boisdarc

Holy cow, I don't know if you can see grain size in this pic, but that was the intent. This is from a similar attempt that was dropped immediately after quenching. Needless to say, I was as mad as a hornet for about ten minutes. But, I learned not to drop freshly quenched stuff on my concrete from 4 foot up. The grain is more suger than salt if that makes any sense. Not super fine like you have to look with and electron microscope or anything, but not big giant crystals like rock salt either.

Ok, so I guess I'll be doing this in increments. The forge process was, final shape to how I wanted it and flat. Blade thickness thicker than a quarter. Taken to non-magnetic and held there for a bit, I wouldn't say heat soak or anything resembling technical knowledge. I tried to keep the blade in the coal in between the actual fire ball and the outside air, I don't know what to call it, so I call it the buffer zone. The quench was salt water and dishwashing soap mix, I didn't float an egg in the brine or anything-however there was a lot of salt in there. Before I put the blade in to heat, I put some LEGALLY obtained RR spikes in my heat to get warm and use them to warm the brine mix. Quench was either make or brake, no ping no fumbling around, just in, sea saw, and out much cooler. Afterward I cleaned the blade and sent it into the oven. The oven wasn't preheated, so in at normal temp-my oven takes about 8 minutes to get to 400 degrees. At 400 I let it stay in for an hour, and then off and cool on its own, for 2 cycles. I should probably input here "IF you are like a 15 or whatever year old kid and reading this--this is not the example you should be following, if you want to make swords or choppers, learn how to do it right--I probably had idiot luck and it didn't break(yet)". After taking out of the oven, it wasn't a perfect honey color, a little funky color but definitely not honey. A file could skate over the edge. The actual edge was obtained with a lot of time and a chinese made wet stone, some filing, and some sand paper. I want to interject here that although I do find some chinese made tools to be less than great, this wet stone probably made in the fifties is really pretty good, rough on one side and finer on the other, I have two of them about 3 inches wide and maybe 8 inches long by an inch and a half thick. You can see some seriously ugly scratch marks here. I don't know how long I can claim rookie status but remember -first submission here. The handle lanyard hole has a little bit of occlusion around it, I honestly should of just peened it out a little bit to take up that space. Lesson learned. Handle wood is an unknown wood. A friend gave it to me. It was originally going to be used in making duck calls, but didn't pass the muster for that and was forwarded to me. It turned out ok, and has a pretty cool stripe action going on. It could be bass wood, or not, it doesn't have the action on the cross grain that you sometimes see with bass wood though. Any way, beat it up if you want. No tears here. Why the brine solution with dish washing soap you ask, Not A CLUE, I actually saw it on youtube, and another place on line.. Now I know that is a terrible answer, but the truth. The other online place kind of had a simple break down on the reasoning, and I'm a pretty simple guy. Heck, I may of seen in an OLD post from this site too. I'll have to search more. But thanks.

My first posting of work. It is a recycled lawn mower blade-J.D. specifically. Forged on my coal burning forge for a friend. The first heat, was just forging the mower blade flat. Second heat was to shape, although the handle was cut with a cut off wheel, so-cheating a little bit. I just finished a hot cut hardy tool recently, and it wasn't done in time to work on this. The bevels were forged in mostly although cleaned up with a sanding disk. I do not have a 2x72 belt sander although I recently received a 4x36 for fathers day, and I honestly didn't feel like hand sanding every scratch out. It is meant to be a user, and perfection wasn't really an obstacle I was expecting to get in my way at this point in time.

If your daughter trains with heavier equipment, down the road when she does demo's she'll be able to fly with a lighter set.

Me being a correctional officer and all, I was waiting for that last comment.

