Still working on the skinner

I have not had much time to work on my knife for a while. I have been working really hard to pass my Pre Calculus class; I wonder why I would need to know that stuff anyway. I originally wanted to put a hamon on this blade, but all of my clay cracked and fell off as it dried. I did try something new during heat treating. I coated the blade with a very thin layer of clay prior to heat treating. I don’t think that I applied enough to effect the hardening and best of all when the blade came out of the quench it had no scale at all on it! Fire scale isn’t a very big deal to most knife makers, but it sure is when you are trying to make knives entirely without power tools.

The first picture is of the blade at 60 grit. In the background you can see the tool that I use for sanding. It is just two harbor freight hand screws attacked onto the sand paper and a piece of wood which serves as a backer . The set up works really well, it is much easier on the fingers than just holding the sand paper. Also I can go a lot faster because I can put me weight into it.

The blade has been polished to 220 grit and I haven’t found any major problems with the blade yet except for the plunge cut. I profiled the blade before I filed the faces and the plunge cuts. In doing so they didn’t line up quite right. A sad thing about knife making is that after hours of work just a few bad file strokes or several seconds on the grinder can ruin the blade. Luckily for me, the mistake is relatively small.

I am not sure yet what design I am going to use for the handle. As far as materials go I am split between a piece of deer leg bone and some zebra wood. I am leaning towards the zebra wood. It Is beautiful material. You can see it in the bottom of the second picture. The last picture is of my two favorite designs. I think that the bottom one looks a lot better, but I am not sure if I have the experience to make one like that. For either design I will probably end up splitting the wood down the middle, chiseling out a space for the tang, and then gluing and pining it all back together. If I do it correctly then the joint shouldn’t be visible. I would love some input on which to use.

A hunter skinner

Well, yesterday I tried forging the dagger blade. It was a whole lot harder than I thought it would be! After two tries, and two horribly disfigured blades, I decided to give it over for now and wait until I get a little more experience.

I really didn’t want to wast the whole day, and all that heat in my forge, so I decided to forge a hunter / skinner.  I don’t really have any use for a skinning knife, but I know a guy who does a lot of hunting. I am hoping that he will give me some nice stag in trade for it.

The blade took me about 1 hour to forge out. The only reason that it too so long was because I had to draw it out from a 3/4 inch spring. It didn’t end up quite the shape that I wanted it, it actually looks like a mistake :-/, but I will go ahead and finish it, for the experience if nothing else. The first picture is of the blade right after normalizing and a few minutes of filing the profile. Also in the picture is a little letter opener that I made.

Today I did about maybe one and a half hours of filling on the blade. I had some really bad pitting, I am not sure why. I also have the plunge cuts pretty much were I want them.  At this point the blade is filled with my really rough double cut file. Before I start sanding I will need to file it all again with my single cut file. This will make a finer finish from which I can easily go to 80 grit paper.

The final picture shows how I have two vises set up in a “vice in vice” set up, as shown by Wayne Goddard in his $50 Knife Shop. I hope the blade like that when I file the plunge cuts. If you are filing with this set up, make sure that you have a file with a smooth side, other wise you will file into your vise.

I think that maybe I will try to straighten the knife when I heat treat it. It doesn’t quite have the look that a skinner should. I figure worst comes to worst, I can destroy it and see how good my heat treating was.

I forged this knife entirely using pecan shells. I had a whole bunch laying around. I think almost 30 pounds of them! I think that they worked better than charcoal does. I was very surprised. Somewhere I saw an add for pecan shells, to be used as mulch. The price was very low, somewhere in the vicinity of $100 per truck load. That sure would be a lot cheaper and easier than charcoal.

Next project, a medieval dagger

A good friend of mine has asked me to make him a medieval dagger. It should be a challenge for sure. I haven’t really started to design it yet, but I am thinking about making a six to eight inch blade, double edged, with no fuller. I will probably do just a plain straight guard, with a wire wrapped handle. He is really good at wood working and leather working so I will probably just give him the blade and fitted guard. His only requirements were that it would be medieval dagger with a wire wrapped handle.

I am not really sure how something like this will work. The only double edged blade that I have ever made was on a letter opener. I was able to get the ridge down the center of the blade pretty straight. With about 30 minutes of filing I could have gotten it almost perfect. As it was, I left it with the fire scale on it.

I recently read of a very interesting method of forging a double edged blade. The idea is to first forge a tapered square. Then turn it on edge and forge it down to the required thickness. In doing so the bevels will already be started. an finally just forge in bevels like normal. One big advantage to doing it this is why is that it should eliminate any chance of a cold shut. The pant image below should help show what I mean.

I am really excited about this project. I have never done anything like this before. I would love to hear any of you suggestions about designs or forging.

My birthday anvil

Well, I finally got an anvil! It is an old 100 pound cast iron anvil. My grandfather used to have it on his farm, he said that it was there when he moved in 50 years ago. It is pretty scarred upon the top, but I think that I should be able to fix that up a bit. The face of the anvil is soft enough that I can us the ball peen end of a hammer to take out the dent. Then I should be able to smooth it all up with the face of the hammer. That method worked pretty good on some of the smaller dents, but it was very time consuming. I am not sure if it would be worth trying to weld up some of the chips, or grind it down, or even possibly refinish it.

