Watch: Make a DIY Folding Lockback Knife With Basic Tools

This is a pretty good video that walks us through the process of making a folding lockblade knife using basic materials and common tools. About the only uncommon tool I saw him use is a furnace or forge, and that can be avoided by using a torch to heat the blade.

Making a folding knife from a worn out saw blade and some scrap aluminum sheet. I used 3-1/4″ air gun nails as the pins and did all of the work on the knife by hand, using hand tools.

He begins by printing a template and gluing it onto a circular saw blade, which will make up all of the steel components. The templates are available on his site here.

He doesn’t talk much in this video; he encourages folks to watch an earlier video in which he made a wooden version of the same knife because he gives more instructions etc in that video. I’ll post it below as well.

Here’s the wood knife video:

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.