Stormcrow

Have at it. I borrowed the idea from elsewhere. :)

Thank y'all! SeaSideForge - I used a rattlecan of Duplicolor brand And I didn't come up with the idea. I think I first saw Raymond Richard do it.

His comment when we were discussing design was that he always carried a small fixed blade on his weak side in case he needed to get a bad guy off of his strong side weapon. He's carried a Becker Necker for such but wanted a custom for his remaining years in the service. Bigfootnampa - I'd think that the suit would be a lot more uncomfortable than the sheath! At any rate, he approved. :)

Got this in the mail today, heading to the customer. He's an FBI agent who wanted a backup knife to wear on his left side. He liked the looks of my personal EDC work knife and wanted something similar in shape with a spray-on truck bedliner handle like it has, something I haven't done in a while. The steel is 5160. The Kydex sheath and MOLLE lock are set up for left-side carry.

Darn good job there! I used to temper 5160 at 350 degrees and it usually is fne. It is a bit hard and the tip may be a bit delicate because of that. Bump the next one to 400 and you'll be good.

Here it is finally finished up: Olive drab Kydex to match the handle wrap, two MOLLE locks, and plenty of eyelets to give options for attachment, cordage storage, and the addition of gear storage pouches. And a shot in hand looking at the false edge. Plenty of steel there to turn over and use as a hammer! This took longer than necessarry. Moving shop and getting back functional has been more of a booger and time-waster than I had anticipated. Sure am looking forward to seeing what my blade will do as well as the other knifemakers'.

Thank y'all! Stewart - No worries, if I didn't want comments I wouldn't display my work online! :D Forge finished blades are what I like to make and I doubt I will make too many more satin-finished blades. Plenty of folks out there who do, though.

I haven't posted any new work in a goodly little while because after the Blade Show was over, I pretty immediately began preparations to move into a new shop out in the countryside south of San Antonio, amongst the copperheads and coyotes. The new shop is almost exactly a half hour drive from my old one, and an apartment is being renovated for me to live at the same place. There's more work being done, but here's approximately what it looks like now: It's built onto the side of a railroad line shack that was built in the late 1800s, and which will serve as storage and later as the bathroom. Almost everything about the shop is salvaged except for some of the wiring for the 3 phase equipment. There's now a creosote pole with an electric meter where the power lines come in to the left of the line shack's door. My new landlord and his helper trimming tin for the door: The new shop still has a lot of organization and moving around to go, but as of tonight I have everything wired up to allow me to run my power hammer, hydraulic forging press, and kiln, so I am back ready to forge ahead! A couple of weeks ago, enough temporary wiring was put in to allow me to string extension cords and use the lesser equipment, so I got to working on Kydex sheaths (which I'll show later) and stuff needing my grinder. One of the things I've worked on was a knife that was commissioned by an airman a long time back. I was enthusiastic about the knife, but there were several new-to-me things that I was going to be trying that I found a bit daunting, and that combined with trying to sell enough knives to pay bills meant that this one got pushed onto the back burner far too long. He finally politely backed out on the knife with the intention of getting something else from me in the future (he already has one of my paracord-wrapped knives). I went ahead and finished up the knife, and another airman decided to buy it for himself, as well as a cord-wrapped warfighter knife for a retiring officer. Because of my experience on this knife, I will be changing up how I work somewhat to prevent long delays like that from happening, as well as continuing to experiment on similar knives in a different direction. Here's the rough sketch I did to give him a general idea of what I was thinking. Double guard with a stout hidden tang, a forge finish, and olive drab Micarta handle. I forged the blade from a 3/4" round bar of 5160, leaving plenty of steel in the tang to be nigh-on indestructible. Less belly than the sketch, but the customer was happy with it. On to the stock removal. Then heat treatment and fitting the mild steel guard. Then the part that slowed me down: the handle. To be able to fit the guard on the tang the way I envisioned, I needed a hidden tang, but the olive drab Micarta I was able to find at the time was only 1/4" thick, and I needed a handle 3/4" thick. So I decided the best way to approach it would be to make a frame handle, something I had never attempted before. I mocked it up with poplar test handle slabs first. Which was good becuase I ended up shortening the handle down and narrowing the end of the tang to leave more of the Micarta in the frame. On to using Micarta, olive drab canvas for the slabs and black paper for the frame, with stainless steel pins. After that, time to clean up the blade and make everything permanent. And then get it into its final shape. And then came the part that caused me the most question and delay: we wanted it to have a black anti-glare protective coating. I went with Durabake, which was the first time I'd used it. I was concerned about the temperature that it needed to be baked at affecting the non-metallic parts of the blade, so I was very careful. It seemed to work ok, but I found that the heat had warped the Micarta and broken the epoxy seal. The customer was in town then on a trip and swung by. He was happy with the knife, but of course we didn't want to have that broken seal. So I knocked off the handle, got some more Micarta, and did it again. Of course, reshaping the handle meant that I'd be grinding the Durabake back off the guard, which would mean going through the whole baking process again and having a good chance of ruining another handle. The customer said he'd be fine taking the Durabake off, but I wasn't able to get it cleared off the blade right in front of the guard, so it all needed Durabaking again. That combined with getting ready for the Blade Show and moving took the project from taking way too long to taking ludicrously too long. I am very appreciative of the customer being as patient with me as he was. So I went ahead and finished the knife up. Here's what it ended up like: The handle is a bit different in shape, but I think ended up more comfortable than the original. The original Micarta, though ordered from the same supplier, was more green at the end of the process, which I would have preferred for the second handle. Win some, lose some. The new customer seemed happy to get it and I was happy to have it gone to a good home. :) I learned a lot and will be shifting directions on the next one.

