The Wood Bee Carver has always been “tinkering” since childhood play activity explored the activity of discovering to make things to fulfill curiosity of making things for play.  Pocket knives were the tools of play through whittling and creative making whatever imagination guided to make into existence.  Once in an old cross road’s country store the observation was made behind the counter of a wooden handled knife hanging on a nail that had been cobbled together using a pocket knife blade inserted into a wooden stick for a make shift knife of necessity.  That idea made a home in the mind of this tinkering youth to use that idea someday. So, it was from childhood play came the tinkering with making “Other Knives” for carving purposes by salvaging usable blade material to be inserted into a wooden handle.  Blades rescued from old broken or worn out pocket knives have found a new home in the “Other Knives” as well as other suitable metal material that could be utilized for a knife blade.

Once again from childhood memories comes the experimenting with the blade from plastic handled advertising knives given away as customer appreciation by merchants whose names were inscribed in the handle. Surprisingly the carbon steel blade is very functional even if the plastic handle was too flimsy for practical use above occasional use in an emergency.

The result to this experimenting was posted in a 2015 entry of this blog which can be viewed by clicking on “OTHER KNIVES” ~ The photo below shows the finished results of making two carving knives using the blade out of a plastic handled advertising knife like the one pictured. Who knew that such advertising knives possessed blades that make excellent carving knives? This is what happens when any “Tinker Thinker” experiments with surprising results.

Here it is now in 2025 (ten years later) that the Wood Bee Carver still likes to “play at tinkering” and having two of these older advertising knives in a drawer aspiring to become carving knives in the “Other Knives” tradition have been granted. The photo gallery begins with the two advertising knives pictured followed by the progressive development of the blade in front of the butternut handle blank, then the blade inserted into the handle embedded in epoxy, then the second knife blade in front of handle blank.  Once the epoxy had cured each handle was whittled to the Shape Up of a pistol shape, sanded smooth, Wood Bee icon wood burned and a basswood carved heart was veneered into the handle.  The blades were shaped on a belt sander and then sharpened by hand using diamond hones and leather stropping for final tuning. The handles received an application of Birchwood-Casey “Tru-Oil” Gun Stock Oil.

                                         [click on photos to enlarge]

The last two photos are of the original two and the last two knives in a profile view to show off the blade shapes with the second photo showing the heart inset veneering to symbolize “favorites” among the favorites of the Other Knives family.