julian

stabilized wood is just more ideal for a functional knife in many aspects opposed to wood that isn't stabilized. You get a TON of function. It won't warp, crack, rot, expand/shrink, etc. When it comes to the finer points in a knife, if you have handle material that expands or shrinks as much as a centimeter it will ruin it. But I'm sure you'll figure these things out one way or another ;)

I wouldn't use lawnmower blades at all. Other scrap materials are just plain better to work with for knives. Coil springs and leaf springs are almost always great knife material, and come in more workable shapes and sizes than mower blades. Just remember to always play with the heat treat on a piece of scrap steel before you make it into a blade, or anything for that matter.

It's already been said, but yep, enjoy that patina and welcome to carbon steel kitchen utensils :)

yes car/truck springs are usually 5160 and are great for tough and durable knives. I've been able to uncoil much smaller springs, but not the truck ones. I just chop off knife-sized sections.

that's the first thing I thought of. I love using old worn out stuff to make knives, but try and avoid destroying new Nicholson files. Did you normalize before you started grinding or after? If you anneal a file before you grind you'll save yourself a lot of time since it will be easier to grind on. Looks cool, nice job

very very cool piece. I like a lot of things about this knife, the overall polish looks smooth, nice and subtle. The bit of filework on the guard is great too, it really looks good with the angle. Awesome handle material selection! The only things I don't really like are the beefy ricasso and the hardened spine, but I still really envy how well you made this. keep up the great work!

that looks a lot like a knife I made for a raffle once, I love the design and handle of the shape. The flow and figure of the knife is awesome, too. If you ever make a similar one bigger, I found that a dark wood with steel bolsters matches the contrasting polished bevel/rough ricasso look well.

as was before mentioned, mild steel *can* be used in a blade billet, but it will suck up carbon and you'll have to avoid having it on the cutting edge. I've used spring steel in laminated steel before, and I didn't run into any sort of problems welding or working with it. What you will have to look out for is combining steels that cool in different ways or behave differently at high temperatures. Putting an air cooling steel that crumbles at high temp in your billet can be very tricky. Just take a bunch of steel you have laying around, tack it together, weld it up, and see what happens. Don't be afraid to use scrap steel for practice!

I'm not sure who exactly the first laminated steel/damascus smith was in the US...I don't think anyone knows for sure. Daryl Meier et al. were the first group to really make laminated steel big in the states. They were playing around with patterns and whatnot in the 70's, for reference.

My advice would be to, as mentioned before, reduce your airflow. Wood charcoal doesn't need much air at all to get very hot. You might look around and try to find a new blower, too. As for the melting steel: even if your fire is way too hot, proper timing and attention to the steel's heat will fix your problem. After a while I started to notice I didn't even have to watch my steel/fire because I started to get used to the timing. You'll probably figure something similar out, too. 5mm steel is gonna heat up REAL quick in any fire, you won't even have to put the steel down.

on the last couple heats you forge the blade on, lightly go over the bevels and over the ricasso/tang/blade area with a very flat-faced hammer. save one heat after finish forging entirely dedicated to wirebrushing only. Get it to about orange and go to town on it with that wirebrush! Also, if you're having problems getting the blade a little too thin, try forging it slightly thicker so you can get all the pits out without making the blade too thin. The thickness increase should be very slight, as a properly forged blade shouldn't have very many pits, let alone deep ones.

Cool blade If you're having trouble lining up the tang in handles, always remember that you mostly have to worry about getting the blade part right. All you'll have to do is drill a couple straight holes in the handle, but the tang is going to have to match up with the center of your ricasso to make the knife look correct.

Unfortunately, horseshoe steel isn't nearly knife-grade. It's the same as mild steel (1015-1020), which has low carbon content. A good rule of thumb to find out if a steel might be good for making knives out of is spark testing. Use some sort of grinder on the steel in question; if the sparks are very bright and intense, it has a high carbon content. However, if the sparks are dull and few, it doesn't have much carbon content and won't harden much.

not having epoxy stick to a knife is a pretty big problem. the cavity idea sounds decent, but I certainly wouldn't trust it over a wood that glues properly. Full tang knives would also not work right at all. In my opinion, I wouldn't sell a knife that I knew wasn't as strong as it could be.

very nice, Alan. I love knives that are made from junk like old chains and stuff. Gives the knife a great personality :)

Nice knife, looks great for chopping what with the balance way out there and the convex grind. One thing, though; when you do a differential heat treat on a damascus blade, it can cause the etch to be different along the hard part versus the soft part. So if you're ever putting a lot of work into a specific pattern or something, it could make the pattern look sketchy if you clay treat it. keep up the good work!

really nice piece sam, great finish on the blade

I tried doing a hawk out of solid leaf spring once, but it didn't work out all that great; it worked, but didn't look very good and weighed a ton since the steel was so thick. Forge welding those hawks that you posted pics of is going to be a lot harder than welding a mild steel/HC steel bit style because you've got that big eye for the handle to deal with; i tried doing that a couple times, and I always burned the eye steel up. I'd suggest trying to weld a HC steel bit into a mild steel body next, I think you'll find that you can heat up and weld the end part without too much trouble. With that method you can also make the bit stick out from the bottom a little more and give it that cool tomahawk shape.

while making your forge and anvil the same height is useful, I like my forge to be higher up than my anvil; about the height of a cooking counter, maybe a bit shorter. The height of my forge is just right, so that I'm very comfortable and there's no heat in my face.

if you have the money, invest in a belt grinder. Until then, just use files and/or waterstones. Google around for draw filing rigs. You just need a vise, piece of wood, and a C clamp. The idea is you clamp the wood into the vise, then clamp the knife to the wood and file it. That way you can put your weight into the file and the knife will hold still. As for making the bevels flat, that's just where practice comes in. Just make sure you're practicing correctly :)

I've always had great luck selling these at demos and girls really like them. Try sticking a bit of cotton or tissue in the bottom with superglue on it and then put a drop of rose oil on the tissue. I solder the stems onto mine, so if you ever try that don't use roofing copper; it has a weird plastic film on it that burns and bubbles as it heats up.

I love those hand rubbed satin finishes everything looks real fit and finish, great job!

Hey Stephen, I really like this knife because you did everything right! A lot of people cut corners and don't bother doing certain things (or doing them right), but you did extremely well in keeping this blade tidy. It's all even; a well tapered tang, well seated handle scales, and really nice dovetail bolsters. Keep up the great work!

nice work, I like the ring on that, it's a good idea. Keep up the good work! Also in the future post blade stuff in the blades section. It's not gonna make the world blow up or anything, but Glenn (the admin) just won't have to move it himself :)

I mostly use my 2lb crosspein hammer made by Richard Thibeau (rthibeau on here), for damascus sometimes I use my 4lb wide crosspein store bought.