chuckster2.0

Reinvent the X-acto knife!

I went into alloys and saw 52100 which also makes a good blade

What scales will you use?

It seems that you have never forged a knife before. Damascus is a very advanced skill requiring temperature control that can only be aquired with years of experience. The steel you are suggesting does not have enough carbon to make a good blade. They are made with scrap metal with various impurities. I suggest you start with railroad spike with HC on the head. They don't have enough carbon to make great knife and will have to be resharpened often but they are good to practice on. Learn damascus when you have mastered the basics and have a good eye for temperature colors.

They have the same edge orientation as the knife in my head but they do not have the spine shaped hollow grind.

I actually have a book similar to that called "Weapon: A Visual History of Arms and Armor" by DK publishing and many of the weapons from India are very unusual. However, it does not contain a blade like the one I have in my head. But I will try to find and look at stones glossary to give me more ideas. As for "knives" annuals, I will also try to get a subscription to that. It sounds like a good magezine.

When I make the knife I will post pictures. The idea of the knife is more about the grind line and not the shape. If someone has made it in the way I intend to, I would love to see pictures because I have not found any so far and would like to see what other people have done. I have done a lot of research on weird knife designs and have yet to see one like the one I have enivisioned. But I am probably wrong and the knife just is not pictured on the internet. I think that I will really know once I make it and post pictures. Though that may take a few months. I need to allocate enough time and resources to attempt it. I don't want to spend all my smithing time trying to be the first to do something. But I do want to define myself as an individual bladesmith with work that can be identified as mine without me giving too many hints. Wait. I just had a great idea! I will grind a bit of steel in the way that I planned and post pictures!

I want to because no one else has. I have never seen a knife like the one in my head.

Well that was sort of my plan anyway. I just wanted some input from some other more experienced smiths to see if they had done anything like it and to understand what I might be getting into.

I know of knives with the same shape as the ones I drew but I would like to know if I can reverse the spine and hollow grind line so that the hollow grind has the same shape as the spine and the spine has the same shape as the hollow grind.

Would it be possible to make a knife look upside-down where the hollow grind is where the spine would be and the spine where the hollow grind would be? Here is the a picture of my idea The orange is where the hollow grind would be in the upside-down knife and the grey is the spine. I did two different ideas because I wanted to either cut well or look really upside down. This idea has sort of been nagging at me for a couple of weeks so I hope you guys fully understand what I am trying to ask because I am not sure how else to word it.

Thank you for the clarification. I was worried that super quench would not work or something. I did not know you meant not to quench 3 times. I will quench once and not temper as I have been advised and I will wear gloves as I have taken shop class and have seen pictures of "accidents."(I call them human error) I Think I will finish it this month. I just have to get the supplies for the super quench.

I can't tell by your wording whether or not you are joking. Are you saying that what Chad said is untrue? I have never heat treated a spike before so Chad's statement and your statement have me very confused. Please clarify.

Thank you! This gives me hope for my knives and makes finishing this knife a more satisfying endeavor! :D

For thousands of years people have created swords. All of the best ones have come from trial and error. The techniques used by bladesmiths today are part of this history. The "what if question" is essential to making progress in bladesmithing today if we are ever going to make furthur progress in our craft. But it should be asked scientifically. Any experiment should be done scientifically. This means asking a question, making a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis and having a conclusion. This means that any "what if question" cannot truly be answered until the until proper testing has been completed. If you are asking whether you can make a damascus candle than be prepared for contraversy because it has never been done before. Until you do it you will never truly know. I myself have am a beginning bladesmith that has what if questions buzzing in my head such as "can I make an upside down hollow grind knife?" But I know that it has never been done before so I will try to make one so that I know definitively whether I can make an upside down knife. Suffice to say, experiment, experiment, experiment. Your failures and succeses will be greatly appreciated by future bladesmiths.

What medieval grave did you steal those from?:p

I would recommend that for "I am legend 4"

I had the smae melting problem with my forge when I made my first attempt at a railroad spike knife. I actually could not believe that my forge had gotten hot enough to do that! But I was much more careful at the next attempt

Basically, stabilizing wood is replacing any water, resin, or air inside the wood with a plastic. The wood does not look any different than if you oiled it. The difference here is that the wood never needs to be reoiled/retreated. Coming from Colorado, that is an incredible statement. If I have finished wood that I intend to use I have to retreat it once or twice a year because it is so dry. It never warps, expands, cracks, fades, or yellow. If it gets scratched, you can buff out the scratch. If you want the knife to have wood on the handle and wish it to last as long as possible get it stabilized.

Can you please stop raising the bar. I need to catch up.

What blade material did you use? I noticed that in the first picture, the end was threaded.

Try micarta

Look up washtub forge. Then after getting tired of buying charcoal, look up how to make charcoal.

The pattern reminds me of lava.

I am a teen. I am inexperienced. When I am confronted with a large body of experience, I listen. Rich Hale, Glenn, Thomas Powers, and Steve Sells are people you can trust to guide on your way to become a great bladesmith. If you don't want their critizism (even that is a hard word), don't post. Many of these guys are right about the fact that you can find many answers on this site and that you can answer your own question. I have not asked very many questions, but when I did it was after I could not find anything on this site or google and that only someone with years of experience can answer. I have the highest amount of respect for these "master craftsmen" You should see some of their work. You can trust me when I tell you that even if you don't like some of their critizism, it will help you. But to answer your questions, 1. Forum search quench or google it. I split the difference http://www.iforgeiron.com/forum/f91/your-preference-heat-treating-1095-knives-13835/ 2. and 3. The knife stickies have excellent information on heat treating. Guess who wrote it. Steve Sells! 4. Most people will tell you that they are either 5160 or 1095. the first two numbers tell you what alloy it is and the last two tell you how much carbon the blade contains. Dragonlair, history tells us that no matter what generation it is, we all have our faults as a group. Every generation has done things that have harmed the world or society or moral values. But we must be patient with the next generation. We must also respect the elder generation Zanzetuken. Without doing either, no progress is ever made.