christian

Being as you are just starting making knives I'd say just go to the local junk yard and find some springs or saw blades or files or ball bearings or wheel bearing races (not sure if that the right name) there is a lot of different types of high carbon steels you can get for scrap prices from local junk yards. and all you have to do is find out exactly what they are. For example ball bearings and wheel bearing races are 52100 steel a good stainless(?) steel very good for knives, however it can be a pain to work with some times. and if you happen to find something that is a little to high carbon steel you could also get it and try your hand at forge welding and forge weld it with a lower carbon steel to make a unique damascus of your own. and speaking of damascus you could always get crane cable and forge weld that together to make cable damascus which is a very good knife making steel. So for a starting bladesmith personally I wouldn't spend all the money for the specific high carbon stuff when you could just get stuff you can be 95% sure of what it is and that make knives that will preform just as well as the other steels.

i used to live in fl and i might know this gent lol what was his name?

hey looks like you have cable down pretty pat first time i tried i had ALOT of help and it still didnt turn out as nice as your second attemp and that was with a BIG swage block but ive got it down now and have several knives in the work that being made from cable (dont know when they will be done though)

oh and depending on how thick that fisrt attemp is now it may still be salvagable,clean it up and weld that sucker inbetween 2 pieces of 1060 and walla all better lol :D

first off welcome to ifi, this is a great website you can learn ALOT here

I have heard thats warps in blades could be caused by the smith hammering on one side more than the other.

well I went to flea market and was able to get a few things including a hammer, a great neck hammer, from italy
Ive never heard of them before so I tried to do some research on the maker
all I could find was great neck tools based out of great neck NY and they do not sell this type of hammer, atleast not anymore
so does anyone know anything about great neck tools? and why does it have italy on it if the company manufacters thier product in NY?

haha guess that shows how much i know lol

and how far above 1% is it steve? i have a few pieces of it so i would like to get my info correct on my material lol

Thank you for the compliments! The steel is i think based on Norwegian clasification cause the carbon steel i normally use are called "20" (1%carbon) and "15" (0.8% carbon) and the nicklesteel i use in the patternwelding is called "15/20" so... yea...

Its highcarbon steel with nicklesteel added into the mix? xD The one with the deep etch and random pattern I made with a old lamination (iron and steel) scrap which I had laying around, I thought that it was a bit of a waste so I wacked it out, twisted it and used the twisted lamination in a lamination... if that makes sense.

these are great! what steels did you use?

I really like the patterns, howd you make them?

it is 3 peices of cable and 15n20 welded inbetween, the cable was welded int solid bars then the center peice was rotated counter clockwise and the 2 outer peices were rotated clockwise, they were wlded into a billet that was rotated counterclockwise lots of welding practice before to get it right lol

not bad josh whats it made out of?

My great grandfather was the smith in Cedarville AR and I have seen a couple of items he made in the 1930's where they were quickly made, recycled steel items that as a hobby smith I wouldn't allow out of the shop---but he was making a living in a time where the extra time to gussy them up didn't pay and so he made them where they worked and his buyers could afford them and he still could make enough to feed the family. As he ended up with over 900 acres of farm land I'm guessing he worked in trade for large items!

Why Wal-mart? I got one for $5 at the local thrift store.Same price at Goodwill and just about every garage sale I`ve ever been to.

Nice anvil!
Maybe JUNB is just part of a person or manufacturers name, I mean Joshua Wilkinson could be one of the owners and another could be JUNB. Dudely?

well went to walmart today and I got a toaster oven FINALLY :D :D

thankfully I just picked up some muratic today, and I sanded the blade a lil and found some small areas that where a little higher, but I think what happened was my freind hammered it WAY thin so I couldnt do much grinding, and I dont thik he twisted it or tried to pattern it in any way so I think Im just on one layer cause I also got lines on the spine. so Im gunna polish it up and put a gaurd and handle on it.

the vinegar has stayed about 60-70 degrees, but even then it should have shown a pattern after 3 days, but it hasnt so Im just gunna have to wait till I can get some stonger acids.

thanks gene, I checked it again this morning and it appears to have started etching more. I'll leave it in there for another day see if anything changes. I would probly put it in a stronger acid.... if I had one, but I do not right now.

hey I recently got a forge welded blank from a fellow smith and he asked me to finish it for him, now I'm at the etching stage and am using vinegar.

my question is how long should I leave the knife in the vinegar? because its been in there for over a day and theres no patterns coming up yet.

It is possible that he mistakenly forge welded a few pieces of the same steel together, but he is a good bladesmith and doubt he would do that.

thanks
christian

Recently I happened across a scrap yard, i got an old hand made file, a 11/2 lb crosspeen, a 1 lb ballpeen, a hot cut and a RR track anvil for $30 US.

Today I went to flee market I found 2 3lb hammers, a few files, a MASSIVE old pry bar, and a good little coal shovel for $19 US.

sorry I dont have any picyures yet.

well, I learned one of these today, I forged out a knife blank and left it in the fire to anneal when I was done for the day, and my dad had the idea to cover the forge with a peice of steel plate (to keep coal embers from being blown out by the wind), well I finished up around noon, I went out at 7 pm and well the fire was still red hot!

I'm just Glad I caught it before something happened.

unattended fire = BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD lol sorry

I knew it wasn't a good idea to put the steel plate over the forge. LESSON LEARNED.

so any smiths out there that have a coal forge, DO NOT cover it when your done with it.

fisrt how much will a hofi anvil cost? and secondly who are the distributors in the US?

hey another way to find a makers mark is get a stick of calk and rub it against the sides, if theres a mark itll come up.

well lets see .22 lbs translates into about 3.2 ounces if my math is correct.

since my forge is out of commission, I just heated this in the fireplace and quenched it haha

sorry the picture is so huge.