new bladesmith/blacksmithing

[primitive_skills]

Im new to blacksmithing/bladesmithing. I want to get back to the way things used to be made, with blood, sweat, and tears. When a person could take pride in the items they crafted by hand and heat. Any advice on tools to use and forges to make would be greatly appreciated. Im looking forward to learning old world skills from craftsmen like yourselves. Hope to hear from you gentlemen soon.

[the iron dwarf]

a hole in the ground is an early forge and some bellows, a chunk of metal or even a rock will do as an anvil, a hammer of some sort and tongs to hold the metal you are working.

charcoal will do as fuel and whatever type of metal you choose to work

[ThomasPowers]

So who will be doing your grinding?  All the way back into Medieval times the smith would  be passing a blade on to be ground and that person would be passing it on to another person/shop to do the hilting and even another would do the scabbard.

Doing it all yourself tends to be a modern thing. In the past most people could not afford the capital equipment to stand idle while they did different steps themselves.

 

[Latticino]

Planning on smelting your own steel from raw materials, or are you going to be overly modern and use that high tech purchased stuff?    For a beginner I would recommend 1084, after you learn some basic forging skills on alternate non-knife projects.

How about charcoal, there were whole communities formed around charcoal making in the past, or were you planning on digging you own coal as well?

If we can assume that you just mean that you want to work without electricity or refined heat sources like propane I would recommend the following (which will give you plenty of blood, sweat and tears):

Simple charcoal forge and double action bellows like Iron Dwarf suggests.  A block anvil of some sort with a couple of tongs and a 2# cross peen hammer.  A hacksaw, vise, a handful of files with a file card, container to quench in and oil to quench with, and some sand paper in various grits between 120 and 1200 grits.

Get the $50 knife shop book and study it carefully.

Then try to take a class in knifemaking from someone who already knows how to do it, unless you really enjoy taking an unusual time learning from your own mistakes.

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many Iforge folk live within visiting distance.

All that sounds nice, unrealistic as all gitout but nice. I think Glenn aught to start a section for folk who want to learn blacksmithing by making a knife. Don't worry, it's a very common desire but that kind of learning curve is HUGE and very steep.

What you're proposing is learning several skilled trades at once. The bladesmith came in pretty far down the list. You have to eat and if you're growing our own and hunting you aren't going to be doing much bladesmithing. Steel, you need steel, if you're good enough you might be able to make your own from Wrought Iron (WI). You have to trade for your iron though. Refine your own ore and make the iron? That's a couple skilled trades that're going to take a LOT of your time, all of it actually. A small scale iron bloom typically takes a dozen guys several days not counting making charcoal or mining coal. Either type coalier is a skilled trade.

Only hobbyists with like minded friends who all have good jobs can afford to start with dirt and turn it into working blades. Nothing wrong with it as a goal, honest there are a number of guys here who do just that from mining the ore to charcoaling to blooming then working it till they can start selecting out the cast iron from the WI to the steel. Then you get to work that billet repeatedly hoping to get good steel once it's refined enough.

It isn't a one person job unless you want to spend maybe years per blade. My advice is get hooked up with the local blacksmith group and attach yourself to guys who do this kind of thing.

Frosty The Lucky.