oups two profiles

I would suggest that you soak it in vinager and then use a wirebrush wheel on your angle grinder. The finish that you from a wirebrush is very interesting and I believe it might actually look better than a mirror polish would on a rail road spike. Sure you could use a round file and then sand paper, but I think that you might be better off working on good steel. I am not sure that a rock tumber would work, see the way a rock tumber works is it takes off all of the high spots from the stones. I would think that you would only get a polish on the very ousides of the knife and you would also lose your nice sharp twists. Plus it takes several weeks for a rock tumber to work on a stone. Good luck on what ever you decide, and don't forget to show us your results.

In Jim Hrisoulas's book the Complete Bladesmith he says "Fullering the blade, or creating longitudinal grooves along the blade, servers two main purposes: it lightens the blade while making it wider without sacrificing cross-section strength, and allows for a more flexible blade.The fullers were neither invented for the blood to run down nor to prevent the suction of a body binding the blade in the case of a stab. These are old wives' takes based on fantasy not fact." I hope it was ok that I posted that excerpt. It really is a great book.

I tried forging with corn today, but I didn't have much luck with it. First I started with a peice of 1/4x2 leaf spring, I had a lot of trouble getting it up to forging temps. After that I tried forging with some 1/2 inch round stock. I was able to get that to orange in about 1 minute of 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. 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. Here is a picture of the fire. ~hogan