Well, I just finished this dagger today and thought I might as well show you all and see what you guys think.

The blade is pattern welded with a spine of braided rebar, and the edge composed of 1060/1075. The guard and pommel are of mild steel, the grip is red oak with bone inlay and rune script. This was just something I was messing around with a bit and kind of experimenting with some different things (like if the large amounts of rebar I have laying about would be worth trying to incorporate into blades and what not). The pattern is not really impressive at all (and most of the small weld lines cant be seen in the compressed pictures anyways) but hey for just messing around, I suppose its not too bad.





Tar Alderion

where's the photo??? :rolleyes:

I see it. Take off your welding helmet.

WOW, I am floored, that is gorgeous! NICE work!!!!!!!

Excellent work. I really love it. How did you attach the pommel? Is the end of the tang peined over, or did you do it another way?

Honest guys, when I first looked, there weren't any photos. But now, I can see...that's good work TA, really nice blade shape.

Thanks all.
Rantalin, for the pommel, what I did was once I had everthing fitted properly, I peened the tang slightly, good enough for it to hold everthing, then I gave it a quick zap with the arc welder to build up some more metal (as well as to ensure a permanant fixation for the entire hilt assembly). Then I ground down the weld build up into the shape of the rest of the pommel style, sanded and polished, giving the appearance of no tang and just a solid pommel piece.

I also did the heat treat on 4 smaller knives I have in the works today. I hope to have them all done in the next couple of weeks.

I also have a large 3 steel billit that I have been working on (currently 18 layers), which I think I am going to try to do a ladder pattern with. But that will take some time before I make much progress with it, I still have to decide on the layer count I want, and how big I want the blade to be. At the moment I could probably manage a decent sized sword with it, but the more layers, I do the smaller the blade due to the loss of mass to fire scale. I will have to see about it once I finish the other blades I have in the works.

Tar Alderion

I like the entire package, is has a barbarish look. very nice work!!

You did a great job with the pommel. I can't see any change in material where the weld is.

I would not want to mess with you in a dark alley...;-) It has a decidedly wicked look.

Did you do any heat treat on the dagger or leave it as normalized? I made some push daggers for a fellow some years ago using 1080 plow steel and they held a pretty fair edge with no hardening/tempering.

Be-yew-T-full dagger, Tar. Just out of curiosity, What do the runes translate to? I'm kinda rusty. Nordic? Or Elvish;)

-S

For the most part I heat treat all of my blades (save some of the stock removal ones, the stock itself is usually hard enough). But yep, full hardening and temper for this one. You could probably get by with the 1080 normalized due to the higher carbon content, but since most of this blade is in the lower end of the high carbons and a mild spine, I figure its best to give a good heat treat to maximize performance and quality.

As for the runes, dont know why I didnt think to mention them before. They are nordic, and on one side it says "Honor" and on the other (which I didnt post a pic of) it says "Power."

On another good note, I finally accumulated enough spare change to go get some more propane. So hopefully I can get that soon and make some progress on that billet. I think I am going to shoot for about 64 layers with it, and I have decided to do a serpantine ladder pattern. And I think with the mass of the billit now, by the time I get all the folding done and forged to shape I should have enough to do a short sword.
And I should also be finishing up some other simple knives in the near future. Will post progress.

Tar Alderion

Awesome dagger! You really paid attention to the detail on this one.