20% of the forge-treated 80CrV2 samples Larrin tested performed well, mostly because they'd been overheated [2].
Quench. Plunge the blade straight down into the oil, point first, and keep it moving gently until it's cool enough to hold. Put the lid on if the oil flares.
Test it. Wipe it clean and run an old file lightly along the edge. On a hardened blade the file should skate off rather than bite. If it bites, the blade didn't harden: heat it again.

Which oil? A proper fast quench oil such as Parks 50 is best: in Knife Steel Nerds' tests it was the pick if you only buy one oil, and canola couldn't fully harden ¼" (6.35 mm) 1084 [19]. For a 3.2 mm (1/8") blade, forum makers report canola "will work fine" for 1084 [15]. See our quench oil guide.

Step 8: Temper the blade

A freshly hardened blade is brittle. Tempering in a domestic oven makes it tough enough to use.

Clean all oil off the blade with detergent, or the oven will smoke [20].
Put an oven thermometerAmazon next to the blade. Oven dials aren't accurate, and one tester's oven swung about ±5°C (±10°F) at 200°C [20] [7].
Temper at about 200°C (400°F) for one hour, let it cool to room temperature, then do a second hour. Two one-hour tempers at 400°F is a common recipe for 1084 [18] [17].

For 80CrV2, Larrin Thomas gives a temper range of 150–230°C (300–450°F), with 175–205°C (350–400°F) right for most knives. Don't go above 230°C (450°F) with 80CrV2, because toughness drops off [2].

Step 9: Finish the blade

Clean up the flats and bevels with wet and dry paper on a flat block: 220, then 400, then 600 if you want a smoother finish. Don't jump grits too soon, and keep the papers apart so coarse grit doesn't scratch a fine finish [9].

Step 10: Make and fit the handle

Cut two scales from hardwood, a little bigger than the handle outline, with one long edge planed flat for the front.
Drill the scales. Clamp each scale to the tang and drill through the pin holes so they line up exactly.
Shape and finish the front of the scales now. Once they're glued on you can't reach the front without scratching the blade [9].
Tape up the blade with masking tape to protect it and your hands.
Glue up. Mix slow-setting epoxy, coat the tang and the inside of the scales, push the pins through, and clamp. Clean off squeeze-out from the front before it sets. Leave it to cure fully.
Shape the handle with files and paper. Round the edges; don't leave it square or thick and clunky [9].
Finish the wood with a few coats of Danish oilAmazon (Tru-OilAmazon in the US).

Step 11: Sharpen the knife

The scandi grind makes sharpening simple: the whole bevel is the cutting edge. Lay the bevel flat on the stone so it touches from the edge to the bevel line, and sharpen at that angle.

Start on the 1000 side of a King KW65 1000/6000 whetstoneAmazon until you feel a small burr along the whole edge on the opposite side.
Repeat on the other side.
Refine on the 6000 side with lighter strokes.
Finish on a leather strop with green compoundAmazon, pulling the edge away from the direction of travel.

No stone yet? Wet and dry paper from 400 to 2000 grit laid on glass or a flat tile works well on a scandi bevel.

FAQs

How long does it take to make a knife by hand?

Several evenings for a first knife with files and a drill. Filing takes the most time; heat treat and tempering take an afternoon; the epoxy needs a day to cure. A belt grinder speeds up the shaping, not the rest.

What is the easiest knife to make for a beginner?

A small fixed-blade drop point with a straight handle and a scandi grind. There are no tight curves or finger grooves to file, and the scandi bevel is flat, so it's easy to file and easy to sharpen. Our First knife template is drawn for exactly this.

What steel is best for a first knife?

1084 or 80CrV2. Both harden reliably with a torch, a magnet and oil, and both are easy to file before hardening. Buy known steel from a knife supplier rather than using old files or springs, so you know how to heat treat it.

Do I need to temper a knife?

Yes, always. Straight from the quench, the blade is hard but brittle and could chip or snap. Two one-hour cycles at about 200°C (400°F) in a kitchen oven, checked with an oven thermometer, makes it tough enough to use while keeping a good edge.

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