i tried it twice but the quality of the stainless and other meterials was tough to find in small quantities..... same with pen making..... if your not gonna make a million of the damn things the quality is tough to find at an affordable/reasonable price.

it was fun however to make a hunting knife! i enjoyed working with the metal and learning a little about blacksmithing.

Personally, I never work in Stainless steel - for anything -I absolutely hate the stuff!

My best source for knife making materials is a scrap yard. Old lorry springs make excellent knife blades, as can old chisels etc. Lumber saw blades are good too, but these are usually too thin to forge, but stock removal, ie., filing and grinding to shape, is also an old and good way to shape blades.

Most of my blades are made from recycled materials.

Heh... Another one on my list of "If I had a million dollars and six more hours in the day" hobbies.
I'd love to be able to build a nice forge and start metalworking. I've dabbled with making a bit of chainmail but I've always wanted to get into some serious weaponsmithing... The closest I've come is making a few prop swords out of sheet metal for various theatrical stuff I've been involved in.

thats another good hobby time and the outcome is great ive done a few got the stuff to make the forge now to get time to make it

ive been looking into this for a while. when i was a kid i was interested. now a machinist i have access, to a lot of scrap metals. and machines to try. made a set of brass knuckles out of stainless last week. better than anything you can buy. custom to my hand. but theyre illegal as fuck. so not planning on showing them off too much.

borrowed two pieces of 1-1/4 by about 6" of titainium from work to try to make a bailsong next, also illegal. but they just look cool. first ill try to make it out of aluminum till i get it the way i want it. then maybe a dagger of some sort.

ya the actual leather work to make a sheath. i have no idea.

I've actually heard that bandsaw blades can be a pretty good material to work with, if you weld them together before you forge a billet. Maybe something else to layer it out, too, that way it'll get that cool Damascus look when you're done polishing the blade?

Regardless, you can probably pick them up for dirt cheap if you can find a junkyard or if somebody near you owns a metal shop.

Interesting

a sought after metal is old timber milling circular saw blades, some go cheap, but in a collectors market they are bringing good $, too much to cut up for knives. they are thick enough to get your blank blade with out lamination.

My mower repair business bring me tons of used, bent and worn out mower blades. I have no clue on the steel quality but I bet I could have funn with it I was thinking more short swords and the like for the SCA and pirate crowd.

If you want to use stainless (I rather use the better quality materials and make sure it does not rust) you can hit the thrift stores and find the old cutlery knives or the ones for cutting the turkey. There are lots of those old ones. Decent quality stainless there.

I make 19th century style fixed blade, and folding knives, among other things.

I work mostly 440 C, 1095, and D1 steel and they are many places you can get bar stock for stock removal so skip the scrap yards and get some good stuff.