My First DIY Knife - Need Help

[AnandNair]

After being bored with tinkering around with air rifles decided to revive my old passion for Knifes, and after seeing the various DIY knife posts in this forum was bitten by the Knife making bug and decided to make one myself.

Since the small town in which i live in does not have any steel stores from where i can source a good bit of steel, tasked a friend of mine to get one from the city.
My happiness had no limits when one fine day he handed me a 6mm hunk of stainless steel which he told me was 440c. Since google baba said that it is good for knife making sat down to try and make my first knife. Promptly looked up some knife designs and decided on one with minimal curves and more straight lines.
Here is my Initial cut with an angle grinder.




Started getting my doubts on the annealed condition of the stainless steel when trying to drill holes in the tang. After burning thru 6 steel bits managed to make 2 and half holes and decided i needed titanium coated / cobalt drill bits but again could not source it here. Internet search yeilded only titanium coated drill bits which i ordered promptly. Also decided to get some Cobalt drill bits and placed order thru amazon from the US of A. Not wanting to wait, bought few more drill bits and after 2 more tries finally made the third hole.


Made a knife filing Jig and proceeded to shape the knife.


My doubts on the hardened state of steel was confirmed after filing for half a day to get the shape of the knife. Managed to get an accepetable plunge line.


Quit finetuning it because of numb hands and constant bickering of the Home Ministry for a wasted weekend as per their preception. Here is the final shape of the knife. Gave a satin finish with 200 grit sand paper


Need Help : Now how to heat treat and temper the steel. I can persuade my friendly gas welder to lend me his blow torch for hardening the steel. and may be the oven (when my wife's out) for tempering. Any other ideas welcome.
thanks

[astronomy.domaine]

Hi anand,
Great going with the initial shape and grind...definitely on the right track.!
For heat treating, you can find tons material/vids on the net with temperature/colour reference charts and suitable quenching media as per the steel type. It would be great if you have access to a proper furnace, if not, you can use your friends blow torch to heat treat your blade in segments.

However, why do you intend to temper the steel??? If its a 440c , it would already be hardened and pretempered by the manufacturer. As you mentioned that it took few sets of drill bits to get the holes done, its a clear indication that the metal is already tougher than general tool steel, ie, >60hrc. You may run a risk of making the metal brittle by further heat treatment. But its just my openion. Do share the details of the result if you go ahead with it!

Cheers

[AnandNair]

I will drill a few more holes in the tang, both to balance the blade and verify the hardness. and then proceed to try giving it an edge. Even my angle grinder sanding discs does not last a few minutes.

Thanks for the reply and suggestions astronomy.domaine