If you're forging the blade out, you can leave the spine the original dimension and spread the remainder of the stock a good bit thinner and wider. If I start with 1/4" x1" stock, I may end up with a blade that is over 1 1/2" wide and still have a spine that is 1/4" thick. If you start with a piece that is wider than you need and you forge it narrower, you can end up with a spine thicker than the starting stock was from upsetting the steel into itself.

There's gonna be a lot more steel in a piece of 2" x 1/4" 5160 from Aldo Bruno than there is in a railroad spike. And much better steel. :) And McMaster Carr is another good source as mentioned by Dodger. Those chunks should make a plenty thick khukuri, and I know a lot of the traditional ones are ridiculously thick at the spine.

Hey, it's that one I liked! :) Congrats, Sam. I very much like and share your philosophy on the knife design. Good work!

The ones from Nepal are made from truck leaf springs. They prefer Mercedes springs. :)

I made my own back in college out of a piece of drill rod using a matrix punch I made from mild steel and files and a Dremel. It lasted for years before breaking, and I had one made by Buckeye Engraving at steelhandstamps.com .

I use a different kind of die-holding setup on my homebrewed Rusty-style hammer than I have seen on anyone else's hammer (though I'm sure it's been done elsewhere). It's easier to build than dovetails, doesn't require lining up bolt holes, and as a secondary characteristic is also very quick to change out. The way I built it is a bit bulky, and it doesn't allow a person to offset the dies like I have seen done on dovetailed hammers, but it seems like a good solution to me (which is why I built it that way :) ) If you build it precisely enough, you can fit the dies in pointed either way. These dies were made from railroad track, but I've since replaced all of them with dies made from 4140. The long bolts do wear out over time and I always keep an extra pair on hand for when they decide to quit. They never have failed while hammering; their threads get galled enough that the nut won't come off again and they have to be twisted off to change out the die. Slap in a fresh bolt and it's good to go for several more months. Maybe a better-executed version of this setup would be helpful to someone.

Beautiful work! I was getting jealous of your lucky trade and then remembered I traded one of my bush swords for a 129 lb. Hay Budden. :D

I think you're making things more complicated for yourself than need be. Ray Kirk in Oklahoma sells 3/4" round 5160 for $2 a foot and can fit 20 feet in a medium USPS flat rate box. It'd be no harder forging from that than from a clip, and you don't have to straighten first. I turned a 3 1/2" long piece into a knife with a 5" blade and a full-length tang. I get absolutely satisfactory performance out of a very simple heat treatment that I describe and explain on my blog. Very cheap for great performance. If you want to stick with scrap material, try automotive leaf springs. Much less struggling with the original form, and is typically 5160 or similar, so you can train yourself on the proper heat treatment for 5160. You're likely causing problems with grain growth weakening the blade, as Thomas said, moreso that picking up any detectible change in performance from additional carbon. The tendency in a gas forge is going to be losing carbon rather than gaining it, but it is at such a slow rate and in such tiny sections that you will typically get past the de-carbed layer when you do cleanup stock removal.