The funny thing about "fad" culture, most of the fads that people have tried to be part of are "pretty cool", knife making, motorcycle making, hot rodding, mma, beer making, shooting, prepping. There is a reason people want to replicate that at home. Its cool. Shooting guns and bows and arrows, making beer, hardtailing your bike, tattoos, what ever, they're all pretty cool things to learn how to do. All of those fad jumpers are wanting to do cool stuff. I'm ok with that. It makes supplies more available not less available. Yes, some of the older tools are getting scooped up by johnny comelately. But aren't there more knife making supply companies around now than five years ago? I have been doing martial arts off and on for a lot of years, doing MMA for longer than the first season of ultimate fighter has been around. The guys that really wanted to train stuck with it, and the guys that watched it on tv and thought "any"body could do it, found out how much work it was(and how much fun getting punched in the face wasn't) quit. I had kids show up that told me they had already signed up to take a fight in 3 monthes. I usually asked them if they wrestled in highschool-they would say "no". I would ask them if they ever took karate or tae kwon do at the "Y"-they would say no. I would ask them if they got into a lot of street fights-again "no". Then, I would ask them if they watched UFC fights-you can probably fill in the blank right. That was the down side, the up side was sometimes when I needed to replace equipment, it was always "lightly used" on ebay that I would buy at a discount. SO, the moral is most fads are fads for a reason, and with popularity of a sport/hobby-the availability of that hobbies supply houses becomes more readily available, and after the fad has ran its course, the good stuff will be available again at a discount price.

Another beautiful knife. That is the kind of broom you can buy in asia behind it right?

Beautiful knife. When sides that are supposed to have perfect symmetry do not, you just have to get artistic and say "organic". Seriously great knife I would be proud to own it and even prouder to have made it.

great knives, and great pics.

My grandfather recently sent me home with an old simplex vise. It was kind of beat up, rusty, dirty, and had been welded at least once. It wasn't one of his good ones, and he couldn't remember where it came from. He said it just showed up in the yard. I took it home and broke it down. Then packed it off to work to become a government project in the blasting cabinet. It cleaned up well, I painted it with some pretty good quality(meaning more expensive than I usually spend on) spray paint. After that paint set up, I put the lettering on. Forgot to take a before pic, but here it is. Believe it or not it does actually close even with all of the weld on it.

Awesome work, truly inspirational.

I recently paid zero dollars for 3 five gallon buckets of montana coal, and the drive was less than 20 minutes to get there. Gas is over 2 dollars a gallon now, and my jeep gets about 17 miles to the gallon.

Great stuff, great for you. Hope you find a place to keep it all until you are 100% settled somewhere. I really believe in what goes around, comes around---you must be a nice guy.ABANA may be able to help you find a local group.

That is pretty cool, my grandpa has one just like it. Now I know what it is.

llittle blacksmith, that little ball pein has become my favorite. I believe that it was made possibly 3 generations ago, in Ausable New York by a man with the last name Akey-his son is Exel and grand son is Harold Akey. Neither of whom I've met.

Mr. Powers, I took your advise and canted the edge bricks up at a 45 degree. It has helped with keeping my coal piled up better. I call the coal between the air and where I slide the steel in my "buffer zone" coal. Have you ever taken a little kid fishing, like with a worm and bobber? I don't mean casting style fishing. You know that somehow that kid is going to find a reason to start cranking on that zebco. Like " the bobber was moving" or " I thought I had a bite". That's how I feel like I'm behaving while I tend my fire. For some reason, I can't not mess with it. I constantly "move a little here" and "push a little there". It's like a compulsion.

I have been using coal. Honestly, next to parts of Kentucky, I live in what is one of the most coal rich areas of the u.s. Everyone in my small city has mine subsidance insurance. There is more than likely part of a coal mine directly below my house as I type this. I think Peabody #7 in under this part of town. However, now I drive about thirty miles to buy coal that is probably imported from somewhere else-its a mixed up world. Here are a few more pics of stuff I am using.The tongs in back are enormous, I can't imagine the dude that must of used them, and I know that it isn't really "traditional", but I use the locking pliars more than anything. Again, mods or Glenn if these pics are too humongous, I apologize(I don't want to be "that guy" that uses a bunch of band width that I'm not paying for). The anvil is a HF, and after I've used it several times, I realized that the rule of anvil height to be equal to the standing knuckle height isn't that comfortable- I feel like I'm squatting down or hunching down. I will be hopefully adjusting that with a new anvil stand I'm making. Next pic, I don't want to get too off topic but, is some of the machete styled blades in various degrees of finished, along with one sheath(wood). I will elaborate more on that in a first knife post. Some of these unfinished blades were worked on before I started using the blower control,(and there is also the fact that I still don't really know what I'm doing). I am learning that to much air on steel, is quite similar(but less expensive) than the lesson that to much air in a 2stroke engines ALSO is a bad thing. I would like to give my appreciation to the folks on this site that are taking the time to mentor and share their experience and knowledge here with people that they don't know, or know anything about. To L.B.S. the ball pein, swage and flatter were given to me by a friend, apparently somewhere along the way I made enough good karma to have really good people that I call friends.

