rhitee93

What? No comment about him flushing all that hard work down the drain? (Just kidding, nice fix :) )

Beautiful. Very subtle and dangerous like it's namesake...

Wayne, Good call on the matches, not sure how I missed that :rolleyes: I was hoping you would chime in Frosty, I don't know much about burners, and I don't seem to get it when people talk about what to look for when adjusting the flame. The pic you think looks a bit cool was actually stopped down 3 f-stops to keep from washing the picture out. In reality it looks like a butter white/yellow, but maybe not as hot as you describe. You are right in that I used a 3/4" pipe for the main tube. Porter says to use a 0.030" or 0.035" tip, but doesn't really explain why to use one over the other. I can make another injector with an 0.035" easily enough if it would be better. My choke adjustments don't seem to be as flat as you describe. Would the smaller orifice cause that? I have to have the choke much further open at 5psi to keep the flame at the same point as I do at higher pressures. (There is a gage down by the propane tank) There is a point where you can start to see green in the flame, I have been finding that point and opening the choke up a bit more until it is all blue. Thanks for the help. You are right about the notebook. I need to start taking some notes...

I wasn't very happy with the fuel consumption and temperatures of the off the shelf forge I purchase this fall, and decided to build my own. the bladesmiths on this forum have been a bad influence on me and I decided to build a forge that I could try my hand at pattern welding blades in. I based the burner and forge off of the plans int Porter's book. The only major changes I made were to go with a total of 3" of ceramic blanket, and to use a castable refractory for the floor instead of a kiln shelf. I also lined the inside with a layer of bubble alumina. Here are some pics after I got done playing around with it a bit today: Here are a couple of pics of it running at 12psi. I am still trying to figure out how to tune the burner at different pressures. I don't really know what I am doing but this seemed to be the sweet spot. Of course, I had to try to weld something. This is apiece of 1/4" square mild steel I had laying around. I folded it over and welded a 4" section. Then I cut the folded end off and ground one side to see the results. I have only done a few welds and this is the first one in a gas forge. The results seem as good or better than what I have been able to do in coal. (Not that I claim to be any good at it yet) I used a 0.030" welding tip for the orifice. The forge will run stable from 3psi to where my regulator caps out near 30psi. The weld was done at 12psi. I don't know how the gas consumption will be, but the tank I was using was nearly empty when I started playing around, and based on my experience with my other forge, I expected to run out in just a few minutes, but it is still going strong. I still plan to do some sort of door like Porter has in his book, but I couldn't resist playing around with it for a while :)

That would be a very welcome addition to my kitchen!

Those grind marks are pretty course, and each one of them creates a stress riser that can be the starting point of a crack. A finer grit prior to heat treating might help. It certainly sounds like this mystery spring material is more trouble than it's worth...

My grandmother worked the graveyard shift as a nurse in the psychological ward of a hospital. She was under 5' tall, less than 100 lbs and in her 60's. It was not uncommon for two deputies to wrestle in some brute hopped up on drugs, hand him over to grandma and take the cuffs off. She'd drag them down the hall, and never had a problem with one. i really miss that lady :) I guess it's about body language, but I wouldn't know. I spent my youth trying to keep from being shut in a locker.

I was a bit skittish about calling the number that AF listed for ordering. As best I can tell that is/was Paw Paw Wilson's number.

Are the rolling mill plans that Hugh McDonald is/was selling still available? I have founds lots of posts talking about the utility of the mill, and some of them were as recent as last fall. However, all I can find for ordering information is an address in Australia. I guess there used to be a US distributor, but he doesn't seem to be around anymore, and the Anvil Fire store doesn't work anymore. I kind of hate to wait for a check to travel half way around the world only to find out the plans are not available. I'd appreciate it if someone can tell me where I can plunk down my money and get the plans. I can figure it out on my own, but for the small sum he was asking for plans, it seems like a no-brianer to at least start with them. Thanks...

I'd read that book!