Even though it has many defects, I am eagerly awaiting the next time that I can forge.

Charcoal

In my opinion charcoal is the best fuel for bladesmithing. One reason is that charcoal is much kinder to the high carbon steel. When charcoal burns it naturally makes a reducing atmosphere (as long as you don’t run the bellows too hard) which in many cases will add carbon to the steel. At the very least it will reduce scaling and keep carbon lose to a minimum. Charcoal is a much cleaner fuel to use. Both gas and coal will add unwanted substances into your steel. As long as you use all natural charcoal, no more than trace amounts of unwanted substances will leak into your steel. This makes charcoal ideal for forge welding and heat treating.

Gas is a very good source of heat for some knife makers. The reasons that I opted not to use gas was because of safety reasons and the cost. Propane gas is very hazardous and if you have even a little leak it can accumulate and become very dangerous. When working with gas, not only do you need to buy an expensive forge, but you will also need to refill your propane tank. I am not sure how charcoal lines up to propane as far as price per BTU, but I would think that even if propane was a good deal cheaper, it would take a long time to make up for the price of the forge.

Charcoal is a better source than coal for bladesmithing. Bituminous coal has a lot of impurities in it. These impurities can stick to your knife and add harmful elements to the steel such as silica. Smithing with coal takes more experience, it is easy to overheat your steel and burn it. After the difficulties of building a good fire you will have the challenge of adding the steel without it coming in contact with green coal or the clinkers. Coal is very hard to find in some places. Also the fumes from a coal fire are bad for you so you need to be careful to vent your smithy.

Charcoal is relatively easy to make on your own. Also the forge needed to burn it is smaller and more portable. The only kind of charcoal that you can use for bladesmithing is the all natural lump charcoal. It is possible to forge with the charcoal briquettes , but they will not produce as much heat, they will also stick to the steel and add impurities. Another hazard when using the briquettes is the ash. Lump charcoal will burn away with little or no ash, but when you use the briquettes there will be an eternal and lingering cloud above your forge. This ash is very hot and will burn your skin.

Everybody has their opinions about what type of fuel should be used. Some people like propane because of convenience. Other people like to use coal because of the swiftness of heating and nostalgia. I prefer charcoal because it is cheap and safe. Without toxic fumes or danger of explosion, charcoal is much safer. Even though it takes much longer to heat the steel, it is a wonderful thing to sit by your forge and watch it burn, with its nice smell and lack of smoke. A charcoal forge like mine can be built for under $30 and will last a long time. Also if you live in a rural area you should be able to make your own charcoal.

Corn forging

I tried some corn forging a couple of weeks ago, but I didn’t have much luck with it. First I started with a piece of 1/4×2 leaf spring; I had a lot of trouble getting it up to forging temps. After that I tried forging with some 1/4 inch round stock. I was able to get that to orange in about 1 minute or so. On problem that I was having was that the corn underneath the stock would burn up to fast that it would hollow out, and the leave the stock with nothing under it.  It was fun, and I was able to forge a couple of hooks for my mom.

I think that there is a lot of potential in corn forging, but I believe that I would need to do some experimenting on the ideal forge design, and the amount of air flow. I did find, though, that the corn clumped up very well, almost like coal. I had tried corn in the hopes that it would cost less, but feed corn costs just about $10 for 50lb. Even though the corn is cheaper, it burns a lot faster, doesn’t put out as much heat, and sticks to your metal. So, after several fruitless hours of trying to forge with corn, I decided to feed the rest or the corn to our goats and go back to good old charcoal.

My third knife, a fighter

Well, I sure haven’t posted in a while. Not over the whole summer in fact. The truth is that I didn’t do much smithing over the summer. Also the computer that I have been using would not load Blogspot for some reason. I had actually thought that my account had been deleted or something like that.

Anyhow, this summer I was able to go see my cousin in New York state. He showed me a different way of forging that I had not tried before. Instead of forging both sides of the knife, he actually just holds the blade at an incline to the anvil and holds the hammer at an incline to that. It is hard to explain, but for example if you are looking for a 5 degree bevel then you would tilt the blade to 5 degrees and the hammer face to 10 degrees. It doesn’t seem like it would work very well, but it seemed more accurate to me and I was able to forge it in half the time.

The blade that I made is the best by a long shot. The blade is made from a 3/4 coil spring. The handle is oak with brass pins, and the guard is made of mild steel and left as forged. The over all length is 12.5 and the blade is 7. I made it without power tools.The picture isn’t very good. That is because I had to take it with my cell phone. Actually I think that it looks better with the poor picture because you can’t see the poor fit ;) . I had a lot of fun forging it. This time I actually enjoyed polishing the blade.

Sadly though it isn’t a very good cutter. I believe that I over tempered the blade and lost some of its hardness. But at that point I wasn’t going to re heat-treat and re polish the blade. It was a good learning experience. I know that I will be able to do better next time!

