Today in the shop we are following up the complicated process of making the Kukuri in our last video, with the super simple process of making a woodworking Marking knife out of an old metal file.

If you have an old rusty metal file and a grinder you are in business. The great thing about this project is that you do not have to do any heat treating. The files are already heat treated to a high hardness which is great for a marking knife, but tough on your grinding belts. The key is to take your time grinding and be sure not to heat up the blade, to avoid loosing the hardness temper. If your steel turns the color purple or blue, you've lost your hardness and need to grind that out.

I show you how to trim down the file to the size and shape you want, trim and shape the tang to have a spot to drill a lanyard hole, then mark and grind your bevels using my 2x72 grinder with the tilting tool rest and platen. Having the ability to tilt both of these gave me the set up to grind my bevels perfectly while resting the blade flat on the tool rest. After grinding the bevels to 220 on the belts, I began customizing the shape of each knife to fit mine and my brother's preferences. I smoothed all the sharp edges with the scotch bright finishing belt, and then hand sharpened both knives with 500 and 1000 grit sand paper on my 12" square granite tile.

I'm really happy with how these turned out and love both versions. Let us know in the comments which one you prefer. The great thing about these, is that now we have a great tool which will aid us in continuing to get better at, learn more about wood working, and eventually timber framing.

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