Feukair

I made my own hammer handles on the lathe and i left them pretty thick compared to normal handles. I don't have large hands, normal sized hands i guess... but I like the thicker handles, they fill my hand and i feel like i have more control while hammering. I do keep them smooth though...

I cleaned up our first blower also, this one is made of sheet metal rather than a cast frame. This blower worked well, we just couldnt pass up the deal we got on the cast body one. We are thinking of selling this one.

We got our new (old) blower cleaned up a while back. Here are some before and after pics. I'm glad to finaly have a solid cast metal blow, this thing cranks out some air...

Can you believe this? My Mom found this in the ground in her yard.

It's a bit out of round, 18" at the widest diameter and 17 1/4" at the shortest. It is 2" thick.

I'm going to make a mount and treadle mechanism for it.

It's like an axe/knife/saw, very cool!

Thanks for the link Glenn. I hadnt considered the issues discussed in that thread.

Luckily, i have about 6 quarts of new 10w30 which had been sitting in a friends garage and he gave them to me after a recent (20year overdue) garage cleanout. Kind of an expensive quenchant, but i think this stuff had been sitting in his garage for nearly 20 years...

Thanks. I just got 5 or 6 quarts of motor oil from a friend who was cleaning out his garage. I'm going to use that.

Wow, awsome!

Thanks for the comments guys. I have two knives almost ready to quench, one is the failed one, shortened to a smaller but still perfectly useable size (about a 6" blade) for a sashimi knife. The other is a 2nd sashimi knife, same as the first, about 9" newly forged.

I am worried about getting an even heat using a torch but i may try it on the shorter blade, using a map gass torch and moving it back and forth to try and heat just 1/8" or so along the edge. If thats not too dificult to evenly heat a thin area along the edge then i may try it on the longer blade.

I think i will try oil for a milder quench as well. Can anyone recommend a temperature to heat the oil to or just do it at room temp?

So... about doing this properly... sashimi knives are traditionally made by forge welding a piece of carbon steel along the edge of a larger piece of wrought iron. I have not any wrought iron, and even less of the skill necessary to forge weld a thin piece of carbon steel along another piece of anything.

So the quest towards gaining experience and practicing techniques continues... I'm still having fun at this.

Nope, never get tired of looking at spikes turned into blades... Interesting way hou worked the head of the spike a little, rather than just leaving it.

Very cool shape. It looks nice and thick...

Hey all. I've annealed and shortened the sashimi knive i tried to make which cracked when i quenched. The one here.

I really only want about 1/8" of the edge of this blade to get hard.

So i was thinking of using a torch to heat only the edge, then quenching only the edge in water.

I was thinking of coating the whole blade with a thin wash of clay, just enough to keep it from oxydizing at all.

Does anyone think I may have sucess this way? Or might this cause the heated edge to split upon hardening?

Please keep in mind that this is a sashimi knife the will not get used very often, and only put to careful use cutting fish flesh. So I'm not interested in going for maximum toughness. I'm not worried about leaving the spine very soft or in it's annealed state.

Thanks for any advice.

Incredible work Adrian. I like he one called regenerare. I'm still working on making some knives successfully. I'll be posting some pics in the blade forum.

Awsome appman...

I like how you left the rough forged steel on the side.

Very clean work!

Thanks for the comments guys. If the sen were shaped like the one in that link i posted I would probably harden the whole thing then draw a temper on the tangs using a blow torch until the metal turned blue about 1/2 to 3/4" into the body of the sen. Like the way the tempering color on the tang of a new file looks...

Feukair,
I'm just learning myself and your misfortune brought a question to mind. Did you normalize the blade before hardening? This is heating to critical and allowing to cool without quench to releases the stresses that builds up in forging. Some more experienced bladesters might correct me or perhaps fill in the gaps for me But I'm not even sure it has to be done with all steels. It was recommended for the 5160 I am using. the guy that supplied me the material suggested normalizing 3 times before I harden it.

Hi Dodge, I'm pretty sure this one cracked because it was too hot in the area of the crack when i quenched. Another of my knives which i got, far along in the process of polishing, also showed a small hairline crack. At that time i remembered that the same thing occured in that area of that blade, a brighter color than the rest of the blade during the quench. So I'm even more frustrated with myself on this one that i let myself get impatient and did the same thing again. I was making this knife for a friend, and now he'll have to wait longer for his blade...

I did what i believe is called annealing... After forging i brought the whole knife up past critical temp (magnet test) and plunged it in a large bucket of ashes and left it until cool enough to handle, which takes quite a few hours.

I did not do what i understand to be normalizing. I was reading some on that this am. I believe normalizing is bring the piece up past critical then letting it air cool.

The reading I found this am recommended normalizing 3 times (as you say) and then annealing once. (by the definitions above) I've always annealed my blades after forging, i also anneal my metal (W1 drill rod) before working with it.

I'm going to take your advice and start normalizing 3 times and annealing. As you say, i don't know if W1 requires it. I'm no metallurgist but it seems to be a common recommendation in the bladesmith world so i suspect it would do less harm than good for any of the steels guys like you and me would use.

Thanks again guys.

Sorry to hear that Feukair, you had a lot of time in that blade and it showed.

What did you quench in and what temp. was it.?

I only check the temp by testing with a magnet over and over until it goes just past non-magnetic. In this case the forward part of the blade came up to temp quick, then i went back in to get the part near the handle up to temp, which was pretty difficult because of my setup, and by the time i got the base up to temp the part about 3" from the tip got even hotter, i could tell it was hotter because it was brighter color. But like i said, i got impatient cuz it was getting late in the night and i quenched it anyway.

I've been collecting parts and various plans to build a electronically controlled propane forge/oven to use to heat the blades to critical temp.

I also don't have a very good setup for doing this. When i built my firepot i made it basically square, like a traditional pot, and that has turned out to not be a good design at all for knife making. Even if i meticulously work the blade in and out of the firepot the middle is always hotter than the tip or the base.

I'm terrified of getting my single hammer power hammer all tuned and working good when i get it put together. I cant imagine getting 4 hammers all working in tandem.

What a great little hammer.

I'm collecting parts for a tire hammer. That's one thing i'm worried about is where i'll find material for the dies. Looks like you found some nice ones.

Well guys I tried to harden and heat treat this blade yesterday and it developed a severe crack about 3" from the tip during the quench. Heating blades for quenching is something I need much much much more experience at. (im still very new at all of this). I have developed some good patience while forging but I'm not there yet with the heating before quenching. I thought i had the front portion of the blade a little to hot but it was late in the day and i got impatient and quenched it anyway.

This is something i definitely need to work harder on. I've also collected almost all the parts i need to build a gas oven for heating the blades to critical temp with real control. I think i may wait until i build that before i quench another one.

Well, next weekend i'll start hammerin' out another one of these babies... ;-)

Yeah, very nice, does look just like snake skin...

Here's the one i made for myself by modifying a file.

Sen Draw Knife