How to Make a Cooking Knife from Recycled Aluminum Foil

Believe it or not, with aluminium foil you can create a very sharp knife. You will need a few tools and some patience, but the final outcome is worth it.

Albeit interesting, this is not a very green project if you don’t use recycled aluminum. However, the maker in this video probably didn’t think of this aspect, but this is actually a very interesting recycling project.

For this project, you must be really careful. You will be working with fire and the material gets really hot. Always use gloves and manipulate the piece with tweezers.

Materials you will need

• To start you will need a roll of aluminium foil
• Also a hammer of iron and another of wood.
• Some tweezers
• A marker, piece of wood
• A knife to use as a reference for the one you are going to make
• And finally a saw, screws, metal files and water file

Step by Step

The first thing you should do is remove half of the aluminium foil from the roll you are going to work with.

Then, with the metal hammer, slightly hit the whole surface of the tube, both sides.

After that, introduce the wooden hammer inside the paperboard tube and roll it to remove it from the aluminium foil.

The next step is to keep on flattening the aluminium paper, also from both sides

Take the paper into the fire and heat the half of it so you can hold it with the tweezers by the cold side

Then cool the hot tweezers with a wet piece of cloth

Now take the other half of the paper to the fire

After that, keep on flattening the paper with the hammer until you get a strong piece of aluminium

Take the knife and use it as a model to draw on the aluminium plate

Use a hacksaw to get the knife shape

Then use a metal file for the edges

Take the knife into the fire to split it in half. You will use only one of the half for making the knife.

After that, use the hammer to keep on flattening the new piece

Now start sanding the whole knife with sandpaper.

Then proceed to sand with a moistened metal file, to get the edge to the knife

How to make the handle of the knife.

Draw the handle of the knife on a piece of wood.

Cut it, then open the handle separating it into two halves and sand the wood.

The next step is to mark the wood and the knife in the place where you will open the holes.

Open them with a drill and then screw.

Cut the remaining of the screws and then begin to align the whole knife