This is my first thread. I have been a member for a few weeks, but have been lurking here(and there) for monthes.I built my forge from a used panel off of our old drier, some 2 x 4s I had in the garage, fire bricks, some black pipe, a vidal sassoon drier, and what I think is probably a "variac" (or potentiometer or rheostat-I honestly don't know) from lowes. If you look really close, you'll see welds that do a fair impersonation of bird poop(I use a little 110 buzzbox from HF with flux core). I use some removable pieces of steel that are "u" shaped to change my air, along with the variable switch. By removing or emplacing the covers, I can make longer or shorter fires. The idea was to be able to make a short fire for items that I only want to work a small area on, and to also be able to heat treat/temper longer items too. As an after thought, I put in the back opening slide to be able to slide longer items through. I would appreciate some constructive criticism--the more constructive, the more appreciated. HAHA. I don't know if this is even a commonly used style of tuyere, it seems to work, I can take items to critical temp, however I also know that I am losing a lot of heat having a more open style of forge. Thanks for looking, and if you are in central Illinoi send me a pm-I would really like to observe some good blacksmithing and knife smithing also. Last pic is some hammers I have, I still cant figure out that flatter hammer. Oh snapple, mods sorry if the pic size is too big. I am pretty new to posting pics.

I love the handle scales you've used. They really pull all individual parts of the knife together.

Mods, if it is unacceptable to post this website for any reason, it was not my intention. That being said, if so move or delete will not hurt my feelings. This guy Mark "animal" Mcyoung is a knowledgeable guy and has quite a bit of information on the subject. Having said that, I have trained some knife stuff(although not as much as I wished), and taught self defense to men women and children. My M.O. is a MMA styled self defense system, and I borrow from Escrima, Krav, BJJ, and Muay Thai. Take that for what it is worth.

Correction to above post I meant a swaging hammer not a "fuller hammer". Thanks

Thank you Frosty, actually my first submission will be a mower blade machete-more in the parang style. Should be coming soon.

Picked up a Heller Vixen file that is coarse on one side, less coarse on the other. It has the circular pattern instead of diagonal like bastard, second, and smooth. Two dollars at an antique store, and this thing pulls off curls of annealed steel. It might be the best two dollars I've ever spent on tools. Also, a good friend recently gave me a big flatter hammer, a fuller hammer, a really nice 2 pound ball pein, some gigantic tongs, and some smaller tong-like grabbers. I honestly do not possess the skill yet to do much with the flatter or fuller hammers, but they will waiting in the wings.

Needed to do an intro., so here it is. As the title says, I live in central Illinois. I am fairly new to blacksmithing, an interest in knife making brought me here. I am a citizen, a veteran, a father, a husband, now a grandfather. I have been a correctional officer for about 16 + years. My interests have always circled around martial arts( I have trained in one thing or another off and on for many years), I was a co-owner/operator/instructor of a Mixed Martial Arts school for about 4+ years, and then taught a Y-class for about a year or so. Now that I'm a geezer, I am reduced to teaching kickboxing one day a week for fun. Other interests are fitness, archery, firearms, and motorcycles. As far as black/blade smithing, I rate myself about maybe a white belt with a stripe, or maybe a yellow belt. I've made a few sharp pointy objects that haven't broken yet, and seem to hold an edge. I do not really hold well to knife metal super-steel theology. Yes I believe starting with a good a steel as you can afford is a great idea, but I also understand a person wanting to get banging steel with what ever is on hand too. I do know that LAWN MOWER BLADES and RAILROAD SPIKES are THE BEST BLADE STEEL EVER. Just kidding, I wish I could watch some of the guys expression when they read that statement(if anybody reads it that is). I am planning to learn more about blacksmithing from Steve Knowles in Decatur some time soon. If anyone is around Springfield or Decatur, please drop me a p.m. I would love to see your shop and techniques. Take care.

That is awesome. Hundreds of years ago you would of been burned for practicing magic.