Recent projects with Real steel

[Malice9610]

So last weekend I decided to get over my aversion of using my good steel to work on, cut up some O1, and started banging away. 

Made myself a nice little narrow single edged blade with a decent sized tang, set it off to the side and worked on another piece. 

Short while later, after it had cooled, I picked up my first piece, and noticed that the tang was not straight... 

Not thinking, I grabbed my 16oz hammer, and lightly tapped it a couple of times, and the tang snapped off 

Then I remembered what I had read, that O1 in thin sections can / will air harden... Since this was later in the evening Sunday, I packed everything up for the night and swore to myself I wouldnt make the same mistake next weekend. 

So yesterday, I started another one, with the same basic design in mind. Since I had not finished the second piece from the week before, I started with that piece. 

And this is how it turned out so far. 

Underneath, is 4 sections of leaf spring, which I had also worked on, took the two shortest pieces from a pair of leaf springs I got from my dad ( off my kid sisters 76 Camaro Dragster pre build, so no hardcore racing done on them ) and cut them in half, then heated and flattened them in sections. 

Today was a " lite work " day as I had some plans to spend some time with family, so rather then light the forge and get all filthy dirty, I just traced some templates out on one of the springs after cleaning the rust off them with my belt sander and took my angle grinder to them, then cleaned them up on my belt sander. 

Originally I was going to use them as templates a bit more durable then paper, but after holding them I realize they need a slightly longer handle, as my hands are not very big and anyone with even slightly larger hands will find the handles too small, So I plan to finish them off entirely and keep them as " Prototypes " to hang on my wall. 

Going to do bolsters on them along with Hickory wood scales, with probably brass pins, I was going to do Micarta, but currently I lack a respirator so I am going to put making any micarta off till the end of the month when the monthly money fairy deposits my paycheck in my bank. 

They dont look it from the picture, but these things are MASSIVE, the springs were 1/4 thick, So its going to take me a bit to grind them down, but luckily I found some thin board type material in my garage ( previous owners left all sorts of useful stuff ) that I can trace these out on, draw the handle out a bit longer, and then cut out and have durable templates for the knives I make. 

They still need a bit of work, the chisel tip needs to be narrowed more and there is a thick spot on the other one right before the beginning of upward curve to the tip. but my main focus today was to get the handles ground out to spec to see how they felt in hand.  The first one still also needs work as the tang is again not straight, but the moment I noticed it I just set it right back down and remembered what had happened the weekend before. 

[TheoRockNazz]

Lookin' good! Some great real first blades.
Yeah, I made that mistake too when I started; people range in opinion on hammering cold, but it seems in general you should not hammer cold, especially so if it's been heat treated (or at least not annealed or normalized).

Moar pics please!

[Malice9610]

Here are 2 more I cut out of the second section of leaf spring. 

Basically my goal to start, is with EDC type knives for something to sell, here in Utah the laws pertaining to knives you can carry are pretty lax as we are an open carry firearm state, but unless you want people looking at you funny and avoiding you, its best to keep the object attached to your belt on the smaller side of the scale.

Also the board behind them, Is what I will be using as my templates moving forward.

Here is the Tanto style one from above after some grinding, I did most of the grinding freehand, then cleaned it up and fixed it best I could with a file. Essentially my plan is to make one of each style, freehand grind it and file it to clean it up, and keep the first of each design for prototype use and abuse, should they pass my tests, they will get made for sale, however my freehand grinding will need to improve before I can actually freehand them all, so I will be using a jig on any I plan to sell, I have a lot of ideas in my head for different designs, so there will be plenty of prototyping done to improve my freehand grinding skills. 

Unfortunately during the week my ability to work is very limited as I have a couple young kids at home who spend weekends with their mother, so forging and heat treating anything at the moment is a pure weekend project, Once my 6 year old gets over his defiant streak, I plan to have him help dad but for the moment its more risk then worth it. That is actually part of why I have moved more over to the stock removal process for knives for the moment, The girlfriend will only tolerate the noise and smell and filthy dirty boyfriend for so long before she reaches back and gives me an old school Italian smack down unless this project starts bringing money into the house. And with the number of Drag racers and mechanics my family hangs out with doing stock removal on old leaf springs is the most economical all the way around.

I have one more template to rough out from a paper drawing to add to the board, technically that one is a special request, my friend who is more brother then friend wants a double edged boot knife similar to the one from Big Trouble Little China, So tonight's work is to get that drawn up and rough cut on a blank, but first I have to make a plate for my grinder, not sure why but the tool/stock rest on my cheap harbor freight jobby has these deep grooves on it which prevent smooth movements with anything remotely Jig shaped. 

[Swords9023]

Looking good! I can't wait to see them when they're finished or reproduced into full blades.

[ThomasPowers]

I'd call that the "American Tanto" style with the ricasso and the short angular tip that was not a common style for japanese tantos---probably less than 10% of historic tantos used it.

Great idea to record them---perhaps go over the pen lines with a wood burner to really make them last a long long time!