I have made several wooden knives before but saw some interesting shapes recently that I liked that had thicker handles than I normally make. My previous shapes had been influenced when I visited Sweden and saw some of the Sami knives that were available in craft shops. As I was going to Spain for a holiday for a month in October 2025, I decided it would make an easy enough project to find some ash greenwood, make some rough blanks and continue the final carving on the drier wood when abroad.
First I found an ash branch that had recently fallen in an autumn storm. The keys were still on the upper branches so I selected a fairly straight piece from the centre with a diameter of approximately 15 cm. This would allow me to cleave the branch down the centre and get two blanks.
There are many ways to progress with the roughing-out and so it becomes a choice depending on your tools, time and skills. I chose to use a froe to split the fairly straight grained wood to a thickness of about 3 cm with the centre pith section cleaved off. After this most of the carving was done with a small carving axe to get a thinner blade section ( less than 1 cm thick) and handle of about 2.5 cm thickness. This was done by drawing a centre line between the knife tip and the end of the handle. The top of the handle and knife top was carved to be a straight line with little curvature at this stage. In the past I have used a carving knife to rough-out but now I'm more confident with an axe, I have found this easier and alot quicker. I think the handle end of end-grain does need a sharp knife to get a good shape. I have a small stock-knife similar to the clog makers knife, that makes shaping the grain ends very easy.
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| The two knives carved roughly to the shape I wanted. |
They were then left a couple of weeks to dry and by that time we had crossed Spain to Guardamar with temperatures in the high twenties and the knives were dry enough to finish. This mainly involved knife work, making clean cuts with regard to the grain, and getting the shape I wanted. This was slightly different in the two knives. The smaller one was 17 cm long and the handle was about 3 cm in depth and 15 mm in width and with an abrupt change in profile at the cutting edge. The second one was slightly longer and the handle bigger at about 3 cm in depth and 20 mm in width but with an indent for a finger-hold just before the blade.
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| The two finished knives, the smaller one is on the right. There is a finger/thumb indent on the larger one. |
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| The profile of the two knives with the longer one on the left. |
The finish carving took some time, especially the finger indent as the carving crossed the grain. I included some simple chip carving triangles on the handles but kept the lines simple. Before treating with walnut oil, I smoothed the surfaces lightly with 120 to 700 grade Abranet as I prefer the look of a smooth finish that can't be made with a knife.
