Christopher P.

Bob Warner did a cool one once, I lifted this pic from his site... MOD note: Photo removed due to copyright

ohhh, Wii-Forge. I like it. KTG, you're looking for help, but you're not making it easy. Your ignorance seems almost purposeful, your desire to do things "different" without any understanding of fundamentals is just silly. A little humility and a lot of learning will get you where you really want to be, taking your goals at face value. You're not going to leap-frog the best in this business by just exploring crazy ideas without knowing what's actually happening. Good luck to you sir.

No such thing as "too small a knife". I make little survival kit blades out of 2 inches of O-1, 1/8 thick. A damascus one would be awesome.

You're off to an excellent start. It appears you've either fallen in love with a curved blade, or haven't figured out how to pre-bend yet. If you want your blades straight, then you need to forge a downward curve before hammering in your bevels - then the blade will come out straighter... and opens up a lot more control to your work. If you like 'em like this, then please disregard. For the record, my first few blades were far worse than this. Good luck!

Which is why anyone selling swords made this way start at several thousand dollars for a bare blade... one has to account for that failure rate. And Ric knows his way around a hunk of steel better than almost anyone else I know... definately in my top 5 list of mentors.

I don't doubt it at all. My stuff is pre-flux, so it's nice pure iron powder. I have cooked taconite pellets directly in a crucible, and it makes an awful mess. I would consider adding a few, crushed up, to a bloomery furnace, but I'd hate to use it exclusively. I'm actually planning a trip to the Cranberry mine soon to load up on a ton or so of their ore. ~70% iron, self-fluxing, and comes out about 1% Carbon, 1% Chrome (from the bound garnets) and almost nothing else... a nice clean alloy. I've also worked with Jesus Hernandez and he prefers to use red Hematite, straight from the pottery store (they use it for glaze) mixed with a little flux. I don't like how fine it is, you end up blowing a lot out of the top of the furnace, but we got good steel with it, so I don't complain too much. :)

The "Carbon Steel" section is all machining steel, not blade steel. If you look under the "Tool Steel" section, you'll find D2, W2, O1, and L6... all of which will make excellent knives. The W2 will produce excellent hamon if you're doing japanese-style work, and the rest will make great, durable, high-function blades if your heat treatment is accurate. It appears they don't offer simple steels like 1095, but if you can live with more complicated alloys, they seem to have what you need. The alternative is to shop Admiral Steel, which has a set price sheet... I don't know how that compares to what you can get at Alro, but it's worth looking at. Shipping isn't very bad at all, compared to what a well-made knife can fetch price-wise at the end of the work. Good luck!

Thank you!

Wow, funny to find myself being spoken about. Yes, the smelt we did in Laguna was a simple iron smelt, by open reduction (burn charcoal, add ore, get bloom). The product of that smelt could be melted in a crucible with the addition of carbon in order to obtain wootz, and I have had the pleasure of making wootz with Jeff Pringle recently... he's perhaps one of the front-runners of modern applied research in this field, with Ric and Owen and a few other close behind. Matt, I brought my own ore to that smelt. It's magnetite from Minnesota, before it gets balled up into Taconite pellets. According to my source, it's 96% pure ore, which is pretty hard to get. Some of the best "natural" ores, such as the Cranberry rocks and various black sands get you in the 60-70% range... which isn't bad, but you have to put more matierial in the top to get the same iron out of the bottom.

No worries, Mutt. I know I have a low post count here... I spend most of my online time at Don Fogg's forum... but I peek in every now and then, and thought it was time to start commenting again. Lucky you. Frosty, thanks for the compliment. And, by the way, I was born in Bremerton.

Well done! For knife #2, you're learning fast. That transition where the edge stops, is often called a "plunge cut". The area just behind it is the "ricasso", before you get to the tang. For a little draw filing and an angle grinder, I really am impressed. It's hard to maintain control with such tools, so I give you full credit for determination and fine motor skills. As you continue grinding, try to bring the rest of the edge up to meet the bevel you've established at the plunge, and you'll have one nice-looking knife there. Congratulations, and good luck with the rest!

I hope you didn't think I was trying to beat you up, man... quite the opposite. It's clear you're beginning, and the sooner you get good information, the sooner you start making quality work you'll be proud of. I was just trying to help. I hope I didn't make you feel bad about it. I will simply suggest, and this is my own opinion, that getting one's head around heat treatment is the most important skill in bladesmithing. It's the alchemy that makes it all worthwhile, turns soft iron into hard steel, and is ultimately the key to making good knives. I go back and read Kevin's article about once every 6 months, and I've been doing this for 10 years. I still get confused with some of the terms, but I always strive to make better work, and this is in my mind a very large part of it. Good luck, and happy forging.

