Homemade Knife

Since the beginning of time man has been consumed in interest of making weapons. Well to feed into your interest I will guide you on how to make a sturdy post apocalyptic lookingish knife. Not the most professional looking piece of cutlery but good enough for a first. So to begin you need to get a few things.
MATERIALS:
-drill
-some type of steel bar
-paracord
-grinding tool
-sand paper 60-220 grit
(Optional)
-forge
-motor oil
-oven

Make sure you have picked out a design that you want and draw it out. After that cut its out and get some spray paint

I used an old bed frame and it worked very well but any steel bar you can find is good. Make sure it had a good width, length and thickness for your liking.

Once you get the steel bar get your spray paint and your design. Lay your design over the bar and spray the paint over it so it cover the whole bar (or enough to see the outline of your blade). Let it dry then take the paper off.

Cut out the outline of the blade until you have desired shape.

After you cut out your blade you will need to heat treat it and temper it. To be completely honest I don't know everything about this step but that's why Google has been invented. I have a forge that I used and I got the steel to a cherry redish orange. I did this three times and let it air cool then on the fourth time I quenched it in motor oil.

After the blade cools down you should have some flakey stuff on your blade. This is called scaling and that's a good thing. I rubbed the scale off and put it in the oven. I set the oven too 425 degrees Fahrenheit and "cooked" it for 1 hour.

After the oven you will notice your blade is pretty much black or gray maybe you like this but I don't. I like shiny things so I decided to grind the blade I don't have pics for the whole blade but you get the gist.

If you want a quality looking blade you'll want to sand it. I started with 60 grit and went up to 220. You may want to go higher but I felt 220 is high enough. I apologize but I don't have a picture for this step.

After sanding your almost done. I sharpened my blade a little before making the handle and some after.

All you have to do know it make the handle. This step is up to you I decided to make mine out of paracord. Mostly because paracord is cool and I like the look of it. (And I don't know how to make any other kind of handle). All you have to do is make simple knots on each side of the handle and once you get to the bottom drill a hole and loop the paracord through and make a knot