a machinist making a knife

I have learnt a lot from making knives (heat treatment, polishing, and fit and finish in particular) and I have gained huge satisfaction from other people's efforts.

Most knives in 'collections' are never used.

I used to carry 3 or 4 of them around the world with me for mooring rope work, got escorted to the luggage check-in a couple of times

An interesting discussion. Going through my "collection" I lost count at about 50. The majority live in the kitchen. They are mostly pointy and very sharp. There are also steak knives and a carving set for the dining room.

Moving down to the workshop there are the usual snap blade and exacto knives for miscellaneous hobby work, along with a number of scalpels and micro knives (cross-over between work-work and small scale modelling ). Most of these have spare blades which probably number in the hundreds.

Then there are the paid work type knives - diving knives ( 2 types ) and compulsory for professional diving, at least where I was trained, and various bush knives for working on land. And, finally, there are a couple which are quite old and rather valuable which live out life rather quietly in an out of the way cupboard.

Despite this lethal armoury so far the only injury caused is to myself, and then only minor cuts.

While I seem to have gone a little overboard in my acquisitions I suspect that most readers will have a similar range scattered around their homes and workshops, all of which are capable of inflicting at the least severe injury if not fatalities.

As a former Australian Government Minister commented when the airlines changed to plastic cutlery to protect us from the terrorists - a poke in the eye with a plastic fork is just as disabling as many of the injuries that can be done with metal cutlery. Interestingly there was never a change to plastic in first class. Apparently we were not anticipating any first class terrorists!

As commented above, knife making is a skilled art and the knives produced as one-offs are unlikely to go on to violent use.

Pero

Great job - work of art. Well done.

Just came across this and there are some very sad attitudes being voiced here, aren't we supposed to be hobbyist machinists and creators, yet some just cant see the creative aspect of making a knife, I have made quite a few and enjoy the creative aspect of using wood and metals, A knife is fundamentally a tool, you could use your engineers hammer as a weapon just like a whole host of other related objects, somehow I don't think I would really fit in here going by some of the attitudes, anyway a couple of members have been very helpful which I appreciate.

A couple of my creations/weapons if you're so inclined, most end up in a display case and never even get sharpened!

[img]https://i.imgur.com/JyAfMuO.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/t9eSDVA.jpg[/img]