Tiny DIY Knife from Hacksaw Blade

A lifetime ago I was really into Locksport and in particular into making manual tools and picks, I'd often use hacksaw blades as a cheap stock of very hard decent steel. I've also always wanted to tinker with knife making and today the synapses all fired at once and I made this.

 

 Starting with a small length of hacksaw blade I made a crude drawing on some card, cut it out and glued it to the stock. Ages ago I bought one of those tiny, cheap, yet surprisingly useful 12V belt grinders. I could do with making some jigs/holding to make my bevels absolutely correct but for half an hour of off hand grinding it's not the worst for a first attempt.

 

I ground out the original hole to accomodate the little piece of brass tubing I'd found and I also ground a hole (this steel is incredibly hard to drill unless you temper it and re harden) and throughout the grinding I kept cooling the blade in water so it didn't lose it's hardness. 

 

Then a super quick little bit of design work in FreeCAD and some 3D printing it was time to assemble. The scales are printed in PETG and I've used some epoxy resin to hold it all together. Despite my grinding it's wicked sharp so I deffo need to come up with a small sheath. Finished off with a small lanyard it's been a good fun little project and it's possibly inspired me to look for a larger piece of steel for further attempts!