matt993fod

Full of rustic charm.

Wow, curly maple is a beautiful wood.

Absolutely adorable. Gotta love one piece knives. You say 'silversteel W1', but I was under the impression silver steel was a different specification. Are they actually the same, specification wise?

Absolutely beautifully executed knife. I love mosaic pins, don't you? ;D Excellent choice of pattern for a bird & trout.

An absolutely beautiful combination of handle materials. I love stacked configuration handles. Great pattern on the blade, too.

I would be very surprised if that was cast iron. As has already been suggested, a quick tap with a hammer will tell you if it is iron or steel. Just be careful with the heel. It really is a little bit thin. Even if it was cast iron, you arent actually doing blacksmithing so it doesnt matter.

Thanks very much for the links, guys.

This seems like the best place to ask on the forum I have gone to study at the university of Kent in Canterbury, and this has Sadly meant I have had to leave all of my Blacksmith work at home in Bristol. Luckily, the local living History group has had need of a smith, and are even building their own replica medieval smithy at the living history village under construction at Wychurst. I want to get involved in this project, and am hoping to meet smiths in the local area who I could chat shop with, and hopefully get some contacts going. I would greatly appreciate being introduced to anyone working in the Canterbury area. Thanks in advance!

That is a very smart and unique knife. I totally agree about using it as a kitchen knife. Not only is the ring end very useful, but the all steel construction would make it much easier to keep clean. Too often custom makers doing kitchen knives in carbon steel apply handles that trap food and gunk and cause problems. This knife certainly won't have that problem. As an all steel construction, it will also be easier to keep the finish in a nice state. Very well done.

Best thing to do would be to learn to weld before you try a mad project like this.

Don't know what sort of buffalo horn you have been using, cos all the pieces I have ever played with have been nice as pie. If you're deflecting drill bits and splitting pieces of horn, you are probably using the drill incorrectly. Use a medium to fast speed, and use the press very lightly. There is rarely any need to put much force on a drill press.

If you don't have dedicated heat treatment equipment you won't be able to make full advantage of alloy steels. You can't dump fancy steel in the good ole' forge, soak it for X number of minutes, dump it in some gammy old oil and then say "Hey, I did it by the book". Proper heat treatment is a science. Practically, the average smith with the average tools will not notice the difference between good old plain carbon 1045 and 4140. Fussing over tensile and yeild strength figures will get one nowhere.

It'll be really interesting to see what the results are. After all, the goal of heat treatment is to refine the grain structure. Great work. I look forward to seeing the results of your experimenting.

You might get some grief from leaving the file teeth in before quenching. They can provide some serious stress risers.

Utterly gorgeous knife, reminiscent of Ed Fowler's hunting knives, in appearence at least. Six quenches sounds rather a lot. Can you be sure this really does refine the grain structure? Etching can be misleading; Have you done any destructive testing to support this method? 5160 seems to like multiple heat treatments; I am intrigued by your heat treating method and would be fascinated to see if it achieves good results. Very very well done.

I personally would have thought it would have made a better hunter without the choil; choil cuts are nice for sharpening, but on hunters they have a habit of "hanging up" when you start slicing up game, which can be annoying. Really gorgeous knife though! The whole package looks fantastic.

Isnt oosic fossilised walrus schlong or something like that? Who would think of using one of those?!?!?

I hope you're working under an awning or something; the daylight can really screw with people's judgement of temperature. It may sound obvious, but a bit of shade can make all the difference, especially since carbon steel can be damaged with excessive heat. Nice bit of practice work.

300 degrees farenheit isnt hot enough to temper to a sensible level. Neither is 30 minutes long enough to temper for. Leaf spring (if you can't be sure what exact steel it is) in a "chopping" blade format is best tempered to a brown oxide film, which requires about 450 degrees (off the top of my head) farenheit. A whole pound sounds very heavy for a 7" bowie. I am looking forward to the pictures, nontheless.

Not the usual use for wrought iron, for sure.

Theres nowt wrong with bakelite. Its a great material if its in the right place. Keep it out of sunlight and it usually seems to last. Rubbish UV resistance, you see.

How is what I put in my last post a swear word?!?!?!?!? Oh wait, I forgot. We don't have such a thing as blasphemy in England. It was thrown out with the rest of the dark ages.

That is such a cool way of making only a few layers look stunning! Whats more, if its all tool steel damascus, the blade won't suffer from having too few layers either! SUPERB looking little knife! A heaty well done.

That is an absolutely MAD pattern! What on earth did you do to create it?!