Canska

I''ll second the tung oil suggestion, I've used it on rosewood a few times. Scuff up the wood to remove the oxidized surface and brighten it up, then wipe on the tung oil before it darkens. Let it dry, then scuff again with fine steel wool and apply more tung oil, repeat to your liking. I've been consistently happy with four coats. I like tung oil because it doesn't yellow over time like linseed oil typically does.

I'm addicted for most all the reasons already mentioned (creating with your hands, primal fire and hammer, stress relieving, etc), but often times the biggest hook is its utter simplicity. It just works. There's no electronics to fritz out, no software crashes or reboots... unlike most crap in modern life, my forge is reliable. The coal always burns, the steel always gets hot, the hammer always works, and the only thing that determines my project's success is Me. I like that.

I'll second that. I still do destructive testing every time I try a new type of steel. There's no better way to know you've treated it properly than putting it to the test.

Get a decent welder and learn to use it well Build a decent coal forge Practice forge welding Forge more decorative (salable) items

Replacement electric water heater elements are about $10 at most hardware stores, wouldn't be hard to permanently install one in the bottom of your tub and hook it up to 120V. At 4500W, it shouldn't take but a few minutes to thaw (and bring to a boil, haha) the entire tub. Actually, its a 240V element. At 120V you'll only get 2250W and draw approximately 19A. Make sure you have sufficient wiring (12gauge or heavier) and circuit breaker. And of course, make sure it doesn't leak before introducing electricity :)

Specs... the blade is 5160 coil spring, the handle is Honduran Rosewood, the guard and butt cap are mild steel. I don't have a tape measure, but I'll guess about 9.5" long overall with about 5" of cutting edge. It really is a handful though. This is my first completed knife in many years (about 12) and it hasn't been like riding a bike. I am figuring it out though. This is the last time I do just epoxy though! And I really need to work on my woodworking skills, the handles are pretty crude and too thick. Hopefully the next project will be better. If anyone has criticism or suggestions, I'd appreciate that greatly. So... I've been making a pair of these knives simultaneously. The first one is nearly done, got it epoxied and roughly cleaned up and the handle has about 5 coats of tung oil. It just needs another quick run on the buffing wheel and sharpening. The second one just got epoxied last night, it'll get cleaned up and tung oiled tonight. Tomorrow (assuming the oil dries in time) its getting Christmas gifted to my father. It still amazes me that a month ago, these knives were a coil spring on my car. Transforming junk into pretty shiny things is good fun. In the 2nd pic, the bottom knife is the unfinished one, and its slightly larger than the other. More pictures here. ps: Taking pictures of knives is harder than I would've thought :(

... speaking of exploding fireballs, a few weeks ago I was preparing to light my propane forge with my trusty (ancient) propane torch. As I angled the torch downward to aim it into the forge, it sputtered and nearly went out, then whooosh! I hadn't turned the forge's propane on yet. Somehow, I'm guessing, the torch vented some liquid propane, which rapidly vaporized and caused a 3' diameter fireball at arms length for about a second, singeing my hair. Stunned, I just held the torch for a few seconds, still with 2ft flames streaming from the entire valve/tip. My buddy snapped me out of it, I waved it briefly trying to put the flame out, and ultimately decided to chuck it out into the yard (30ft or so), making a great whooshing sound as it went. I've replaced that torch. But in all the years I've used the things, I've *never* had one do that! Sometimes it doesn't matter how attentive you are, stupid and crazy things happen. Even so, I more frequently burn myself in the kitchen than at the forge :)

Good to see I'm not the only one sucking it up and forging in the winter weather! I've got a huge shed, but its unheated and not always even a good windbreak. I managed 3 hours last night during the ice storm and 2 hours the night before, while it was 6F outside... brrr. Anyhow, are you going to post some pics of the finished knives? :)

That is just amazing. How do you make so many beautiful knives so quickly?!

I've got a big music collection, and often load the mp3 player up with a random assortment, resulting in everything from the 60's to present, mambo and latin music, folk, etc. Its often funny when something like CCR is followed up by Rammstein or techno. But I'll confess, my favorite smithing music is the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack. Maybe I'm a dork (ok, I am), but that's my favorite soundtrack of all, and its great background while working. The Rambo II soundtrack is also suprisingly good. Yep, I grew up in the 80's.