In addition to what adamj said, an even surface, properly prepared, will have less stress, present fewer opportunities to warp, and be -much- easier to clean post-hardening. Hardening, done right, won't scale up much at all, and most of what you get may well pop right off in the quench. Use a reducing fire (bushy flames coming out the front of the forge) and keep the temps low, so you don't overheat. Ac1 is a lot cooler than most people think, barely incandescent in normal light... not glowing orange. There's quick and dirty, and then there's thoughful and deliberate craftsmanship. Most of us who've been doing this awhile have found that putting in the time to do each step properly saves a ton of time down the road in fewer correction, fewer failures, and far better work.

Differential heat treat will affect the crystaline structure (the hard edge vs. the soft back) and is the essence of hamon in Japanese blades... that frosty transition zone between the two. It will not affect the physical structure per se, but when etched, the hard steel will react differently than the soft, giving you different etching rates, or inconsistency. Personally I don't see this as "ruining" a piece, but if you value the consistent look of the cable over the frosty hamon visible after a high polish, then by all means full-quench. Good luck! - Chris

For your benefit, Mutt, some clarification on terms... To Normalize: bringing the steel to critical (Ac1), and allowing to cool in still air. Often done during the forging process to relieve stress and refine grain. To Temper: improving very hard (and brittle) steel to pretty hard (but tough) steel from its freshly-quenched state, to a more manageble mix of beta martensite and cementite, accomplished by heating to around 420 or so (the Ms point). Oxides, the colors on the surface, are a good visual indicator of the temperature the surface has reached. For the record, the effects of tempering have much more to do with the temperature the steel reaches than the chemistry of the steel itself. Various blends have a range of effective temps, but these are often measured in 10's of degrees, usually smaller than even a well calibrated Mark One Eyeball can estimate using a torch or toaster oven. Personally, I often start at about 350, and finish a cycle of 3 tempers at 400-425 degrees. I also save the last temper for the next day, to catch any retained austenite that converted into fresh untempered martensite... in some alloys, this can take up to 24 hours, and is less common with simple steels. I am curious, does your well-known bladesmith tutor have a name? For further reading on heat treatment of steel, I highly reccomend Kevin Cashen's article found here: http://www.swordforum.com/metallurgy/ites.html Good luck! - Chris

The trick with carbon kitchen knives, is to hand wash and oil immediately... and enjoy the "stain". Stainless was developed for people who like perpetual shiny, but it isn't the same as plain carbon steel.

I find vinegar etches more uniformly grey... great for antiquing pieces, but ferric is better for contrasting pattern. Especially with something like Shear, where there's not much contrast to begin with.

If it were me, I'd buy a can of Nelsonite from Darren Ellis, pull your vaccum with the piece in it, and go from there. Mammoth ivory responds well to superglue to repair small surface cracks and fill little gaps, but for overall strength I reccomend a stabilizer.

EDC = Every Day Carry Thanks for the fresh compliments, guys. This is one of my favorites.

I know. That's why I posted it... not to get your assurance.

I'm kind of new on this board, but I've been around the block a few years now. Once you fold and weld a piece 2 or 3 times, carbon has pretty much equalized. Such is the nature of shear steel, tamahagane, or any modern damascus. The only thing that will inhibit it is something impermeable, like a pure nickle layer. Anything in the 200+ layer count is going to equalize out fast. The different wear rates may absolutely be a function of the original material, but will come from some other alloy like manganese, nickel or chromium. Not really a function of hardness, but wear resistance.

I like the Ulfbehrt style, personally. Here's a modern version of the inlay technique: http://forums.dfoggknives.com/uploads/monthly_05_2009/post-1272-1242921260.jpg

I highly reccomend the video. It is very well done, and Tim knows his craft. Just remember, there's several ways to skin this cat - Tim's is just one of them. Don't take it as the "only" or "right" way to do things, just one approach that works. Have fun and good luck!

Cool. Though, that part nearest the handle looks like it could bite a finger pretty easy - you may think about rounding that part off more... but overall, that's a nice shape and ought to be a good cutter.

Wii Bladesmithing? Forge the ultimate virtual sword? I like it.