There are a number of ways that knives are made including stock removal, machining or forging. So lets talk about a couple and our preferred or standard method of knife making!
Stock Removal
Stock removal is a pretty good way to make a knife. People argue constantly that stock removal is better then forging, or forging is better then stock removal and this is up for debate. A well forged knife and a well made stock removal knife are in almost every way comparable. But there are ups and downs to each. Stock removal is the process of taking a pored, stamped, rolled, or extruded bar of steel and grinding or machining away material until you have your final product. Stock removal is less prone to having stress fractures, voids in steel, and can be made from more specialty steels. This is how we make a lot of our knives, it also allows us to make a full tang knife which creates a stronger handle.
Forging
Forging is another way to make a knife and though many people think it so much better it does have its pitfalls. As I said with stock removal knives, a well forged knife is very much comparable to a stock removal knife. Forged knives are limited to there steel selection, because some steels are not workable, meaning even at high temperatures they do not like to bend or deform. A number of steels have been created specifically for forging. They usually are made to allow for deformation at high temperatures as well as have the ability to be work hardened. Work hardened means that as the steel is struck it compresses the structure of the material making the surface harder. The pitfalls or misconceptions about forged knives is that a properly heat treated knife should be annealed before hardening. Stress fractures and high stress points can be formed in steel when forged, the process of annealing means that the steel is normalized or those stress points are allowed to soften to the same hardness as the rest of the steel. Then when heat treated the hardness of the steel is uniformly raised. This is done to avoid cracking of the blade happening during heat treatment. This is also an issue with stock removal knifes, that why normalizing is a standard practice before heat treating. The major benefit to forging is that there is usually no waited materiel your start and end with generally the same amount of material. It is also much easier to get really high grinds on forged knives because most of the work can be done before grinding. You can also easily have full threaded tang or hidden tang knives much easier though forging so it does have a few benefits. We have made a few knives though forging, however it is not common because we do not have all the necessary tooling to do so but we are working our way there.