Johnnyreb338

5 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Who do you have teaching you?  Trying to do it on your own will make learning it take at least ten times as long.

Yeah that's 1 problem,  I'm basically  a  loner,          I'm a hermit who live in the boonies, no friends except the wife and dogs.

I like it very clean and simple.    Only thing I see is mabey incorporate some beveling on the scales at the front where the scale and blade meet. Looks kinda square from the pic. But I still am a fan.

Honestly, if you want to be up and running fairly quickly on a lower cost basis you may want to check out the Atlas mini forges for less than 300$, it think I seen where there offering it in s/s now as well.   Just my 2 cents.    Welcome aboard. 

Looks like a good start to me. Man I wish I could figure this forge welding thing out. Everybody makes it look so easy. 

Good afternoon  Masta Stan  

The wood is red palm,     wasn't real enthused when I first seen them but after I shaped  them and polished, it really made it pop. The picture don't do it justice, my iPhone doesn't take good pics. Thanks for the compliment. 

Thanks for all the tips and replies, I'm trying to take mental notes of all information. Anyways were supposed to be going to northern Kentucky to the Ark and creation museum, anything blade smith, leather shop or blacksmith related between mississippi and Kentucky that would be worth going to see. Well have about 6-7 days in that area and unlimited miles on the rental car. Although my back doesn't have unlimited miles, if it would be worth the drive i would suffer through. 

Just now, ThomasPowers said:

My stitching is bad---why I know that trick; but most of my knife sheaths are just because I had it hammered into me that no knife leaves the shop without a sheath of some sort as they are sent out *SHARP*!

As for the Hurricane we didn't get a drop of water out here.  Houston is about 746 miles away by road, 674 straight line miles...

I would love to do my own sheaths but a full time job and other duties prevent me from having enough time to do everything. My wife has stated she might be interested in getting her feet wet in the leather arts but has not committed yet. Right now she has vacation on the brain and we don't have the extra cash to invest in the tooling to get started. So for now I'll heat and beat and outsource the leather. I have 4 butcher knives to make for my boss for Christmas I'm thinking of trying kydex for them being that meat cutting is a semi wet environment. 

In addition to the series of knives shown above here is another blade I hammered out of a Timken bearing race, it has Bolivian rosewood scales and blue liners with nickel silver pins. 

Good afternoon Mr Thomas.  

Humm yes I will pass that along. I also would  like to have rivets at the top of each stich, it's just open stiching and subject to a lot of abuse. And I'm afraid the snap in the middle of the handles is going to create hotspots. But we are both learning and just having fun. How's life in El paso, did you take any hurricane damage. 

Little late but here's a picture of the completed san mai style blade from above along with another knife I hammered from some old leaf springs, kinda has a pirate appeal to it. 

Another great point that has not been mentioned is the type of drill press being used, I know from personal experience sometimes even though I aneal my steel over night in my forge I still can't drill it, my little craftsman drill press will only turn so slow and seems to not like drilling semi hard tool steel, but I can take the same blade to work and use our larger industrial press that turns slower and has more compound pressure, it will go on through. Also a quality drill bit makes a difference as well. 

Whew ( wiping sweat ) finally finished.     Been away from the board fer a spell, between fishing, bushoging ,full time job, putting up new fence and building a tractor/boat shed I'm tired. In my spare time I did complete an order. There made from 8670 steel from Alpha Knife Supply, the scales came from Exotic Wood Supplier, some of the pins are brass, nickel silver and carbon fiber. The sheaths were made by a friend who is just starting out leather working and I'm just an amateur knife maker so it works out, I trade knives for sheaths. There were 6 knives I made but only got pics of 5 of them . 

Thanks for the response 

I'll run by the welding store and pick up some good Flux before I try this again. If I try it again. 

The money going out vs the money coming in is a little to one sided. Plus I don't have a belt sander so all work has to be done by hand. Lately I've been questioning whether to keep doing it or not. I think drag racing was just as cheap. Hopefully it will stop raining here 1 day so I can go fishing.

I have limited experience at doing laminated steel so that being said I also was useing very thin material which adds it's own challenges, it was probably something I did wrong. 

Thomas       

1 each per side.    Standard Walmart borax for Flux. 

 The 5160 bonded to the cold roll good, but the 15n20 did not bond to the 5160 or the 1095. 

Good afternoon  Thomas.   The quenant was canola oil and the temp was a good Brite orange  (1600 1700) degrees. The core was 1095  1/8 thick, 2 each 5160 1/16 thick ,2 each 15n20 1/16 thick, and capped with 1/16 cold rolled flat bar on each side. 

Good afternoon  Steve. 

 It was ordered as so, and still had the sticker on it. 

During quenching. I heard it cracking in the tank.     Later this morning I cut some 2x2 test pieces of the same materials and tried welding them again, same problem, I quenched it and it delaminated as soon as it cooled. Not sure what's happening. I done another blade after the first 1 failed but I left the 15n20 out and it worked fine. 

This 1 went really bad, was trying to make a 7 layer laminated blade. Ended up with a knife shaped banana peel. The blade split on both sides between the 1095and 15n20. I guess they can't all be winners. 

Good afternoon friends 

Kozzy     I've skinned deer with both pointed knives and knives like these, I would say I boils down to what you get use to useing,both types will work as long as they are sharp. Kinda like ford Chevy and dodge, they will all get you to Walmart, just what do you like to drive. 

After doing some research on Nicholson files people said the quality of materials had dropped off since the company started outsourcing services to Mexico, except for the lathe files were still high quality  steel. That's why I specifically stated it was a lathe file. I have friends at the local machine shop here and they go through a pile of them. 

Just finished a couple of small skinning knives. 1 has maple/iron wood scales, blade is made from a bearing race. The other has Purple Heart scales and the blade is made from a Nicholson lathe file. 

Goodo afternoon  friends. 

My forge is a homemade job I put together out of some junk I had piled up around the shop. It started out as a single  burner naturaly aspirated forge using a piece of 1" s/s pipe with a 1/8 copper  tubing  stuck in the top( no jet ). It got plenty hot to just heat and beat but not forge weld. I redesigned it after a few months and put 2 of the same burners as listed above but also added another 1/8 tube to each burner and plumbed it into my shop air comp via pressure regulator and a 1/4" needle valve at the forge. Still no jets in the gas side just open ended. Now I have infinite adjustability and can have more heat than I need or can cut it down to a lazy flame. It will get so hot inside the forge the flame will be clear and can't be seen, the inside will be solid white. Foge time is cut down because it only takes a second or two for the steel to reheat after hammering. I do have scale issues if I work a piece for a long period of time. I solved this by a trip to harbor freight and bought a glass bead blaster for about 100 bucks. Takes about 3-4 min and all the scale is gone and the blade is nice and clean. It's much more efficient than waiting for it to soak in vineger overnight. Also works beautiful if you plan to put a blue finish on, I sand my blades to a 6-800 grit finish then bead blast it then blue it. Leaves a nice smooth texture.        

Just my2 cents.     

Sweet. Nice and sleek      missing a lanyard hole but thats minor. I'm a fan.

Nice   very sleek and streamline    I like.

Thanks friends.  I hammered the protruding area out then used a saw file to cut the gut hook out.  The hump in the handle is actually comfortable especially when it's turned around useing the hook. It gives a place for the Palm of your hand to rest and gives great leverage. It's a little big in the hand but the man I made it for has fairly large hands, so it should fit him good. It would be to much for small hands tho. The blade is 6 5/8 long.