Making an ulu knife from a circular saw blade – a visual tutorial

Ulu knife by Russ McMullin

I made this ulu knife about 10 years ago and it still gets used pretty often. It is solidly built and works great. Today I was looking through some old photos and found this sequence. I though it would be nice to share.

If you have the right tools, the shaping of the blade can be pretty easy. For example, after using the hacksaw to rough out the basic shape, it was easy to use the abrasive wheel on a bench-top belt sander to apply the finishing touches to the outside shape. I made a point to keep the blade as cool as possible while grinding. I had a more difficult time with the interior shape. Files did the trick, but a spindle sander would have made the work go much faster.

Below is the design I settled on after developing a number of others.

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