What on earth is a sgian dubh? It's a knife that the scottish used to wear in their socks. It was used for small food preparation tasks and general use. Well, I was living in a van for a couple months and was looking for something to do on the weekend, so I made this knife.
You may notice that there is some scalloping on the back of the blade. According to wikipedia this is "common on all scottish knives". I was intrigued by this and tried to do some more research about why the scottish did this. Unfortunately while you can find the phrase "scalloped filework" in conjunction with "common on scottish knives" all over the show, no-one hypothesizes a reason for it. I half wonder if some text book a couple decades back had that phrase and it's just been parroted since then....
So this knife was made in a campsite (possibly to the concern of other campsite stayers). The source material was a sawzall blade that had been gathering rust in my toolbox, and I worked it with a dremel and a file. The handle is made from oak and finished with teak oil. Fun fact: the dremel was hooked up to my van's solar system, so perhaps that makes this knife eco-friendly? Probably not as I still had to heat treat it.
I made a leather sheath for it. It's not my finest leatherwork, but it stops it from stabbing things when it's in my backpack.
Anyway, I've been using this knife pretty much daily for preparing my dinner. It's the right size for chopping most vegetables and the handgrip is surprisingly practical. It's a carbon steel, so I have to dry it after use.
Another small knife
About the same time, the knife in the campground kitchen broke while I was using it. The handle snapped clean off! So I took the remaining blade and reshaped it to this knife. The scales are from mahogany and it was finished with cyanoacrylate (superglue).