Y'know, someone made the same crack about Miami at the Blade Show. :) I don't think "SyFy" original movies have a big enough budget to rent these for props!

Thank y'all! Robert - A good number of folks at the Blade Show were surprised at how light these were given the length and the thickness of the spine. One fellow commented, "My pocketknife weighs this much!", which I'm sure was a bit of exaggeration. :) I get all of my Kydex stuff from Knifekits.com

Also means you aren't welding onto the tire rim itself, which is always somewhat risky.

No worries. :) Sold four knives so far, made several commissions, and met a whole bunch of neat folks. I consider it a smashing success!

Thank y'all! Hope it can help someone thinking of homebrewing their own hammer.

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These are the last of my inventory for the Blade Show. I'm not particularly good at naming every blade or style of knife that I make. Some knifemakers can come up with a new name for each one. "Gutripp Skullcrusher". "Asmodeous's Revenge". "Brothers of Aggression". :D So a lot of times when discussing design with a customer, I end up refering back to a previous blade by describing, "That one I made for the airman to take on his SERE training (http://helmforge.blogspot.com/2012/01/primaltactical-sere-knife.html)" or, "Those three I made for the Marines (http://helmforge.blogspot.com/2012/03/three-knives-for-u-s-marines.html)". So I decided that when referring to a knife intended for use by military personnel, particularly one based off of the SERE knife, I wanted a specific name. Calling them "soldier knives" would not please non-Army service members, though that tends to be a civvy generic term for military personnel. I talked about it a bit with some military customers and members of various forums and decided that "warfighter" covered what I wanted to say. So these are warfighter knives, intended for use by folks going into harm's way in service of their countrymen. Most of these are based on the airman's SERE knife, though there is one little dude that is a tad different and a bigger one that started out with the intention of the same profile as the others but began pointing elsewhere. I decided to let it go where it would and am pleased with the result. They were all forged from 3/4" round 5160, given my typical triple normalization, triple hardening, triple tempering heat treatment cycle I use on that alloy, wrapped in various combinations of black, desert tan, and coyote brown paracord with two-strand Turk's head knots that was then impregnated with Minwax Wood Hardner, and sharpened to shaving sharp. Most have a blade length approximately 7" long and an overall length around 12". The little dude has a blade length of 4 3/4" and an overall length of 9 3/8". All have Kydex sheaths that match the color of the paracord on the knife's overlay. All but the little dude have two MOLLE locks, while it has a single. This picture shows the typical profile on the left (this particular one has already sold), the little dude, and the oddball up closer. I realize that the profile of the oddball is a bit hard to see in detail, so I'll see if I can get a better picture tomorrow before packing it away. Got a little more to do getting ready, but most of my preparations for Blade are done! Yay!

More for the Blade Show. :) Aggression's younger brothers will join their elder sibling. They both have recurves, which was not present in Aggression, and each has a different tip and end of the handle wrap. All have fully sharpened top clips that will shave hair, all are forged from Aldo's 1084, all are wrapped in Minwax Wood Hardener-impregnated paracord with a three-strand Turk's head knot. The one with the neon lime green wrap has a blade length of 12 7/8" and an overall length of 19 1/2". The one with the bronze colored wrap has a blade length of 13 3/8" and an overall length of 19 1/2", with the butt of the handle left exposed for cracking the skull of a shambler if need be. Also for undead decapitation duty will be this zombie killer bush sword forged in 5160, with an integral socket handle wrapped in retina-searing neon orange paracord and two-strand black Turk's head knots fore and aft. Although its clip is a false edge, it makes up for it with a longer reach with a 15 1/2" blade and 22 1/2" overall length. The blade profile is based on a blade from Thailand that was in an article by Reuben Bolieu in Tactical Knives magazine some months back. And the whole family together, ready to serve at the first sign of an outbreak. :)

It'll be a while yet. The deadline on finishing these up hasn't happened yet.