Re purposing Old Knives

Having finally gotten most of the tasks I needed to get done out of the way, I have started on some other fun projects. I look for old knives at thrift shops and yard sales to recycle into other uses. I look for old carbon steel knives rather than stainless. The stainless steel is much harder to rework by hand.The top knife in the pic is one I cut down to hunting knife size and rehandled. I cut down and epoxy-ed the front leg bone from a deer for the handle and made the sheath from some scrap leather. The sheath is not much to look at but it does it's job.  The bottom knife is another I am going to cut down. It has a nice bone handle on it and is from a old meat carving set. I have no use for it as is but after it is cut down it will be very useful as a skinning knife since I can shape it to have a long belly curve.This one has very high carbon steel which is easy to test for. If you touch high carbon steel to a grinding stone and watch the sparks, it will tell you a lot about the steel. High carbon steel will throw very bright, almost white, sparks and they will bloom, or branch into multiple sparks. Don't stay on the grinding stone very long though or you will pull the temper out of the edge.I do not use any power tools on these so I don't have that worry. I start by putting the blade in a vise, aligned on the mark, with the part I want to keep below the jaws. I then wrap a piece of leather around the blade and strike it with a hammer. A carbon steel blade will snap right off at the vise. If necessary, I take several more small "bites" off the blade to get it fairly close to my desired shape. Make sure you wrap something around that blade, the piece that breaks off will be very sharp and will leave at a high rate of speed! After that it is just a matter of filing away at it until you have it nicely contoured. Once it matches the shape you want, start filing the blade to attain a thinner cutting edge and point. If you are after looks as well as function you will need to use progressively finer grades of sanding paper to get that mirror finish.  A lot of these old kitchen and chef knives have great steel in them, this is a great way to reuse them.
On a different note, I've been cracking nuts, black walnuts and hazelnuts, for Ann's holiday baking. Ann posted a recipe for one of the treats she made this year, Black Walnut Spread. I would call it nutella but that name is copyrighted of course. If you like that product you will love Ann's version. Scroll to the bottom of the Recipe page to see it.