Morakniv Knife Scales

schuylab · August 29, 2026, 6:43pm

Working on some knife scales for Morakniv SS knife blanks. The wood is an offcut from UC Berkeley when they were studying wood properties, sold by a hardware store in Santa Cruz called Byrne Bros around 1910-1930. It says purpleheart/amaranth a few spots on the board. Have been saving it for the right project.

Using Solidworks to model and Carbide Create to path it out. I used some oak I had laying around for test cuts before moving to the purpleheart.

Do all the 3D roughing and detail on one side, then flip and cut the opening for the blank.

Definitely trimmed a clamp with the cutter… need a touch more clearance after the flip.

Still need to do some CA finish then polish, and make 7 more!

WillAdams · August 29, 2026, 10:27pm

Let us know about the clamp at support and we’ll get a replacement to you.

robgrz · August 29, 2026, 10:42pm

We did a knife years ago with a CA finish for the scale- it’s an underrated technique.

schuylab · September 3, 2026, 9:13pm

I appreciate it Will. I found the STL repository you guys have and I have printed a handful of replacements already, so no worries at all. Thank you though!

terryawatkins · September 4, 2026, 9:11pm

What an awesome project. Can you describe how you created the internal geometry for the knife tang?

schuylab · September 5, 2026, 2:20am

Thanks! I used calipers to measure the blanks and then modeled it in CAD:

Modeled around it and gave it a five thou offset:

If anyone needs the DXF, I’ll get it up on cutrocket

terryawatkins · September 5, 2026, 4:43pm

That would be very helpful, thanks!

Shenanigans · September 9, 2026, 2:12am

I have been curious to try this for my knives. Did you import your solid works stl into carbide create?

schuylab · September 15, 2026, 4:17pm

It’s a fun process and has yielded good results so far. I did. I had to add some geometry since the parts require operations on both sides, but overall it worked really well.