Thanks again all for the nice words. The knife looks better in the pics than in real life. I should go back to 400 grit to take care of some scratch marks and work up the polish again, but I m ready to just be using the knife rather than polishing. I never wanted it to be mirror polished, but it kept looking "Muddy" at 400 and 600 grit. Once I got to 1000 grit, I figured I might as well keep going until I ran out of finer grits to use. I think I understand how you all achieve those nice even satin finishes, but I had a hard time getting good results. Here is an earlier pic of the blade. I had etched it with vinegar and lemon juice (separately of course) to highlight the hamon. You can kind of see how cloudy or muddy looking the blade looks. Ultimately I decided I liked it better with a brighter finish and a more subtle hamon.

Wow, thanks to all of you. Compliments from this group truly mean a lot. BigGun - I would probably like grinding more if I had something other than a worn out old 1x30 HF special. I have purchased some good quality belts for it, but it still isn't much fun to use. I am considering building a 2x72 grinder. I do like the Zen-like feeling of cutting with a good file. It is a nice way to put the work-related part of my mind to sleep. As for how it cuts: I didn't achieve the legendary edge that Japanese knife makers are supposed to create on this style of knife, but it does pretty good. I deviated from the traditional style in 2 ways. First I made the knife a bit thinner than normal. The spine is only 0.160" above the heel. Even for one this short, a typical Yanagi seems to be closer to 0.180 to 0.220" Second, I created a small secondary bevel. This knife should have been sharpened with one primary bevel. I put a couple of layers of tape along the bevel line (Shinogi) when I formed the final edge. (Much like you would when honing a straight razor) I'm sure this limited the ultimate sharpness I could achieve, but I couldn't see trying to take that entire plane down the final edge with a 4k or 8k water stone. Here is a quick video I shot testing the knife with a rather rotten tomato...

Hi all, this is the result of my first serious knife attempt. It is my take on a yanagi ba style knife. My version is made from 1095 steel from New Jersy Steel Baron. (I guess that is Aldo to most of you) The blade was clay coated with Rutland's black furnace cement. Quenched for 3 seconds in 160F 9% brine, and then moved to 140F canola oil until 'cool'. Tempered for 2 hours @ 375F and allowed to cool in the oven. Here is the result: The handle is made from Bloodwood, African Blackwood, and Maple. I vacuumed stabilized the completed handle in thinned down Minwax wood hardener. I'm hoping that reduces the movement of the different woods. The following are my steps in making this knife: This is what I started with, it is a piece 025" x 1.25" x 9" 1095: The next pics are what I had after 2 hours a a friends coal forge. I made the aluminum pattern to use to check my progress as I went along. I don't like grinding, so I had planned to do the final shaping by hand with files, stones and paper. It probably took me about 4 hours to get to this point using moslty files. I wanted to try to achieve a hamon line. I used Rutland's black furnace cement to make a very thin slurry that I used to cover the entire blade. Then I used a thicker mix to create the heavier layer. The spine was left with only the thin coat so I wouldn't get a curve (Sori) in the quench. I fretted for a week over the quench step while the clay dried. I think I read every post on every forum written in the last 15 years about heat treating 1095. In the end, this is what I decided to do: Using a thermocouple I got my forge as close to 1475F as I could. My burners don't have a choke, and tend to run with an oxidising flame at this level so I put a piece of 2x4 box tubing in the forge. I closed off one end of the tube, and threw some small chunks of charcoal inside to use up the oxygen. The I had planned to let the blade soak for a few minutes at temp, but the temperature started rising, and I couldn't get it under control. Once the tube got to 1550, chickened out and went for a quench. I had a 5-gallon bucket of 9% brine that was heated to 160F. I plunged the blade in, tip down, for 3 seconds. Then I immediately moved it to canola oil that I had heated to 140F. After the blade was cool, I slid my pocket knife blade along each side to remove the remainig clay, and put it directly into my kitchen oven that had been preheated to 375F. I left it there for 2 hours, and then shut off the oven to let it cool to room temp. I had a hard time waiting for the oven to cool, but I could tell that there were no cracks in the blade when I removed the clay, and at this point, you could have pried me off the ceiling I was so happy. My wife and kids, however, were not so happy that the house smelled like a fish fry because of all the canola burning in the oven... Here it is after it cooled, and I scrubbed off the burnt-on oil. I spent close to 30 hours with EDM stones and wet dry paper to finish polisihng the blade. I may have to rethink my distaste for grinding! A file still skates off the harder part of the blade, and it took a lot of time to get it polished. My level of polish still leaves something to be desired. I tried etching the blade to make the hamon more visible, but I didn't care for the way it looked as much as I did before etching so I polished it back out. I tried to get a pic, but as you all know it is hard to do. You can sort of see it here: Here are a few more finished pics: I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. There are a lot of things I will improve on the next time, but it is turning out to be a pretty handy kitchen knife. The hollow grind on the back side was pretty hard to do by hand. It's functional, but not very pretty. The only other knife I have ever made is in this thread: ...so my expectations were not all that high for this one :)

