Steve

For anyone with access with Adobe, I tried following your tutorial with laid-up and it works fairly well in Illustrator. The differences are minor and easily addressed using the Adobe help for Draw users.

Now if I could only make a blade that looks like the drawings....

Kevin

I'm learning a lot of new stuff right now, but I think this is going to be a real serious benefit - slower initially than pencil and paper, but in the medium to long term, this is going to make life easier, and more importantly, consistent and better fitting parts certainly. I'm in.

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I’ve been requested to start a thread on how I use a computer to design knives and knife fittings. I print the designs that I create on the computer and use the paper printouts as patterns to cut out knife parts. I can also design a complete knife on the computer, convert the drawings to a PDF document and then email it to the customer for approval.

The software that I use for design work is Corel Draw. I have version X4. Corel has version X5 out now. I’ve had Corel Draw software on my computers for years. I've had versions that Corel sold through the last 10 years and they were all capable of this type of work.

Draw is not inexpensive software. I'm sure that there are CAD programs and other drawing software that is less expensive; though I have no experience with them, so cannot suggest what else you could use. Google has a drawing program called SketchUp. There is a free version of it, but I have never tried it out. It may be worth checking into. I will show what features in Draw make it simple for me to use, so that you can look for these features in other software.

There are several benefits (for me) in using a computer to design my knives. I am not so good at drawing with a pencil. After I get done scratching around with a pencil, the lines are not precise and the paper is covered with eraser smudges. If I need more than one copy of the drawing, I have to either use carbon paper to trace it, or scan it on a flat-bed scanner. Too, pencil lines are much thicker than the lines that can be generated on the computer and printed. The thin printed lines are much easier to cut and grind to.

I have a stack of French curve and drafting templates, but using these limits you to the plastic shapes that you have on hand. The shapes that I can create on the computer are limitless. I also find it difficult to use a French curve to draw one side of a part that needs to be symmetrical, then flip the French curve over and locate it perfectly to draw the other half of the part. When designing a symmetrical part on the computer, I just design one half of the part, duplicate it, reverse it and paste it to the first half.

If the drawings do not fit on a 8 ½ X 11 sheet of paper, I can have the software print the drawing across multiple sheets of paper to create a full size drawing of the knife. The sheets of paper overlap each other and each sheet has reference marks so they can be aligned accurately.

I also use the software to design the patterns that use for engraving. Draw has a tool that creates scrolls. The scrolls that it makes are not perfect in shape, but it is easy to clean up the scroll by using the Shape Tool. I can also create leaves and other elements to complete the engraving patterns. I save all of the elements that I create so that they are available for me to use again. Each saved element can be easily resized, rotated, flipped, or reshaped to use it in another pattern.

I'll start posting up information on how I use Draw to create knife designs and also how I use the printed drawings to cut out knife parts. Hope you enjoy!

Mr. Culver,

Thanks for taking the time to put together this information. I have been wanting to use computer design for a while now to help with new designs but just have not decided on the best route to go with yet, this sheds a lot of light on questions I've had for a while.

Thanks,

Jonathan S. Johnston

Jonathan,

I'm glad that this thread helps you out!

My primary point in posting this thread, was to demonstrate how using computer software to design knives could be convenient. There are CAD programs and free drawing software that would also work for designing knives. I have Corel Draw on my computer, so that is what I use. I have no experience with other drawing software.

I fully intended to continue this tutorial on using Corel Draw. There is a lot more that you can do with it and some controls that make using it easier. But any additional information that I would post, would only apply to using Draw. If we have some folks on the forum that would like more information on using Corel Draw, I will get busy and post up more information.

I prefer using clip studio paint to do my knife designs. it works about the same. I am just glad i am not the only guy out there who uses a art program to make my blades as i was getting it on bladsmithing reddit for using it for designs.

I realize this is an old post but I use Draftsight. ( https://www.3ds.com/products-services/draftsight-cad-software/) it's free and is pretty much a clone to 2D Autocad.

Hey everybody

This is a neat thread. My dayjob is tattooing and after over 20 years of drawing with rulers, squares, graph paper, french curves etc I finally made the jump to doing my drawings on an iPad. I use procreate which is a very inexpensive app with a fairly easy learning curve. It has symmetry, adjustable graph background, and transparent or opaque layers to work with as well as being able to import photos easily to trace your pencil drawings or historical photos. I use it all the time for all kinds of projects and it’s a great option.