Hi.
When hunting and skinning.
The best general Skinning blade I had. was a home made one.
Buff's Cattle. Goats.
Power Hacksaw blade from engineering shop.
Break off length you want.
and profile it. then start with a slow coarse grind and drum of water.
Eventually you have profile.
Make the hole end of blade, the hilt. It's VERY hard to drill
Laser cut if avail.
I then grind the bevel and face of blade.
Polish on Diamond plates.
there is a bloke in States. sells Exotic timber for hilts. some already treated and cut for each side.
Drill holes to suit hole in blade.
Epoxy the 2 pieces to hilt. Rivet.
File to shape and polish up.
First 2 we just dipped in rubber vats for hilts.
Shooting mate worked in Tyre factory.
This was all around 45\50 yrs ago.
But blades still avail and make great skinning curves.
Lighter, narrower,, not so deep blades
would make smaller styles of knife.
And there are a massive range of timber bolsters avail from that bloke.
from $25 up. In many sizes.
That steel. Hard to work with. But. Slow and patient.
Make the best steel for holding edge and working with.
Just don't grind fast enuff to take temper out of it OK.
Coarse grinding wheel slow speed. lotsa water.
You want to be exotic.
There used to be Japanese. Damascus blanks avail a few yrs ago.
Maybe?
. Still.
I've made a coupla Kitchen knives on the old forge.
and folded old files.
Bloody sloooow work.
But come out alright. Good steel.
