McIntyre Knives

Hey Guys Great looking tools doing those on your own is bloody impresive. I have back Brian 100% on the heat treating here. As a Knifemaker i am pedantic about heat treating and always heat treated all hot cutting tools. After three days with Brian and LDW you realise it is a waste of time and effort on hot cut tools. If the tool is formed properly and used at the right heats, it becomes a non issue. The time and effort can be used to do something useful. Cheers

What about looking at it from the other direction? It may be easier to manipulate the work with his "good" hand and modify the hammer. There are some extremely simple Oliver type hammer set ups out there. If you are replacing a hand hammer the rig could be light construction and use an existing anvil.

I just had my first experience forging hex with Brian and Lyle at Brian's class. I was using it for the striking ends on punches, it was way more efficient than going to round and looks good. The one trick Lyle showed me is if you are struggling to get the 60 degrees right you can go 90 and come back up 30. It sounds like double handling but I think we are all so programmed to go 90 you have to fight it at first. Once you get the feel for 60 this way, you can then go straight for it.

He is hitting it like he means business! Look forward to seeing the finished piece. Thanks as always for the pictures Lyle.

Great video Lyle love the fussing and the huge grin at the end

You have to twist two bars one clockwise one counterclockwise. If you bend it in half or turn one around they still go the same direction. It is like the old trick of sending the apprentice off to cut the heads off of some bolts and welding them on the other end to make a left hand thread. It works in your head but not in reality. If you are working with a small bar you can grab it in the middle in the vise and twist one way then spin it and twist the other. You wont waste as much untwisted material as cutting in half first.

G'day Outsider I would have to agree with Thomas and his comment on time. With no forge and only a few months to go you may want to look at making the billet with someone else or buying some commercial Damascus. Barring that, give her a drawing and a promise and then give yourself the time you need to make her something you will be happy with. Damascus is a whole world of alloy compatibility, heat treating, etching, patination techniques, and sourcing the materials you need to do the job. Once those decisions are made, then you have to build it. If anything goes wrong, you chalk it up to experience, chuck it in the bucket, then you build it again. A few months is not a long time when you are starting from ground zero. Righto enough doom and gloom this is what i would do if I was making it. 1. 1084 and 15n20, If you want to do a small twist I would leave to count pretty low say 50 to 75 layers. What looks good in a blade can get lost in small items, you want people to see it's Damascus. I would buy the material so I know what it is. Etching is a huge topic, safest is probably Ferric Chloride mixed three to one with water. To get the crispest etch you will need to harden and temper the piece, it will also etch faster and deeper. I would finish to about 1000 to 1500 grit prior to etch. After etching you can neutralize and cut the high spots back with 2000 grit and leave the 1084 oxide as your contrast. You can also cold blue, have a gunsmith hot blue, or have it Phosphate coated and once again cut back the high spots with 2000 grit. 2. Pure Nickle and Mild steel best contrast out there. I have always found pure nickle easy to weld in gas, it twists ugly though unless you keep it really hot. Expect lots of weld shear until you know the limitations due to differential stretch rate. Using mild and pure nickle lets you skip heat treating and etching. Mirror polish the whole thing and then go for it. You can heat color it, hot blue it, cold blue it, Manganese Phosphate, or rust brown, none of which will touch the nickle. Like all patinas they will have a wear factor but you can just recolor it when needed(depending on your mountings) Have fun Cheers Shawn

G'day Guys Once again magic pictures from Lyle, makes you feel like your there. Dan looks like he is all over it like a rash.(that is a good thing in case it does not translate) Five days of swinging like that and he will leave with his own blacksmith shop and know just how to use it. Thomas I can tell you, if you are excited now wait till you get there, it is just a blast. You could not be more right about Brian and Lyle they are peanut butter and jam, peas and carrots, Bacardi and Coke(sorry, loved the theme had to keep it going). Their individual skills are really fantastic, when you can see them together or have one point out nuances while the other forges it really comes home to you just what they are on about. Fantastic stuff. Cheers Shawn