Nice! I love that look. I agree that 3D modeling is easy to get used to, but it takes some special skill to create swooping organic curves like that. I'm impressed with your CAD skills. We have relied heavily on 3D printers here at work since 2000. The capabilities just keep getting better and our latest machine is amazing compared to the first SLS machine we had years ago. I haven't done a lot with the direct to metal technologies. Are the parts you got pretty robust? Years ago, they were pretty pithy and brittle, but yours looks nice and solid. One thing we have done in the past is print a plastic model, and then make a silicone mold of that. We can then make wax positives from that mold to be used for investment castings. We had one machine that used a material that you could just sit in a pan of melted wax. The part would become impregnated with the wax, and could be used directly to create the investment casting without making an intermediate mold.

True, martensite is technically body-centered tetragonal. I suspect Steve had 'cube' in quotes to keep the conversation from becoming more pedantic that it already has... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martensite

OK, I'll stop now ;)

It would do no good Mr. Powers. A paisley-covered Chesterfield sofa would just appear and bring you back.

...but he received that award for his Fjords Come to think of it, Zaphod's 3rd arm would be handy when trying dropped-tong welds...

I bet they don't have access to on-line blacksmithing forums either. What they know they learned from the old guy down the road, and by just good old trial and error. Honestly, the world could use more of that type of spirit...

There is a difference between "Magnetic", and being a magnet. I believe the phase has more to do with whether or not something stick to a magnet, and that magnetism is a function of the alignment of the polarity of the atoms. Take this with a grain of salt, as I am not 100% sure.

Those rotary dumpers are crazy to watch. They use them at the local power plant which consumes 100 cars worth of coal a day. The cars for rotary dumpers have a special coupling marked by a stripe at one end of the car. (Or so I have been told) Every now and then I'll see a train where two cars have the striped ends together, adn it makes me wonder what the operators of the dumper do when that happens.

Thanks for all the input. It sounds like the starting shape doesn't necessarily effect the blade, but it makes a lot more sense to start as close to the final form factor as possible. Other benifits would be things like starting with flat stock would allow me to spend more time practicing hammering bevels without spending all the time drawing out and flattening. thanks again...

Whoa there Mr. Hale, you didn't bother me a bit. I simply apologized for making the same mistake that every other new person on here does by asking a question that was listed in the tomes of the knife making lessons. Perhaps the tone in my reply came off as bad, if so I am sorry. Yes, I saw that the first knife (101) was made from round stock. Others were made from different materials. My question wasn't if this was possible,but is round/square preferred over flat stock. As of yet, I haven't seen any discussion on why one may be better than the other.

Good point. I don't heal as fast as I did 20 years ago, and I seem to get damaged a lot easier!

How did I know I was going to see that answer? :) I've spent a lot of hours looking through the knife making lessons, and a big thanks to you and Steve for all the work that went into them. If you say there is some discussion in there about starting stock, I'll believe you and apologize for bringing it up again. I suspect from Steve's response, it has more to do with why you are making a knife int he first place. If you have work to do and customer's waiting, why add time to the journey? If you are making a knife more for the experience than the result, then why not? I also suspect form Steve's response that I may have accidentally stumbled into one of those eternal debates. That was not my intent.