This is the Complete Knife Making Kit from the team at Indy Hammered Knives based in Indianapolis, Indiana and founded by James C. Wahls, Sr. Each blade is hand-forged and hammered into shape by James personally.
As the name suggests, this kit contains everything you need to make a knife, this model has a fixed 4 inch skinner blade made from 1095 high carbon steel and measures in at 8 inches overall. The kit can be ordered with a variety of different wood types for the handle, and each comes with a handmade leather sheath.
As you can see here, each of these knife making kits comes with the steel blade which is pre-sharpened, both parts of the wooden handle, the two brass pins, two-part epoxy resin, a leather sheath, and detailed, illustrated instructions.
James C. Wahls, Sr. was formerly a nursing home administrator and social worker who struggled for many years with alcoholism. He goes into detail about his story here in some depth, but the compressed version is that he left the stresses of his old career behind and set out on his own, as the sole proprietor of Indy Hammered Knives.
Originally, the company was based out of his own urban forge, but he’s now working out of a full scale smithing workshop based in one of the oldest gas stations in Indiana. A wide range of knives are made at IHK, including kitchen and chef knives, survival knives, skinner knives, cleavers, filleting knives, straight razors, and more.
Wahls regularly puts in over 60 hours work a week to ensure he has stock of all the knives he offers on his store, so that customers don’t need to wait weeks or even months as with some other low-volume knife makers. More recently he began offering knife making kits for people who want to get into the trade, or who have just always wanted to make their own knife.
Each of these kits starts with an 8 inch hand-forged skinner knife with a 4 inch blade, it’s essentially a blank that has no handle or fixings. Each of these is shaped, sharpened, and polished, then packaged into the wooden gift box with two brass pins, and two wooden handle blanks.
These wooden handle blanks have the holes for the brass pins pre-drilled, you can choose from a variety of different woods including black walnut, curly maple, birdseye maple, bloodwood, zebra wood, cocobolo, and olive wood.
It’s then down to you to cut the wood to the correct outline and sand it back to your own desired shape. This allows you to match it perfectly to your hand, so the ergonomics will work for you better than any other knife you’ve ever owned.
This is the decorative box that each kit comes in, it’s made from wood and has brass hinges, and a brass latch.
Each of these kits comes with a handmade leather sheath in either brown or black, and they cost $133.99 USD apiece. They come with illustrated instructions, two-part epoxy, instructions on maintaining the high carbon steel blade, and a wooden gift box with brass hardware and a brass latch.
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