Yann Kastell

Sorry for necromancy. The project was finished 2 month ago, but I thought I'd update the post with the finished blade as I said I would, even though not many might care. With new belts purchased online, I managed to get a decent finish, but a keen eye will spot many flaws here. The badly forged bevels were saved with a guided file and a lot of elbow grease, but I didn't achieve a nice, distinctive ridge because of prior mistakes. I'm still satisfied with how it turned out nonetheless. The quenching was a failure because my forge is too small to heat the whole blade ; but I'm planning to craft a fireplace big enough specifically for heating with coal prior to the quenching. I couldn't find at all how to craft the pommel as on the original piece, but since time was lacking, I went for a (much) simpler design. I've barely sharpened the blade to a light edge ; I had purchased an old grinding stone but I hadn't restored it yet. The handle is a piece a hand-cut and hand-polished oak, treated with walnut ink and linseed oil. In the end, this isn't a fonctional blade at all. But it's decent for decoration. I gave up twice on it before learning something else while working on another knife and coming back to this one. This was too ambitious for my current skills and equipment ; a professional would be ashamed to craft such a piece, and yet I'm glad I did since it was insightful. Thank you sincereley to everyone sharing their experience on this forum and on the internet, allowing folks like me to learn "on their own".

Thank you very much everyone for your advice ! There's a car scrapyard nearby, I'll go visit them and ask about springs and coils. About cooling the steel into wood ash, can I use sand instead ; or perhaps it doesn't have the same properties ? I've got plenty of it, and was already using it to "store" hot pieces.

I had planished it at 4mm of thickness, so that I could grind it without too much worrying. The issue is that I tried to forge the bevel (don't know if that's the proper word) instead of fully grinding the edge, and I shouldn't have done this, since the edge have pits aswell. My other problem is that I use a very old and worn-out belt grinder, and the belt is discontinued on the market. It makes the grinding process very long since the belt is exhausted, combined with a lack of power. I do not know what kind of steel it is. I know how dumb it sounds, but I started by gathering remains from the house and from friends. I've been throwing away a lot of steel as I discovered how bad some of it was (some cracked in many thin layers as I heated and worked it ; other simply never hardened after quenching, ...). I am a bit worried actually, because I'm running out of good steel and I simply cannot find a way to purchase some. I visited and contacted many companies dealing in steel around where I lived, whether it was second-hand material or industrial distributor, and no one sells steel capable of sustaining thermal treatment ... Some professionals even have never heard of the type of steel I've been looking for (french / european standard : XC75. And the industry apparently only deals with S235). And to finish answering you, Frazer, I'm not sure what you imply by "plan for hardening". I use vegetable oil (sunflower) for the quenching, and temper it once in the oven. Since I lack a lot of knowledge in metallurgy (in fact I am lacking in many other aspects), I adopt an empirical approach : 220°C for 2 hours in the oven, and observe the results. If I feel it didn't work, I change the parameters for the same steel on future projects.

Well, I tried throughout the day to flatten it, unsuccessfully. I'm a bit disappointed after getting this far into it, but I guess I've learned my mistake.

Thank you for your answer. I indeed discovered only recently that I might have been inserting the steel too deep into the forge, though I never saw this blade melt. Perhaps it caused some damage nonetheless. I think I'll heat it back and try to do as you said. You saw correctly, it's Aragorn's dagger from Lord of the Ring My brother and I deeply appreciate these movies / books and I wanted to craft him a dagger from the movie. This one seemed amongst the least difficult to recreate. It's been quite challenging so far, but now I feel much more confortable forging a classic knife. If by happenstance some might be interested in seeing the result of the planishing - or even the final result - I can update this post later. Thank you again !

Greetings, after a long time lurking on this forum, I finally decide to post, unfortunately because I have a problem. I am trying to reproduce a dagger from a movie as a Christmas gift, and as I was grinding it, I discovered many, many marks on the blade. I managed to grind a lot of them while maintaining a homogeneous thickness, but there are parts where I just cannot get rid of them. I used a brush before and after working the hot blade, and always wiped the anvil to remove the scales, yet it is still badly damaged. Is there any solutions to fix this issue ? Should I put it back in the forge to try to correct it, or is it irredeemable ? I am a beginner ; I've built my first forge a year ago with bits and pieces, but barely had the time to work. Thanks to unemployment, I work at the forge nearly everyday since early September, but I am still learning on my own, though with all the resources on this forum and elsewhere. By the way, this is a good opportunity to thank you all deeply for all the knowledge here ! Thank you very much in advance for your insight !