julian

Mende, making the head out of wood with a hole in it for the handle, then welding plate steel on the outside would be your best bet. You need a good foundry setup to cast that much metal. Why paladin hammers? They're such a lame class :p

good work, nice twist. Remember that spikes marked even as HC have only about 40-45 points of carbon in them, but they still work as blade steel. to put an image in a thread, put the (I think that iswhat it is) around the link. If you host your photos online (I use photobucket.com) it'll automatically have the thing there so you can just copy/paste that onto here.

I finished this little knife up yesterday. It's forged from a 1095 nicholson file, differentially heat treated; there's a faint hamon that I didn't try to bring out, camera didn't catch it. The handle scales are stabilized Buckeye with four brass pins and one mosaic pin in the middle of the handle. I put a stain finish on the blade. It's very dainty and turned out very clean except some of the gorilla glue that foamed out on the blade (I'm going to switch to a different non-foaming epoxy). It's just big enough so you can put your weight into it when you cut, but I made it for small cutting jobs.

Thanks again for that Thomas!

congratulations Mende, the English language is pretty dang hard to learn from what I've heard, glad you did so well!

like skunk suggested, exercise the hammer muscles in your arm before you overwork them. If you're putting too much force on muscles that can't handle the weight, other parts/tendons will try and do the work, which will mess things up. It took me a few months to get used to using my "hammer muscles" when I first started out, and lifting weights/working out has helped a ton as well.

I use Windex to neutralize the acid on an etched blade; you can use any sort of glass cleaner as long as it contains ammonia, which is the ingredient that does the actually neutralizing.

Welcome! It looks like you're definitely on the right track, awesome first blade. One thing I'd recommend starting to work on are the curves and blending the handle/blade together; once you've got the subtleties in shape and proportions down, stuff will seem to come out a lot nicer.

I remember seeing this a while ago, it being in German makes it like five times funnier lol.

really cool Jim. The blade goes great with the handle. Nice work with making the cable look good too :)

the radial pattern is my favorite. I've seen the W pattern on a lot of folders, and in person it's really cool to see and feel. Great job!

that is a really cool blade design, I love how the sheath goes with the blade. Awesome damascus.

Hey Joe, I like it I'm glad you're concentrating on the knife's heat treat and cutting well. Wood handles are a big leap from chord wraps, so (if you've never done one) don't get discouraged. Keep up the good work!

I'd recommend waiting a minimum of 5 years before trying a sword. By then you should have a decent amount of skill, money, tools, and assurance that you're really dedicated to the craft. If you want to try a sword, do some knives. Then some more knives. And once you're sick and tired of knives, make about fifteen more. Swords take a lot of skill to even complete properly; making them work and look good is a whole new ballgame.

Ah, that's rough My mom was kind enough to let me do stuff in the backyard, as long as I cleaned up and kept everything in my area. You might try putting on the "puppy eyes" and asking again. You can also do stuff to help your smithing without having a forge like Glenn said; I'd recommend weightlifting. After a while you'll be able to move a big anvil like nothin' :)

You generally won't mess up smithing too bad if you are safe and don't overwork. Great work is produced with somewhat little effort, because you're letting your skill and practice do the work for you. My forging experience has been entirely trial and error with the internet as a reference source, it's a lot of fun to figure out how to make stuff .

It sounds like you missed the period of time right after the quench where you can straighten the blade. My advice would be get your heat treat down pat before moving any further. Long blades like swords are very unforgiving when it comes to heat treat flaws due to there being so much steel to get the same hardness/flexibility; it will take some practice.

Karl, I really admire your knives. Not only the finish and aesthetics, but the handles look like they fit wonderfully into your hand and the blades look like they will slice through just about anything. I'm definitely going to incorporate a bit of your design into my stuff :)

that's perfectly normal, and as long as it doesn't get so hot that it takes the heat treat out of the steel you're fine. If you really want to you can just pour a bit of water over it in between heats. My 68# gets pretty warm too :)

thanks guys :)

couldn't fit all the pics, here's the last couple:

Well, the Arizona heat has finally let off and I'm back to forging! I made this knife for my knife club's annual show raffle. The blade is forged 5160, I left the part above the bevels with a forged finish for a cool look. The handle is ironwood with steel bolsters and brass pins. I also did some vine filework along the spine of the blade which unfortunately lost some of it's intricacy after I polished it up. It cuts very well and I'm happy with the finished piece.

awesome, bob! thanks for sharing, it looks great.

cool i have yet to try a hawk with a nice haft, they look really nice. If you didn't clean the inside of the bole out well enough you'll get a slightly acidic taste for a while ;)

I like the second one down Paulo, it looks like a great knife. Nice work :)