Amateur Knife Making

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Look for stamping die blocks. Absolutely amazing to forge on.

Look for old anvils that you can resurface. I'm always surprised by what you can find in old barns and camps.

The Sec/Treas for ABS used it and my hammer and dinky one brick forge at the Youth Hammer-In and he kept commenting on how nice the forge was and then on the hammer and then the anvil. He wanted to know where I got each one and repeating how impressed he was. I paid paid as much for the hammer as I did the forge and not much more for my 165 lb anvil. The anvil came from Terry Jones in MS. The forge was made by my buddy "Bear" in Bristol TN. The hammer came from the guys at Big Blue Hammer.
 
Yep, i should have listend. Do not attempt to weld spring steel. It didnt come out too bad but on the one side it did crack arround the weld. Its not serious and should not make the knife week as the weld was done in a place for cosmetic reasons only.

Another thing, my forge does work a little too well. Stuck the blade in and when i pulled it out, i had a three quarter knife :(. So no the blade is a little shorter than it was supposed to be. Not a great day by the fire, cut myself with a angle grinder and got bit by my dog.

I suppose we all go through a learning curve. I learnt 3 leasons yesterday, watch the heat on the forge, dont weld spring steel and dont stick your arm into a dogfight, just give the bu%^ers a good kick :)

Going to heat treat this afternoon and temper then finnish up tomorrow. Ill get a pic up sometime tomorrow.
 
Ha! Gotta hate that. I've had more than one knife slightly truncated by over-firing the forge... Always happens on one of the last heats for some reason.

Good to know about the weld. I figured it might happen, but hey, someone had to try it!

I wonder if you've noticed yet just how little air you really need to forge, once the coals are good and mature? Do you have good control over your air volume, or is it an on/off sort of affair?

When I started out 4 years ago, my forge would consume about 15kg of charcoal per knife, in about 6 hours of forgeing. I used alot of blower. After running this way most of the first year, I began to notice that if I used only maybe a quarter of the air I had been using, the fire was more uniformly hot, cleaner and more efficient.... And it was finally a reducing fire. No more flame-cut markings on my blades.... The dagger on my post on Page 1 shows the flame cut markings I mean. Looks like water droplets on the blade.... WAY too much oxygen in that fire!

J
 
I'm afraid you're going to find you've ruined the blade by leaving it in too hot a forge too long. Both mistakes leave the blade steel badly weakened by decarbuization and bad grain growth. What you probably have now is a chunk of metal that won't take or hold an edge and that is subject to breakage.

Everyone risks making these mistakes and ever forge has a pile of junk blades that the smith burned up.
 
If he cuts back to unburnt steel, it should be OK. Further forgeing should restore the grain structure of anything that wasn't heated past yellow-white heat (anything that wasn't sparking, ie. burning). I assume it wasn't left at too-high a heat for more than a minute or 2...

I've noticed decarburation myself, manifested in a couple ways. First was in my knives.

Before hardening, I put a 90 degree edge on'em with a bench grinder, just to help me make out the profile I want. After HT, I sharpen from there. Takes a while. I've found that the first edge doesn't do that great, but once a blade's been re-sharpened a few times, it does much better. It just takes a while to get beyond the decarburized surface, the outside fractions of a millimeter...

The second time I noticed was when I started making strike-a-lights for flint'n'steel firemaking. A steel is tempered rather harder than a knife, just the palest of yellows on the striking surface. Fresh from the forge's HT, they don't spark well. But if I grind off the surface (gently, no overheat), they do great. Again, it's a few tenths of a millimeter to find the "good" steel.

Man, what a fun hobby....

J
 
Morning guys. More bad news.

I melted the handle off at the back bend. Man im pi$%^d with myself. Didint learn from my first mistake. Im so dissapointed, after all that work i go and trash the handle.:(.

Im left with a coll looking blade with a long thinish tang with a little curl at the end. What do i do now? Toss it? I would like to finish it and thought of putting on a wood handel, not ideal but at least it will still be a knife. This blade has become my experimantal/learning curve blade.

Is there any way to anneal just the tang, to drill holes for brass pins to secure the handle?

Again, MAN, IM DISSAPOINTED.
 
I think you can go the same route you did with your first posted knife. Use a hidden tang style. I don't know how thin your tang is however so that would be the deciding factor. Most of my mistakes end up as happy accidents. I'll post one tonight when I get my camera. Bikerdoc I wish I could impart some sage stock removal techniques for you but I use a hand file almost exclusively to remove my metal. Grinders and I don't get along. Good luck:)
 
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Sounds like your new forge is gettin' the better of ya! LOL. I've had it get away a few times myself, frustrating, but a good lesson.

