edge9001 Posted June 19, 2010 Share Posted June 19, 2010 Thought I might show all of you what I'm working on. This knife is only a practice piece so it's made of mild steel. I'm attempting to learn how to forge descent a knife, and all I have is mild steel from HD. I'll post more pics as it progresses. after i make something i'm satisfied with, I plan on locating some good hardenable steel and make it again out of a good qualitiy steel. I know it is very early in the process but does anyone see anything yet I need to work on? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
golgotha forge & anvil Posted June 19, 2010 Share Posted June 19, 2010 Nice start! All u can do is keep on pounding steel till u get it the way u want it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
otto Posted June 20, 2010 Share Posted June 20, 2010 nice shape.next leafspring or coilspring? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefera4m Posted June 20, 2010 Share Posted June 20, 2010 Great start. I started out with RR spike steel (even milder) and I learned a lot about forging techniques. Now that I've made a few knives of harder stuff (5160) I'm very glad I started with the softer stuff. Starting out on 5160 could have proven discouraging to say the least. After practicing on a half dozen or so RR spike knifes, learning from other bladesmith and gaining some experience, I swithced to 5160. I quickly found out that it takes about 10 times as much work (and 10 times as much fuel - either coal or propane) to make a blade as mild steel - even when annealed properly. Without the prior expenience of the RR spike knives it probably would have take 100 times as long and 50 times as much work - which when just starting out would probably never happened. So for what its worth, practice on a few more pieces of milder steel (RR spikes can make some pretty cool 'looking' knives). And be mentally prepared to deal with the greatter effort required for the harder steels. And by the way, 5160 is approx .6% carbon and .7% - .9% chromium, making it, when heat treated properly, as hard as properly heat treated 1080 or 1095. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edge9001 Posted June 20, 2010 Author Share Posted June 20, 2010 nice shape.next leafspring or coilspring? I think once I'm happy with this blade I'm going to find some leaf spring, since it is already somewhat flat. I have been looking at a design I want to try when I get ready to attempt a higher quality steel. a ULU of sorts I think someone else postd a picture of it last week. the blade was cut out of a saw blade and the handle sits parralel(bad spelling) to the blade the whole thing is in a U shape. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcraigl Posted June 22, 2010 Share Posted June 22, 2010 Looks good. One thing I'd suggest is to brush the scale off very frequently. Especially when you start getting close to final shape. If not, you'll be pounding "pockmarks" into the surface of the steel and that just increases the amount of drawfiling / grinding that you'll have to finish it up. Also, I'm not totally sure I agree with reefer man above. True it takes a little bit more work to forge 5160 or one of the 10xx series steels. But not 10 times. I'd say it takes maybe 20% more work in terms of the number of heats etc. as long as you're starting out with stock that's already flatstock or almost. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edge9001 Posted June 22, 2010 Author Share Posted June 22, 2010 Well not only do I get to practice making a knife, I'm also getting a propane forge from a guy(an amazing deal $50) so I get to see how that differs from charcoal as well. AND now I have a good place to annealand HT my blades with out firing up the ol solid fuel forge(ie quicker and cleaner) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
golgotha forge & anvil Posted June 23, 2010 Share Posted June 23, 2010 Sounds like ur well on ur way! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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