My Number Two Knife

I forged this one on Saturday. I took me about 1.5 hours to forge it. I was originally going to forge a puukko knife, but it turned out to be a much harder shape to make than I had originally thought. When the knife had been annealed it took only about 30 minutes of filing and about 30 minutes of sanding to get to the desired finish. I didn’t finished this one very finely because I wanted it to be a user knife.

The handle is a temporary set up. Just so that I can test out the knife. As far as the material that the blade was made of, it is the bar part of an old furniture clamp. I am not sure what to call it, but it is one of those clamps thatT can open up to about 3 feet. From the sparks that the knife produced, it has a fairly high carbon content, but still I had to quench it in water in order to harden it.

After I sharpened it I was about to cut computer printing paper with it. But I wanted to try cutting something a little harder. Cut up some soda cans and then I cut up an old BB tin. Even after that it was still able to cut paper. I am very happy with it!

I am so happy to be finished with school for another two months. I am hoping to make a lot more knives this summer. Also I am going to be visiting my cousin, he is also an amateur knife maker, but he is much more accomplished than am I. Also he has a very nice forge and a good size fisher and norris anvil :D . I shall keep y’all up dated on the progress that I hope to make this summer.

My forge and "anvil"

Wow, it has been a while since I have posted anything here, sorry. School has been eating my lunch, so to speak. I have yet to finish that knife for my dad, but it is well on its way to being finished.I thought that you might want to see a picture of my forge and anvil. So, here the are.

Some of you may notice that this is a version of Tim Lively’s “wash tub forge.” I made this forge in a 5.5 gallon oblong galvanized steel wash tub. The tuyere is made of one inch black pipe with 1/4 inch holes drilled every 1 inch. The refractory that I used isn’t actually a true refractory cement, I took a 60 pound bag of quickrete and added several hand fulls of wood ash. All of the parts cost me about $35, it is probably one of the cheapest forges that you can make.

The forge has worked very well for me so far, It has develped a couple of cracks in it, as you can see in the photo, but I think that they are natural. This forge burns about 4 pounds of charcoal per hour, while maintaining forging heats. The washtub forge is able to to get sustain forge welding heats with ease.

To the right is my stake “anvil.” It leaves a lot to be desired, but it does get the job done. The anvil is a piece of 2 inch mild steel round stock. It totals about 18 inches in length. Mild steel isn’t a good choice for anvils, but it makes a pretty good substitute (its better than using concrete at least). There are several reasons that Mild steel doesn’t make a good anvil. First and perhaps most obvious, is the fact that the anvil face can dent easily. Another reason not to use mild steel is because the mild steel will absorb the hammer blow, making it so that your work isn’t as efficient.

I know that my tools aren’t the best, in fact not even close, but I think that I will be able to make good knives with it. I have been able to make some very nice little trinkets with the set up. I guess it just goes to show you that tools are not the most important things, it is the skill and will, both of which I need to work on. I hope you enjoyed looking at my set up, I shall also try to post more often from now on.

My first steel knife

My first steel knife is about 8 inches long with a 5 inch blade. I am very happy with how this one is going The depressions in blade were caused by the original stock. My friend had found the file with his metal detector and it was very pitted. I think that if I start with smother stock, I will be able to make the knife with little or no blemishes. I have used almost no electricity on this knife so far (I used an electric blower to power my forge). I have done all of the shaping with files and emery cloth. I am going to give this one to my dad when I am finished with it. I am going to finish the blade and make a guard for it, he wants to design and make the handle.

I think the safest way to heat treat this piece will be to first give it a nice long heat soak (maybe 15 minutes at nonmagnetic) then I will do a quench in 100-150 degree motor oil. I am not going to try to give this one an edge quench for fear that it will crack. As far as tempering I will put it in a toaster oven at 300 degrees for 30 minutes or so, than once it cools down I will try the hardness with a file, if it is too hard, than I will repeat the cycle at 325, than 350, and so on as needed. I think that this is the best way to do it because I have no idea of the type of steel I am using. Please give me your thoughts on my heat treating process.

Resources

I have found that a very good way for learning about making knives is through reading books. The following is a list of book that I have found to be very good and informative.

The Wonder of Knifemaking by Wayne Goddard
The $50 Knife Shop by Wayne Goddard
Step By Step Knifemaking by David Boye
Hand Forged Knife by Karl Schroen

Another resource that I have found invaluable is the video

Knifemaking Unplugged by Tim Lively

Don’t forget to check out some of these online resources

http://dfoggknives.com/ (don’t forget to check out his forum!)
http://livelyknives.com/
http://www.americanbladesmith.com/

Feel free to suggest any other books or websites that you have found.

Another blog

Hello,

First off I want to say thank you for reading this, I would hate to do all of this work and have nobody benefit. Also I would like to make it very clear that I am not an expert on knife making, although I have done extensive reading on the subject and had some experience. It is my hope that as I get better, you can learn from my mistakes. I would also like it if you would make suggestions on how I can make my knives better.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask! I will answer them to the best of my abilities, and if I don’t know then I will find out the answer!

Thanks,
Hogan Baker