Rich Hale

If the hardness of the surface relates directly to rebound testing,,,and I think it does,,,if the rebound does not change the surface hardness did not change.

Think back to times so far back they are before me! A community could not exist withouit a blacksmith. They did so many essential things they were a foundation for a town. They made nails..they made them until it wsa cheaper and easier to have kegs of them brought in, They spent the time making some4thing else the found a need for. They made horshoes and shod horses. At some point they made some ornamental things,,, May have been about the time some of them stopped with horses. WE couild go on and on with this but the point being, with economic growth a smith worked and moved ahead with the times. Some of them became amazing in wot they crafted. some of them did not. And aloong the way there have been drastic changes to our way of lifee. The current one is not the first or likely the last. Some will continue and struggle, some will fail and stop smithing..some will add something else to their bag of tricks to keep working on a limited bases at smithing. Business plans suggest a lot of ways to look at wot you are doing. Like short, long and longer term goals based on a real look at your surrouindings. Can you move forward? Will your present plan continue that progress? If you are stalemated in your present situation would adding additional skills push you along? can you afford to gain those skills? The heading says,,Its so sad..and it may be an understatement to have the smith in the thread at a point that he is in. Sad also that in the time I have taken to type this I have not offered a solution or direction that is of help.

Check private message Goeff

You can also do a pass around story board....Forge several blades ahead of time and take along. pass them out at the time youi aer working the demo blade to match it...Pass a piece of raw stock..while you aer heating naother piece..then after chaping pass one ouit like it..then another when it is rouigh ground...and heat treat another rouigh ground so theycan see..etc..as far as you wish to grow....watching grinding to me is like watching paint dry....have fun..

ASk before youi buy if it is annealed..if so youi can drill it just fine...And whether it needs to be hardened will depend on the type of wood you are doweling..dense hard wood will need HT for the steel...You may try and harden it by heating it as well as youi can to non magnetic with your otrch...then stick it in oven for a few hours at 400f....I use A 2 quite abit and never have trouble with drilling or machining. Do not know if yoiur drillpress will turn slow enough to drill that size hole,,,but you can find a spindle speed chart to help you with that and most drill presses have a chart telling spindle speeds with belt positions.

If you would like thoughts on that private message me.

I know wot you mean about the time it takes to get a hand sanded finish on a blade that big,,,About double the time I would take for a similiar length blade for a knife. And also why I use power tools for that work....lol

That for sure was not covered, i will tos mythouights in and admit I have not tried it...I almost remember Moony mentioning he has done this. No details pop up here. I Would try tig welding sa the clean weld wouild allow me to assure no gaps would be covered over.ALso I believe you could select a filler rod based on its compostion more readily than if you used a wire feed welder.. For anyone that is really good with a tig theuy may wish to sonside how much more they could make with the same mount of welding time as it would take for a knfe that is an experiment. I do nto see Moony post in the forums but he is in the chat room almost daily ,,at the odd times that work for those folks from Oz....He may be able to add mroe if you catch him.

It is a shame that the person that posted this question does not color within the lines. He has already missed out on some good information in the above answers. Information that may have helped him along. However the thread remaining will likely get more answers and there are a lot of folks that will get access to it.

Message received...

I would weld quarter inch plates to top of legs and bolt them to the half inch,,,

The line you describe is due to two different steels.

Applying this chart to shop settings may confuse new folks...Ambient light is a huge determining factor in the color we see ,,a certain color of flame or metal in dim light will change dramatically in bright sun. many new folks forge outdoors or in shopw with large doors to outside light. dark or bright...Eric hit a big point above when he mentioned the color of the steel reaches the color of inside of forge...I weld at that temp ,,either in shade or sunshine with a gasser... my coal forge is outside and the light is different than inside a gasser,,,

There is more information if you wish to learn more...start with the sections on heat treating on this site..and a copy of The Complete Bladesmith by the above mentioned Jim hrousalas. is vital for anyone wishing to learn more..most libraries can get one if they do not have it on a shelf. after a short read you can decide to purchase one or not.

Ric I posted just after you did and i had to look back to see just how this did get on knives...Chief said in the #5 post that he would start out selling knives at gun shows.....I know that would allow him to see just wot the market is like. and would be educational. maybe not productive as if he stayed in shop when he gets going and learn basics I wish that when I began all of this i would have had half the advice that has been posted in this thread alone...let aloneall that is on this site.

Chief if it will help at all let me chime in here: I did a lot of guns shows when i first started making and selling knves,,,and the selling part came alot of years after i began making them...The desier part was there to sell, the buyers were not. I had been to a lot of gun shows and saw as you have that there were buyers there for knves and guns. So i would rent a table and site for two days and watch my work being scrutenized and handled. once every two or three weekends I would sell A knife. Good thing I had a day job. and they were not along way and a lot of gas to get to. Slowly I got buyers..some bought a second and third knfe...some got buddys to buy. so i moved into the green side of the ledger...I started dropping gun shows and moved up to shows that only had knife related sales. Agin there were buyeres there and they bought,,but not from me...Took about two years beforfe I could leave a show with more money than I took. Then I found out that each time I went to a show I had nto been to in the past it was the same thing...folks look,,,no or few sales...and after a couple of years the sales come along...Noow yearsl ater i fullyunderstand that each show i attend I may return with every knifee I spent so much time making. I no longer have a day job. And the sales do nto fedd me. so I enjoy the shows...when I have a great show it is all worth it. Join not only the forging group but find a knife club and go to meetings and just listen and watch..it is another way of an education.

Don't forget that an anvil is a tool,,some tools get altered to fit a need and some of them are broken in use...and of course some are owned by folks that do not know proper usage. That would be welcomed in my shop and I have two..just right for my needs.

For youir forge you may want to reread wot Wayne Coe wrote above..He is the man with experience to make this item work...a lot of folks come on here and look for plans, products etc and then change a lot of things when tey build..and it doea not work well when they try and us it to forge. Some wills ay it works great but does not heat metal hot enough to forge and will cetainly heat enough to forge weld in.

Blue color after part of the heat treat whole process may be cased during the final phase..tempering..and in most cases with blades that wouild indicate a blade that has beensoftening too much with tempering and would not hold an edge properly. You may have glanced through the heat treat informationhere but it is critical for youi to learn both the terminology and the steps involved,,,shoot they are so easy to learn tha4t I did!. But it will take more than a scan or two to get it right. Now wot i think you likley saw in a blue blade is a blade that was finished entirely,,all heat treat steps and final finishing on the metal work...then it may have been gun blued...most likley hot blued..that makes a dureable finish just like it does on firearms. Any colors as a result of the heat treat process are very thin surface thick only and will not last..they will rub off when putting blade in and out of the sheathe.

I would make a metal template with holes in it and a guide to postion it over the leather..then use one punch through the guide to punch the holes one at a time....

Oil is easy to heat. Heat about three bars of steel like one inchsq by a foot or so...hea tfirst one until it is hot when close to your skin...but not glowing....leave other pieces in forge and put first one in,,swirl it arouind until it is cool...drip dry the back in forge,,may flare up in flame so watch for that..then take another one and do the same...keep it up until a thermometor tells you you are at correct temp.....takes more time to type than to do!

I see Co2 and CO confused on this site alot,,,I think we be really carful not to do that!

I am sure Steve will appreciate the thank you...even if he does not know why!

I never use it...I do all of my HC blades in atf

Several spots on google say call Kelly Cupples...,.