I like to lift the coals covering the knife so I have "windows" thru which to observe the heat's progress... But still, sometimes.... *sizzle*...

Annealing the tang will require that it be heated red and cooled slowly. IF you wrap the blade and first inch of tang with a wet cloth, and keep the cloth wet, you may be able to cool the rear of the tang slowly enough to anneal it enough to drill.

Place only the tang in the fire, keep the cloth wet without allowing drips to run down the tang (or it may crack on ya), and let the fire die. If you can keep this kosher for 10 minutes-30 minutes, you should be able to get a pin or 2 in....

But if you had to re-harden the blade, that would be no disaster either, eh?

Looks pretty cool, actually...

J
 
I like it.

Took my piece of file out of the ashes this AM. It is still magnetized, drilled fairly easy, but it does not sparkle when I grind it.
Do I have Junk?
 
Just anneal the tang with a torch and let it cool in a pile of ashes or just put the tang in your forge and leave the blade out then put the whole thing in a pile of dry ashes to cool.
 
Biker,

Nope, should be fine. A normally aspirated fire for a few hours cannot decarburize more than a few thou of the surface metal. It takes hours and hours and hours at heats above critical temp to decarburize deeply.

The sparks *should* be similar to what they were before, but perhaps cooler looking, as the softer steel will shed larger, cooler pieces, and fewer will become incandescent.

Get grindin!

J
 
I am so impressed that you folks are doing stuff like this. I certainly don't need a new hobby, but this looks quite compelling.

My wife and I need new wedding rings. How close is the equipment you use for forging steel to what you'd use for precious metals? I'm guessing that's closer to casting bullets than pounding out steel, but I'm amazed that this can be done in the back yard with bricks.

(Posting from where my wife won't see...)
 
My stepfather's a retired goldsmith, among other things. I've seen him do some basic silversmithing, and his toolset for that is completely different. Very fine work. Mostly I've seen him drawing out and shaping wires using drawplates, soldering, etc. His heat source is generally a small acet/air torch setup. I've not seen him casting ring blanks... Can't offer much more.

Working of precious metals is an altogether more careful and meticulous craft. When he works with a jeweler's saw, he does so over a leather apron which catches the gold dust for re-use. I've only had the chance to watch him work a couple times, and only on small, simple projects, so can only offer so much insight...

But Goldsmithing is to Blacksmithing as Watchmaking is to Engine Rebuilding....

I can tell ya that carbon steel bracelets leave rust stains on wrists, though... :)

J
 
Is this right?
Click to expand...
Yes

Would that be strong enough ?
Click to expand...
No, but when it comes off you can just go back to putting it on with pins and epoxy.

BTW, That has a nice look to it. Good lines. You have a pretty good eye. Keep trying. Keep reading. Keep learning.
 
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How close is the equipment you use for forging steel to what you'd use for precious metals?
Click to expand...

It is a question of scale.

My 165 lb blacksmith anvil and 8 lb hammer vs a 10 lb jewler's anvil and a 12 oz hammer.

I've worked a little in both jewelery and now in steel. It's target .22s compared to artillery.

Neither are as difficult to do as you think starting out, but neither are trivial.

But Goldsmithing is to Blacksmithing as Watchmaking is to Engine Rebuilding....
Click to expand...

Great analogy!

BTW, I know several knifesmiths that started off as jewelers.
 
It is a question of scale. My 165 lb anvil vs a 10 lb jewler's anvil.
Click to expand...
Lol.

I started a long-winded reply here clarifying myself, then decided this likely wasn't the proper forum.

The thing I've learned here is that there are alternatives to $1,000+ kilns for creating high heat. I've seen lots of contraptions made out of brick, for instance. This also means that books in the local bookstore focusing on using precious metal clay aren't the only way to solve this problem.

Still impressed as hell with what I'm seeing here. I had no idea we had this kind of talent here. :D
 
And we're the rank amatures! Guys burnin a bit of charcoal behind the shed a few times a year!

We've got some REAL tallent here too, like Valkman, Faud, and so many others... Then over to gunsmithing, with RCModel, Tuner and the others... This place is a great resource!

WRT the expensive, fancy tooling... I've found that in most persuits, the first 98% of perfection is relatively easy. The last 2% costs dearly, with ever deminishing returns.

"Perfection is the enemy of Good Enough". While at first glance, it's an invitation to sloppy work, to me it says something else:

Run whatcha Brung.

J
 
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