Bladesmiths are particularly reliant on the generosity of other makers when they are first starting out.
As anyone who has done one of our courses will attest - we have no secrets at Tharwa Valley Forge. All of us here have benefited from the generosity of some incredibly talented craftspeople.
In this spirit we are pleased to host a library of our own knife designs and templates, free for anyone to learn from and use. Check back now and then as we are always adding more.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Japanese kitchen knives seem mysterious and exotic to many people. Their most characteristic feature is their design language - in particular the blade geometry. Not only does it seem exotic to western eyes, but it is an example of form and function defined by manufacturing technology and a culinary tradition that is markedly divergent from the western experience.
Folding knives have been around since at least the year 600 BCE. You don't have to be a precision machinist to make one, but you do have to take care to be accurate. These designs are suitable for anyone with a drill press and some basic hand tools.
Field and tactical, skinners, utility, and more - includes hidden and full-tang designs.
This is a tribute to Lloyd Harding, Western Australian Master knife maker, 1921 to 2003.
It is only a small sample of his work - much of it is unrecorded. This archive contains 104 templates and 300 drawings which have been scanned to scale to allow them to be printed as templates.