Razzputin

Heys guys last update on my Knife WIP. Quenchant - Raw linseed oil Handle - Wrapped leather Sheath - Wrapped leather and spring washers Let it do the three one hour soak sessions in the oven at 250 Deg Cel with a normalising cool between each soak to temper it. It is amazingly sharp for my first knife and glides through tomatoes, wood and paper. What do you think guys?

What type of clay should I use for this?

What do you guys think? The spike aspect is something I made up myself, I haven't seen it around elsewhere. If any of you have please post some examples?

Here is an update, I just wanted to show the spine off.

Well look at my new acquisition from the weekend, It fairly jumped into my hands and for R400 bucks it was a good steal. It was a part of a whole set of stuff that the bloke had from a deceased smith (rest his soul) and was just what I was looking for to start my portable outfit. All I need to do now is find another washingmachine motor for my other blower and ill be set! This thing weighs in at 30kg so its quite light compared to my 60kg brute I use normaly. Here you can see the brand on the forge bowl is millenium. This is where the blower will be mounted and the nice part about it is its adjustable so I can make anything fit in there. I had to dismantle the poor guy to get it home. All the little bits and pieces, thankfully the whole thing was covered in grease which kept almost everything mobile and loosenable. I say almost everything because this little fiend was holding the 4 toed foot at the base and the nut had rusted shut, if you can look closely you can see the bulge around the intersection between the nut and the bolt. There was thankfully just enough space to wedge a hacksaw blade in and start sawing, but woe to me the only blade I could find was from my neighbor and it was almost entirely flat. I counted 20 teeth along the whole length of it, so as you can imagine I stood there for quite a while. What you guys think?

I know a guy by the name of Riaan Bredenkamp who is friends with Coenraad Botha, the two of them are my knowledge base at the moment but I'm happy to make as many friends as I can. The blade and tang have been annealed and I normalized 3 times. I have yet to temper and heat treat it. I doubt I'll be drilling holes in this one. Do you know of any smiths in Pretoria who I can start an apprenticeship with?

Hey guys, here are some pics of my first knife made from a section of an old leaf spring from my moms bakkie. It still has to be tempered and heat treated and have a handle put on but Ill do all that next weekend hopefully. The blade is 17.5 cm (6.8 ") long and the whole thing is 32 cm (12.5 ") long. Tell me what you think? The original piece of stock. The rough forged blade. The final shaping and cleaning. This is the first one I have made and Im quite happy with it considering the size and outcome so far. I will see if my forging methods are correct in the tempering stage, bends, buckles, cracks and snapping could all await me. But I am confident in my technique and am sure it will come out perfectly.

Well here is the final product, the handle is varnished and the blade is engraved with the clients name. I wrapped the join with some leather to soften the tansition a bit and all in all it was a great success. Ill be meeting the client in two weeks to give it to him as it is for his fathers birthday.

thank you so much for the advice on the burning in of the tang. The sawcut is going to be covered by a leather wrap which will soften the transition from shaft to blade.

Well here is an update on this build, I have burnt the blade into the shaft which I hand carved out of some rather tough old wood that is really strong Ill have the type of wood in my next update. Now all I have to do is engrave the clients name, varnish the whole thing and do some leather wrapping and Ill be done. On this pic you can see the black smudge caused by the little flamethrower that happened when I pushed the tang in, is this ok? or am I making the tang to hot? What you think?

Cool man, I hunt as well but a little less frequently than I use to due to studies. I reside in the Pretoria area. Where do you go hunting.

That is a really nice way of presenting them, I must congratulate you and I hope you wouldn't mind if I borrowed and adapted the idea?

The zulu culture we are talking about dated back to pre renaissance age up untill and into the colonization of the African countries. They did not have the advanced metallurgical knowledge of the western world and did not have files but as Dodge rightly says they had sand. This piece is an artistic rendition for a client and is intended to be a decorative piece rather than functional and I am well aware of the failing point of the thin tang as the original assagai was meant to do this if it was thrown so that the enemy could not throw it back. The stabbing spears had a more substantial tang. Thank you for the advice on the photography by the way.

Just lighting the forge up and doing anything on it does it for me.

I have the exact same vise, but it has seen a lot more work and is a nice rusty color Mine also has no markings or indication of where it is from. The only difference is that I am in South Africa.

Well this is my first attempt at forging a flower of any type and I am quite pleased, my only change would be to shorten the stamen a bit in future. Here you can see a small crack just at the base where the petal meets the stem, this was caused by a wayward blow that caused the normally straight edge of the petal to develop a sharp kink in it that after I returned it back to its straight edge cracked once I started folding the petal. Comments are needed and are welcome.

Well guys I got my forge on this morning and cracked my to do list right down the middle. The assagai blade I wanted to forge did not take me as long as I thought it would, maxing out at just a little over an hour to forge and another hour to clean it up a little. This is the rough blank I forged out before the shaping and cleaning up. Initial cleanup of the blade. Final cleanup was to shiny for my flash so I took another one... Here. Sorry for the bad quality but my camera does not take nicely to photographing shiny things. I decided to leave the pockmarking and pitting from the forge to give it a more authentic feeling as back in the day when these spear blades were forged they had no means of sharpening or cleaning them, so they forged them sharp and left them fire scaled. One might say that this is rather easy to do but considering that the anvil used back then was a large rock and the hammer another smaller rock I would disagree. Tell me what you think, It still has to be attached to a shaft, that I will be doing tomorrow.

Howsit man, im also a SA blacksmith newbie. Im in the hartebeesport area whereabouts are you based in jbg?

Thanks guys. Ill be at my forge again this weekend making an assagai (Zulu spear), a large knife and a few other bits and bobs that take my fancy so ill have a few more posts come monday.

I wonder however where the idea that this was a complex design came from? this type of comment I would have expected on a post like my Frostmourne replica one where the idea was as thick as jell-o not on one as simple as this. I have pulled off much more difficult builds than this including my candle holder, my recent leaf handle sets and my numerous knife blanks. I have always had the opinion that if I have never tried it before then there must be a way I can do it. Even if it is beyond my skill range, maybe I learn something from the experience. People learn a lot faster from getting things wrong rather than getting them right. I we never got anything wrong we would never be here in the first place, many innovations are bred from mistakes.

Well it was the second design I ever did on Sketchup so Im glad you think so. I find it helps to pull out the final product on sketchup as it gives you the insight into all the little nooks and cranies rather than a simple pencil drawing.

Im working on some photos. its been hectic for me these past few months. i was working in a game farm for two of them writing exams for another one and the other two I was just lazy to come drop by and visit with you guys. I have more time these days though as you will see soon with my many projects that I have lined up. The staff was a great success with my client and he loved it. I lightly textured the staff shaft with my hammer after heating the shaft, hot chiseled in the lines and engraved his initials and name all in the space of about an hour. The end product weighed 4 kg in total.

I was simply posting a question out of interest. It held no conviction in my mind that I would ever use it. I know many methods of quenching and this was a new idea that popped up. I have learnt never to dismiss an idea until it has been tried and tested to prove inaccuracy or impossibility.

I've looked around a bit but to no avail. My question is this, I live in good old South Africa far from the USA where many of these bluing solutions originate and I was wondering if it would be possible to use HCl to induce the rust in the steel needed for the rust bluing process. All I find in the forum is reference to an acid solution. If you have any other thoughts on the matter please share them I am willing to learn as many DIY methods as possible without having to resort to paying tonnes of money if possible.