New Knife - Nordic/Japanese Inspired Hunter

[Benton Frisse]

Hey y'all! 

 

I finished a knife that I've been working on for a while. Here's the break down: 

It's a blend of Japanese and Nordic style, which kind of just happened as it progressed. I had certain features I liked, and I continued to add more. 

The blade is a three-layer blade, with mild steel for the cheeks and a layer of tool steel in between for the cutting edge. I took the idea from the book "Swedish Blacksmithing", in which the smith makes a "U" shape bend in some smaller mild steel flat bar stock, drops the piece of carbon steel in the "U", and welds it, cutting the excess mild steel off. I did that, ground it, shaped it, and started polishing. When the weld line came out, I was pretty stoked. I know some people get their hamon by clay tempering... but I was pleased to get one this way by way of weld lines. Tempered to a straw color over the forge, this baby is pretty dang sharp. During polishing, I shoved it through my thumb nail... twice. No worries, lesson learned. 

The handle is poplar, mainly because that's all I had access to besides red oak, and I wanted to mix it up. It has 6 coats of boiled linseed oil and a final coating of Tru Oil Gunstock finish. I left my wood carving chisel marks in it because I felt it gave it a cool texture and even feels nice in the hand. 

 

The spacer, which I kind of took a concept from the Japanese seppa, is from a copper pipe between 1/8 and 3/16in thick. I cut it with a hack saw and then filed it down to shape, drilled the holes and filed to fit the tang. I did a little (or tried to) fancy filing on the spacer... but I'm not too happy with it. Didn't have small enough files. Oh well. 

Hope you all enjoy. After reflecting on the project, I do wish I would have polished the blade a bit more and to get out some of the sloppy, deep weld lines. Although, the blade is solid. This is technically my first lamination or forge weld on a knife blade. I wanted a rough, old look to the blade. I wanted it to look like it has a story behind it although I have not yet come up with that. I would have also used a bit more dense wood. But the poplar feels nice and it was easy to work. 

Cheers!

[TheoRockNazz]

Looks very handy!

While that is a laminate, I don't think it has a hamon - correct me if I'm wrong, but a hamon is formed through differentially hardening steel.

A nice acid bath would have really brought out that weld, and help hide those cold shuts. 

The texture on the handle will definitely help keep the knife from slipping and cutting your hand, and adds a nice effect.

[ThomasPowers]

Yup a hamon is from differing states in the same steel, not the interface of differing steels---don't worry about it, you can do really neat things with the steel to steel interface, make really neat patterns---just don't call it a hamon and you're golden!  (when you get practiced and fancy you can even do one where a hamon and the interface "mirror" each other in the blade, or track in parallel, etc and have *both*

[Benton Frisse]

I suppose you fellers are right about that! Note taken! I was going to etch it, but I decided not to. I even went and bought ferric chloride from radioshack! 

I think I will make another one of these soon. They're fun to work with. 

Thomas I like that idea. I'll have to work towards that. 

 

Thanks guys! 

[Dogsoldat]

Nice knife.  I kinda like how the carving marks worked out on the handle.  Almost gives it the appearance of antler