Hey Brian I may have been the first Bladesmith but I won't be the last, I have been bending peoples ear since I left your place. If Amanda hear's the phrase "surface area contact" one more time she is going to poke me in the eye. She loved the flower bracelet and LDW's leaf fob, she says thanks and has all the stuff in a little display. Your spot on about helping other people and how you learn more, Demonstrating something to someone makes me think about what I am doing in a different light, then the ideas start to bounce back and forth. The first thing i did when i got to my next stop was grab a1.5" round off cut of 52100 and forge my friend Tommy Gann (another ABS Mastersmith) a new hardy. When I cut some bar stock to center he and another Journeyman Smith's face lit up like kid's at Christmas . I needed Lyle there for back up as I didn't think I was getting out of there with my hammers! I went honey badger though and they backed off. I look forward to trying the tang technique you described above, thanks. I am going to knock up a quick vertical configured venturi single burner forge with about a 5" diameter interior with the burner entering from the bottom. That way i can isolate my heat. I have always cut from the bar and turned around after forging the blade to avoid excess grain growth by unneeded reheating of already forged sections. By being able to move past the heat source i will be able to work the tang section as you describe, avoiding tongs and making handling the blade during subsequent normalizing cycles more user friendly, great stuff thanks. I caught your last video on YouTube doing the oval taper, fantastic reminder for me a great demo for someone who hasn't seen you do it in person. I don't think the plywood is sturdy enough though. Say hi to Karen and Lyle for me, I am off to the forge, can't wait. Type soon, cheers, Shawn

G’day Everyone Well I have just arrived back to Australia and wanted to get in here and say a few things about my time at Brian’s. If I were to write everything I wanted to about my time there it would be the forge version of War and Peace! (Length wise not subject matter) I am going to split it in two and give a personal view and a professional one. From a personal view my time there was as enjoyable as could be. I have travelled around the joint a few times and met some fantastic people, and I can honestly say Brian, Karen, Paul (Brian’s son for those who don’t know), and not least Lyle are some of the best around. Due to fairly severe jet lag I turned up in pretty rough shape. Everyone was patient, understanding and downright caring as I bumbled my way through things in a bit of a daze. Karen made sure I had everything I needed and made me feel like I was at home. Thanks guys. Righto, the nuts and bolts- my professional view as a full time Bladesmith. You could not make a better investment in your forging career than to spend time with Brian and Lyle. From the moment I walked into the forge I could see I was going to have to put aside what I knew and pay attention to what I was seeing. These guys are metal moving machines, calm, efficient, professional. Every move has a reason; every hammer blow is one step forward towards your goal. Surface area contact, choose the right die, heat hold hit, half hammer face blow, concretes hard, Brian tells you these things over and over until it makes sense and you use them to your advantage. Here is the funny thing, among knifemakers I can honestly say I am considered pretty good with a hammer, well there is a whole other level out there and I am glad I found it. I have always been able to accomplish what I wanted to, now however, I will do it faster, more efficiently, and more accurately. The skills I learned will apply to hand hammer, power hammer, hydraulic press, it is all the same just more horsepower, bigger metal. Bladesmiths are often self-taught or learn from other Bladesmiths, therefore we often don’t see the way other craftsmen have solved problems. Tailgate shear, never heard of it. Well I am building one tomorrow, it is going to save me heaps of time and chop saw grit when I prep Damascus billets. Pine tar for burns? I will have a tin in both shops. I gave up on traditional cut off hardies years ago; I was sick of chewed off cuts. With Brian’s style of hardy I was cutting 15/16” round material in one heat straight to centre, it is like a party trick except anyone can do it if you learn the technique. The list goes on and on. I would like to say a huge thank you to Lyle for all the photos he took. I have looked at heaps of photos on iforgerion and all over the net. I don’t think Lyle realizes just how bloody good his photos are and how much we owe him for putting them out there, cheers mate you are a legend. Finally thanks to the Brian and Lyle for the laughs, the stories, the enthusiasm and the passion for the craft of Blacksmithing it was an absolute pleasure and I look forward to seeing you again soon. Cheers Shawn