Canoe building plan

Paddling Knife

Here's a little diversion from my regular paddle making routine. I decided on ordering an easy Knife Making Kit from Ray Jardine's online site. Given my new found woodworking skills, the kit seemed simple enough. Epoxy pre-drilled wood pieces to a Mora Knife blank and carve out a handle to suit your fancy. In addition, I ordered the Sheath Kit because of a latent interest in leathercraft as well. My intention was to make a quality knife for paddling trips while also decorating it with a paddling motif.

The kits were well prepared for the novice. Following Ray's request, I will not post or provide specific details of the instructions, but simply show my work in progress in the following pics. Epoxying the knife handle was straight-forward and the handle material supplies (Alligator Juniper from Arizona) smelled absolutely fantastic. After using the template provided, I further shaped the knife handle with some rasps. The sanding was boring as usual, but using the various samples provided (course, medium, fine 320 grit), the handle smoothed out nicely.

The sheath kit had an appropriate sized piece of tooling leather from which the shape had to be cut out. For the decoration, I decided to use a canoeing image and wanted to burn using my pyrography machine. This would be my first attempt at burning on leather but read that burning on cheaper, chromium tanned leather would release toxic fumes. Ray replied to my email request and confirmed that it was vegetable tanned and therefore safe to use with adequate ventilation. Burning on leather was nice because of the absence of any grain (like on wood) but after bending and stretching the leather sheath to accomodate the knife, the image had some obvious vertical cracks.

Epoxied Components and Final Carved Handle


Sheath decoration, clamping, drilling stitching holes with awl bit


Stitching & Final Shaping
Overall, I've quite happy with it and am comfortable that I would be able to carve future knife handles and make appropriate sheaths with materials I have on hand. In fact, I'm seriously considering making my own crooked knife (mocotaugan) after reading a post on Canadian Canoe Routes and re-reading the David Gridmark's chapter contribution in Canoe Paddles: A Complete Guide to Making Your Own. I've already found an old rusty, high carbon steel file to shape into the blade. More on that project later.