Those pics are incredible and inspiring! I should hope to do so well some day!

Canska is a Native American word (Lakota Sioux) for hawk. Its supposed to be said like chawn-shka, but I've gotten used to people butchering it every which way you can imagine. My actual name is Rob Judd.

I've heard Carnauba wax (like Turtle wax for cars) works well. I'm going to try it myself, but I wonder if anybody's had experience with it?

Maybe I just don't have a big enough grinder, but making an entire knife by grinding down a bar seems tedious and converts a lot of fine steel into filings. I like to forge things mostly, starting with a 3 pound hammer for rough shaping, and 1 pound hammer to nearly exact shape. Then take it to the grinder or belt sander, if need be. But I prefer to do the final finish with a good sharp file, then sanding. There's something very gratifying about filing. You can see the work becoming exactly what you want it to be with each stroke. To each their own, I s'pose :)

I live in the middle of nowhere, but Bloomington is the closest real city, so Chicago is a good haul for me. Thanks for searching though! So now I know what I'm looking for, already I've got a dozen leads close by, shouldn't take long to get something decent and affordable. I'm guessing the best way to get started (other than having a good mentor) is to carefully practice drawing a bead until I can consistently get clean and uniform beads? I've got a good bit of 1/8" scrap for practice. Thanks again!

Thanks again for the kind words guys! I glued it together last night. First I carefully cut little notches in the tang, roughly as deep and wide as the width of a hacksaw blade. Probably about 8 overall, staggered and spaced apart down the length of the tang, with a few extra right at the tip of the tang to provide more anchorage. I went with Loctite "Professional" 60 Minute epoxy, as I've been reading that slower curing epoxies are generally the strongest and longest lasting. When I mixed it up and saw how runny it was (was expecting stiffer goo), I carefully masked off the wood handle, blade and other metal surfaces with masking tape, expecting I'd probably make a mess of it. I was right, in the end I had epoxy everywhere. In trying to make sure the handle void was entirely filled, I applied too much, which squirted out everywhere. But, because of the long cure time, I was able to get all the edges aligned just so and clean up most of the excess glue easily. After 3 hours it was work hard, so I carefully removed the masking tape before it ended up permanently attached. With the tape off, I was surprised at how clean a job I actually did. I'm still being gentle with it, full cure is 24 hours and its only been 11. Tomorrow I should be able to sand away the little bits of excess glue. Then I intend to mask off the metal parts and apply several coats of tung oil to the wood. Sorry these pics are terrible, only have my cell phone available at the moment. I should have some decent pictures of it completed by the end of the week though. Even if this epoxied knife stands up to hard usage, I'm pretty sure I'm sticking with threaded tangs from now on. The glue was a mess (ok, that was mostly my fault), and it was a very stressful hour, wondering if I was about to ruin the entire work or not.

Like this one? That's in my price range :)

Jerry W, thanks for the link, I spent a good while reading the entire site. Lots of good info! Dodge, I had thought of that, because I don't much trust the epoxy either. I plan to cut a couple notches in the tip of the tang. And I drilled some shallow holes inside the butt cap's slot (where the tang goes). They're drilled at about 45 degrees compared to the tang, to serve as anchors. Hopefully, that'll prevent the epoxy from coming loose. bg7m, I've threaded most of my knives before, and had good luck with it. But this is (hopefully) going to be a christmas present. And I'm afraid of not having time to tweak it 2 dozen times, trying to get the handle and butt cap joint just perfect... which, to me, is usually the hardest part of making a knife. So fingers crossed, I'm hoping the epoxy works out, but I wouldn't be surprised if this shortcut doesn't end up costing me. Thanks for the helpful comments guys. I will definitely add more pictures when its done. If I may derail my own thread, how long should it take to make a knife like this? I've been very careful with this one, trying to make my best blade yet. But I've spent something like 45 hours in total. Thats fine for a hobby, but I'd be hard pressed to make a living of it!

