In most commercial knives, the blade is constructed by stamping the shape out of a giant coil of steel with a hydraulic press, much like a cookie cutter stamps shapes out of dough. The blade is then refined, tempered, ground, polished and honed into shape.
A few commercial knife companies- mostly in Europe- use a hot, dropforge process to construct blades. In this method white-hot steel is held on an anvil while an immense mechanical hammer called a drop forge pounds the rough slabs of metal into the proper thickness for blades. It is then hardened, tempered and ground. Companies that employ it to produce a finer grain and more orderly molecular structure in the steel and more strength.

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When a blade is formed for a fixed blade knife, it includes a metal extension in the general shape of a handle. This extension is called a tang. Handle material is attached to this extension. If the tang extends to the end of the handle, the knife is said to have a full tang. If it extends only halfway, it is a half tang. These are frequently visible on both the top and bottom of the handle. Some tangs are trimmed and extended through the length of the handle, but not the width. These are called partial tangs.

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