I only recently started taking digital pics of my projects, but my 2cents... HC railroad spikes Automotive coil springs leaf springs (knives, hinges, trebuchet hardware, hot cuts) pitchfork tines (punches, small knives, springs) old hammers (hot cuts, fullers) And all manner of junk from the scrapyard, broken machinery, etc. I've got a pile in the corner of broken stuff to scavenged bits as I need them, but that stuff is mostly used for decorative work. For something functional and important, its better to know what type of steel you have and that its not damaged. If you have any local vendors, mild steel (round or square bar) is actually pretty cheap to buy, and metal prices are dropping.

Hahah! I'll take that as a yes, its a toy. Somehow, though, my grandpa used that thing to weld a small boat frame and dozens of other things over the years. Granted, he was a veteran welder, but I can't imagine how he pulled it off. Stil,l I wonder if there's any application for this little tyke. I do intend to get a decent used welder. Any recommendation for a welding newbie (arc, mig, tig)? I was leaning toward arc or mig.

I inherited this little welder (sorry, the picture quality is terrible). Its decades old, says "115V 50A" on the face, has no controls other than an on/off switch. I don't know a lot about electric welders, but I assume its an AC arc welder. I believe its output is about 25V. Is this just a toy? I don't see any recent model welders for sale with such low output. I tried experimenting with it, using a 1/16" rod on scrap steel. It works but seems incredibly difficult to maintain an arc, it extinguishes if the gap gets beyond even 1/32". Is there any use for this thing? Or should I start looking for a decent Lincoln or similar? Thanks :)

No comment? Well, here's what I've made so far. Any criticism/advice would be great. There are a couple more pictures here. Tonight I'm going to attempt assembling everything with 20 minute epoxy and do the final finishing tomorrow, after its fully cured.

Let met start by saying I've never been taught any kind of proper way to make knives. I study every knife I come across and learned from that and experimentation. But I'm interested to know what everyone else does, as I suspect my methods could use improving. With my current project, I've made a full tang blade and heat treated it, machine and hand sanded it up to 400 grit wet/dry and will probly finish it to mirror polish with 1000 grit and a buffing wheel. I made a guard and rear bolster out of mild steel, and a handle from a block of rosewood. It all fits together nicely. I intend to finish the rosewood with tung oil. Would you finish the handle before assembling everything? Or would you assemble it first then finish? I can see arguments either way. With some knives, I've threaded the tang and tapped the rear bolster so it screws on. In that case I can see finishing the handle first. With this knife, I intend to permanently epoxy the unthreaded tang into the guard, handle, and rear bolster. I've never tried this before, and perhaps its not a good idea? But it seems to me in this case, if I finish the rosewood first, some epoxy might squeeze out between fittings and ruin the finish. So it would be better to assemble, let the epoxy set, then sand away any epoxy before finishing. So after all that babbling, I guess there's two main questions. How do you attach your rear bolsters? And what is your process for final assembly and finishing? And, does the process change depending on the type of knife and attachment method?

IMHO, that pipe will work fine, make it as long as you think you'll need for the kind of work you intend to do. For my propane forge, I used 3ft of elevator down pipe. The entire inside is lined with 1" thick ceramic fiber refractory blanket, sold under the trade name Durablanket. Its good to (I think) 3200F, which easily exceeds our needs. I made a plug of durablanket, which acts as the rear fire wall of the forge, and it can be moved to change how much of the forge is heated. Propane isn't cheap these days, so why heat the whole forge when you only need a foot or so? There are lots of options, like castable refractories, but I think the blanket is the easiest to start with. Also note, if you plan on doing forge welding, many refractory blankets will dissolve when hot borax/flux drips on them, necessitating a more flux resistent liner (like satanite) in the bottom of the forge. Also, if you make the forge very long, you'll likely need multiple burners. The most important advice, I think, is make sure to include valving for fine control of the fuel to air mixture ratio.

As you noticed, putting both pieces in the vermiculite together doesn't work well, the sides facing each other will cool more slowly, while the outside faces will cool and shrink faster, warping them outwards. I find most smithing operations benefit from consistency and evenness. Heat your metal evenly, cool it evenly. Study up on heat treating, definitely don't quench air or oil hardening steel in water, and patiently keep practicing. You made it this far (which means you're probly already hooked ), just gotta keep at it! And of course, be safe. It's not fun anymore when you're on fire.